Fixation positions after skipping saccades: A single space makes a large difference

During reading, saccadic eye movements are generated to shift words into the center of the visual field for lexical processing. Recently, Krügel and Engbert (Vision Research 50:1532?C1539, 2010) demonstrated that within-word fixation positions are largely shifted to the left after skipped words. However, explanations of the origin of this effect cannot be drawn from normal reading data alone. Here we show that the large effect of skipped words on the distribution of within-word fixation positions is primarily based on rather subtle differences in the low-level visual information acquired before saccades. Using arrangements of ??x?? letter strings, we reproduced the effect of skipped character strings in a highly controlled single-saccade task. Our results demonstrate that the effect of skipped words in reading is the signature of a general visuomotor phenomenon. Moreover, our findings extend beyond the scope of the widely accepted range-error model, which posits that within-word fixation positions in reading depend solely on the distances of target words. We expect that our results will provide critical boundary conditions for the development of visuomotor models of saccade planning during reading.     

Early detection of drug use and bullying in secondary school children by using a three-dimensional simulation program

The current study analyzes the psychometric properties of an innovative three-dimensional (3D) simulation program, entitled Mii-School (MS), designed for the early detection of drug use and bullying in Secondary School children. This computer program showed adequate reliability and construct validity. The factorial structure, as well as the explanatory weight of the different factors, is presented. In addition, the results of a parallel version in paper and pencil format are also presented and compared with those of the computerized version (i.e., MS). There was a statistically significant difference between the two formats in the total (i.e., combined) sore of risk. When drug use and bullying were separately analyzed, differences were found only with regard to drug use. The relevance of these results as well as the suitability of this type of 3D instrument for the early detection of risky behaviors in young people are discussed.     

Capturing and testing perceptual-cognitive expertise: A comparison of stationary and movement response methods

Numerous methods have been used to study expertise and performance. In the present article, we compare the cognitive thought processes of skilled soccer players when responding to film-based simulations of defensive situations involving two different experimental conditions. Participants either remained stationary in a seated position (n = 10) or were allowed to move (n = 10) in response to life-size film sequences of 11 versus 11 open-play soccer situations viewed from a player’s perspective. Response accuracy and retrospective verbal reports of thinking were collected across the two task conditions. In the movement-based response group, participants generated a greater number of verbal report statements, including a higher proportion of evaluation, prediction, and action planning statements, than did participants in the stationary group. Findings suggest that the processing strategies employed during performance differ depending on the nature of the response required of participants. Implications for behavioral methods and experimental design are discussed.     

Studying Children’s Religious Knowledge: Contributions of Ethnography and the Clinical-Critical Method

We analyze different methodological and conceptual contributions of anthropology and psychogenetic theory to the research of children’s religious knowledge. We argue that for the study of children’s points of view it is possible to build an approach that links aspects studied by both disciplinary fields. With this aim, we revise some of their basic theoretical assumptions and recent reviews as well as their methodological proposals. Then we review the core characteristics of ethnography and the clinical–critical method—proposed by Piaget’s psychogenetic theory—with the goal of stressing their potentialities as well as their limitations in research. We argue that within an ethnographic approach, we must establish certain restrictions on the clinical–critical method following basic premises of social anthropology. This approach lets us demonstrate the importance of understanding children’s constructions by placing them within social relations that children produce and update in everyday interactions.     

Adjective–noun order as representational structure: Native-language grammar influences perception of similarity and recognition memory

This article describes two experiments linking native-language grammar rules with implications for perception of similarity and recognition memory. In prenominal languages (e.g., English), adjectives usually precede nouns, whereas in postnominal languages (e.g., Portuguese), nouns usually precede adjectives. We explored the influence of such rules upon similarity judgments about, and recognition of, objects with multiple category attributes (one nominal attribute and one adjectival attribute). The results supported the hypothesized primacy effect of native-language word order such that nouns generally carried more weight for Portuguese speakers than for English speakers. This pattern was observed for judgments of similarity (i.e., Portuguese speakers tended to judge objects that shared a noun-designated attribute as more similar than did English speakers), as well as for false alarms in recognition memory (i.e., Portuguese speakers tended to falsely recognize more objects if they possessed a familiar noun attribute, relative to English speakers). The implications of such linguistic effects for the cognition of similarity and memory are discussed.     

The Validity of the Massie-Campbell Attachment During Stress Scale (ADS)

The present study is the first step towards validating the Massie-Campbell attachment during stress scale (ADS). The ADS is a one-page guide to standardized observation of mother-infant interactions meant to detect insecure attachment behaviors. So far it was used infrequently in scientific research but it is widely applied in the Chilean public health system. To establish the ADS’s convergent, concurrent, and construct validity, the ADS was compared with the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) and correlated with maternal sensitivity. Videotapes of the SSP were coded with the ADS and the resulting ADS attachment classifications were compared with the SSP classifications. It was found that the ADS can distinguish moderately well between securely attached and non-securely attached mother-infant dyads, and the ADS was also associated with observed maternal sensitivity. However, the ADS suffers from a number of limitations that warrant further study. In particular, the ADS proved unable to detect resistantly attached mother-infant dyads. Revision of the scale and its scoring rules seems necessary in order to improve its validity as a screening device in scientific research and clinical practice.     

Knowability as potential knowledge

The thesis that every truth is knowable is usually glossed by decomposing knowability into possibility and knowledge. Under elementary assumptions about possibility and knowledge, considered as modal operators, the thesis collapses the distinction between truth and knowledge (as shown by the so-called Fitch-argument). We show that there is a more plausible interpretation of knowability—one that does not decompose the notion in the usual way—to which the Fitch-argument does not apply. We call this the potential knowledge-interpretation of knowability. We compare our interpretation with the rephrasal of knowability proposed by Edgington and Rabinowicz and Segerberg, inserting an actuality-operator. This proposal shares some key features with ours but suffers from requiring specific transworld-knowledge. We observe that potential knowledge involves no transworld-knowledge. We describe the logic of potential knowledge by providing models for interpreting the new operator. Finally we show that the knowability thesis can be added to elementary conditions on potential knowledge without collapsing modal distinctions.     

Eine streitlustige psychoanalytische Psychosomatik und die gegenseitige Analyse von Ferenczi und Groddeck

This article is the third part of an originally unplanned trilogy caused by the internal logic of the research process on psychosomatic theories. On the background of Freud’s difficulties with the illness and disease theory the fragmentation of the field of psychosomatic medicine has been described and presented in the two previous parts as an attempt to explain its tortuous developmental course. In the first part of this current paper the author tries to understand both the ideas and sociopolitical forces that were involved in the historical development of psychosomatic medicine. The scope of the field as well as the models used oscillated greatly. Psychoanalysis has played an important role in this development even if the mainstream psychoanalysts showed relatively little interest. Psychosomatics also required therapeutic approaches that were foreign to the accustomed psychoanalytical setting. Occasionally the influence of various physiological models was strongly displayed (e.g. Selye’s stress model and the influence of the immune system). The deepening of the psychological understanding is nevertheless due to original marginal psychoanalytic thinkers, such as Ferenczi and Groddeck. Under the influence of Ferenczi the unconventional search was completed by Balint to some extent either through development of the psychotherapeutic technique or by the influence of listening to the doctors in their interaction with patients.