Evidence for the integration of audiovisual emotional information at the perceptual level of processing

The present aim was to investigate how emotional expressions presented on an unattended channel affect the recognition of the attended emotional expressions. In Experiments 1 and 2, facial and vocal expressions were simultaneously presented as stimulus combinations. The emotions (happiness, anger, or emotional neutrality) expressed by the face and voice were either congruent or incongruent. Subjects were asked to attend either to the visual (Experiment 1) or auditory (Experiment 2) channel and recognise the emotional expression. The result showed that the ignored emotional expressions significantly affected the processing of attended signals as measured by recognition accuracy and response speed. In general, attended signals were recognised more accurately and faster in congruent than in incongruent combinations. In Experiment 3, possibility for a perceptual-level integration was eliminated by presenting the response-relevant and response-irrelevant signals separated in time. In this situation, emotional information presented on the nonattended channel ceased to affect the processing of emotional signals on the attended channel. The present results are interpreted to provide evidence for the view that facial and vocal emotional signals are integrated at the perceptual level of information processing and not at the later response-selection stages.     

Second language learning in elementary and high school students

Abstract

A cross-sectional approach covering an age range of 10 years was used to compare the developmental changu in picture naming md number naming of 77 high scbool md 74 elementary students who came from Germany to Sweden. For the two different groups of students, length of residcoce in Swedcn was the main independent variable and reaction time on simple naming tasks of pictures and numbers in German and Swedish was the dependent variable. The results provide evidence that elementuy school students achieved a balanced form of bilingualism 2 years earlier than high school students on the picture naming task. Naming two-digit numbers was shown to be a relatively difficult task for elementary school children, as indiated by markedly prolonged response times. Despite this fact, after about 4 years of residence in Sweden, both groups of students reached language ballaced on this task in that they showed identical response times in both languages. The results on the picture naming task were taken as support for the optimal age hypothesis.     

Psychodynamik und neurophysiologischer Befund bei einem Patienten mit einer zwanghaften Lesestörung

The present single case study is aimed to investigate neuro-physiological correlates of checking and ordering compulsions in a 40 years old patient suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by means of the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method. After the presentation of the psychogenesis and psychodynamic of the OCD case, the cardinal symptom, a compulsive reading disturbance, is described in detail. Based on the symptom analysis eight different texts, hierarchically arranged by their degrees of difficulty were composed and presented to the patient for reading during fMRI. The results of the fMRI during symptom provocation display significant increase of activation in fronto-thalamic-cortical neural circuits with the occurence of compulsive reading disturbances compared with unproblematic texts and with the reading of a control subject. The findings are discussed in relation to the neurobiologic literature as well as to an object-psychological model of the OCD.     

Entwicklungstendenzen psychotherapeutischer Praxis und Forschung

This review presents an analysis of articles in the journal “Psychotherapeut” during the years 2000 and 2001 with the focus on new efforts in the field of psychotherapeutic practice and research. The main topics of the journal are the presentation of new therapeutic approaches, some of them integrating different theoretical orientations, and the emphasis on the therapeutic relationship as a specific contribution to the process and the results of psychotherapy. In addition, this article presents a survey of the various subjects in psychotherapeutic research including a) the application and testing of new questionnaires to measure the effectiveness and the process of psychotherapy and b) research in the epidemiology of selected forms of stress, their consequences and lasting effects.     

“You be Sure Now to be Honest in Your Assessment”: Teaching and Learning Self-Assessment

When taking part in the everyday practices of the school, the pupil ‘metalearns’ implicit institutional knowledge about educability and its proper criteria. The aim of this study was to examine one important school practice, self-assessment: How is self-assessment ‘taught’ to children, what is assessed through the self-assessment method, how is self-assessment introduced to children, and how do they perceive those situations? The ethnographic research focused on the classroom situations of one class of first-graders during one autumn term. The data were collected by means of regular observation, video recordings, short interviews, documents, and informal conversations with the teachers, pupils and parents. The findings indicated that the frequency of self-assessment episodes was particularly high in the domains of writing, mathematics, and social skills and behaviour; self-assessment situations were a ‘natural’ part of everyday teaching practices. According to our observations, the result of the self-assessment was considerably explicit. The teacher made sure that the pupils assessed their performance in the way she wanted. The teaching of self-assessment also teaches the child what assessment criteria the school regards as important and how well the child fulfils these criteria. According to our analysis, these important assessment criteria are objectiveness (compliance to standard), honesty, and individuality (a product that ‘looks like’ its author). The children practised self-assessment actively and were apparently capable of assessing their own performance. Our results suggest that ‘the self’ in self-assessment is paradoxical: you can assess yourself as long as you assess the right things in the right way.     

Hearing Impairment, Coping Strategies, and Anxiety Sensitivity

The aim was to study coping strategies among hearing-impaired individuals by using a validated coping instrument—The Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WOCQ; S. Folkman & R. Lazarus, 1988)—and to relate the use of coping with anxiety sensitivity and experience of hearing impairment. A questionnaire booklet was sent out to the members of the local branch of the Swedish Hard of Hearing Association. Ninety-four members responded to the questionnaire, yielding a 53% response rate. Primary outcome measures were the WOCQ, the Anxiety Sensitivity Index, and visual analogue scale rating of discomfort from hearing impairment. Repeated measures analysis of WOCQ subscales showed that the participants used planful problem solving and self-controlling coping strategies whereas escape/avoidance responses were less frequently used than the other coping strategies. Anxiety sensitivity was associated with escape/avoidance coping (r = .63, p < .0001). In conclusion, hearing-impaired individuals do not use escape/avoidance coping more than other coping strategies. However, escape/avoidance coping is associated with anxiety sensitivity, suggesting that sensitivity to anxiety sensations is an important associated factor. Coping strategies were not associated with discomfort from hearing impairment in any meaningful way.     

快速节俭启发式--基于有限理性和生态理性的简单决策规则

本文阐述了德国“马克斯．普朗克人类发展研究所”以Gerd Gigerenzer教授为代表的“适应行为与认知中心”简称“ABC研究中心(组)”关于判断、推理和决策制定简单启发式研究的理论背景、研究思路和技术路线,着重介绍了该研究中心在有限理性和生态理性假设基础上提出的一系列极富创意的快速节俭启发式规则,并对围绕这些简单决策规则开展的研究活动作了简要介绍。     

Musiktherapie in der deutschen Psychosomatik

The authors report about the clinical implementation of music therapy in psychosomatic hospitals in FRG based on a survey among practising music therapists: attending especially to the qualification of music therapists, their integration and the problem of indication. The coverage of music therapy in the standard textbooks on psychosomatic medicine is discussed.Finally the state of research on music therapy in psychosomatic hospitals is reviewed.     

Virtual reality and the new psychophysics

Virtual reality (VR) promises methodological rigour with the extra benefit of allowing us to study the context-dependent behaviour of individuals in their natural environment. Pan and Hamilton (2018, Br. J. Psychol.) provide a useful overview of methodological recommendations for using VR. Here, we highlight some other aspects of the use of VR. Our first argument is that VR can be useful by virtue of its differences from the normal perceptual environment. That is, by virtue of its relative non-realism and poverty of its perceptual elements, it can actually offer increased clarity with respect to the features of interest for the researcher. Our second argument is that VR exerts its measurable influence more by eliciting an acceptance of the virtual world (i.e., ‘suspension of disbelief’) rather than by eliciting a true belief of the realism of the VR environment. We conclude by providing a novel suggestion for combining neuroimaging methods with embodied VR that relies on the suspension of disbelief.