The Quality of Response Time Data Inference: A Blinded,Collaborative Assessment of the Validity of Cognitive Models

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Most data analyses rely on models. To complement statistical models, psychologists have developed cognitive models, which translate observed variables into...     

The Peace Work and Witness of the Churches in the German Democratic Republic and the World Disorder of the 21st Century

This article is an edited translation of an address given in Erfurt, Germany, on 12 May 2019, to celebrate the 90th birthday of Heino Falcke, dean (provost) of Erfurt from 1973 until his retirement in 1994. Falcke, who was also a member of the working group on Church and Society of the World Council of Churches, played a central role in developing the theological and ethical response of Protestant churches in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to the threats to peace in a nuclear age. This was expressed in the “renunciation of the spirt, logic, and practice of deterrence.” This article seeks to set out the insights from the peace work and witness of the churches in the GDR against the background of the “world disorder of the 21st century.”     

What is so frightening about spiders? Self‐rated and self‐disclosed impact of different characteristics and associations with phobia symptoms

Spider phobia is a common and impairing mental disorder, yet little is known about what characteristics of spiders that spider phobic individuals find frightening. Using screening data from a clinical trial, we explored which characteristics that spider‐fearful individuals (n = 194) rated as having the greatest impact on fear, used factor analysis to group specific characteristics, and explored linear associations with self‐reported phobia symptoms. Second, a guided text‐mining approach was used to extract the most common words in free‐text responses to the question: “What is it about spiders that you find frightening?” Both analysis types suggested that movement‐related characteristics of spiders were the most important, followed by appearance characteristics. There were, however, no linear associations with degree of phobia symptoms. Our findings reveal the importance of targeting movement‐related fears in in‐vivo exposure therapy for spider phobia and using realistically animated spider stimuli in computer‐based experimental paradigms and clinical interventions such as Virtual Reality exposure therapy.     

Object- and direction-specific interference between manual and mental rotation

We conducted a series of psychophysical experiments to investigate the nature and specificity of behavioral interference between mental and manual rotation. Participants were asked to mentally rotate five different types of visual stimuli--hands, faces, tools, cubes, and natural objects--either clockwise or counterclockwise while they simultaneously manually rotated a wheel in the concordant or discordant direction. Our study clearly revealed object-specific interference between manual and mental rotation. In comparison with a neutral baseline condition without any manual rotation, both manual rotation directions generally impaired the mental rotation of cubes. In contrast, the mental rotation of hands was impaired only by discordant manual rotation. This object- and direction-specific interference between manual and mental rotation proved to be independent of task difficulty. We furthermore found an angular distance effect across different stimulus types.     

Fitting the ratcliff diffusion model to experimental data

Many experiments in psychology yield both reaction time and accuracy data. However, no off-the-shelf methods yet exist for the statistical analysis of such data. One particularly successful model has been the diffusion process, but using it is difficult in practice because of numerical, statistical, and software problems. We present a general method for performing diffusion model analyses on experimental data. By implementing design matrices, a wide range of across-condition restrictions can be imposed on model parameters, in a flexible way. It becomes possible to fit models with parameters regressed onto predictors. Moreover, data analytical tools are discussed that can be used to handle various types of outliers and contaminants. We briefly present an easy-touse software tool that helps perform diffusion model analyses.     

Explorations of anticipatory behavioral control (ABC): a report from the cognitive psychology unit of the University of Würzburg

The report comprises recent theoretical considerations, experimental research, and simulations which all aim at a clarification of anticipatory mechanisms of behavioral control.     

... dort, wo ich berühre, werde ich auch berührt Touched by touching

Ziel der Arbeit ist es, die Berührung, den Berührungssinn oder die Haut als dessen Organ ph?nomenologisch und psychodynamisch zu erfassen sowie zu überlegen, wie der Erfahrungsraum der Berührung sich gestaltet und wie diese Dimension des Fühlens in der psychoanalytischen Psychotherapie sich umsetzt. Die ph?nomenologischen Analysen folgen v. a. den franz?sischen Ph?nomenologen und Philosophen Maurice Merleau-Ponty und Emmanuel Levinas, die psychodynamischen Analysen u. a. Didier Anzieu und Danielle Quinodoz. Der Erfahrungsraum der Berührung wird in folgenden Schritten nachgezeichnet: Einleitend wird zu fragen sein, was die Sprache an Erkenntnissen über die Berührung bereith?lt. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die ph?nomenologischen Analysen beschrieben, die den Erfahrungsraum der Berührung (synchron) erfassen. Dabei werden die Verbindungen zwischen dem Selbst und dem Objekt (Personen) im Mittelpunkt stehen, aber auch die Qualit?ten oder die Regulationsvorg?nge, die in der Berührung und durch die Berührung erbracht werden, und schlie?lich die Zeitlichkeit oder die in dem Prozess der Berührung mitschwingenden Zeiterfahrungen. Die Dimensionen der Unmittelbarkeit, der Wechselseitigkeit und des Abstands werden dabei entscheidend sein; sie werden anhand von exemplarischen Darstellungen von Berührungsmustern in der Kunstgeschichte erl?utert. In einem dritten Teil wird eine Fallvignette aus den Behandlungen der Basler Psychotherapeutischen Tagesklinik zum Ausgangspunkt genommen, um zu zeigen, wie die frühesten Berührungserfahrungen das Selbstverst?ndnis bilden und zur Ich- St?rke beitragen, und wie Psychotherapie, durch eine Berührung mit Worten, bei dem Wiederfinden oder dem neuen Entdecken von Berührung hilft. Anstelle einer Zusammenfassung wird ein Gedicht zum Thema der Berührung erneut die Frage stellen, ob Worte berühren k?nnen.