Mood states determine the degree of task shielding in dual-task performance

Current models of multitasking assume that dual-task performance and the degree of multitasking are affected by cognitive control strategies. In particular, cognitive control is assumed to regulate the amount of shielding of the prioritised task from crosstalk from the secondary task. We investigated whether and how task shielding is influenced by mood states. Participants were exposed to two short film clips, one inducing high and one inducing low arousal, of either negative or positive content. Negative mood led to stronger shielding of the prioritised task (i.e., less crosstalk) than positive mood, irrespective of arousal. These findings support the assumption that emotional states determine the parameters of cognitive control and play an important role in regulating dual-task performance.     

To help or not to help an outgroup member: The role of the target's individual attributes in resolving potential helpers' motivational conflict

When people are faced with the decision of whether or not to help an outgroup member, they often experience conflicting motivational tendencies due to the concurrent presence of factors prompting help and factors prompting non‐help. We argue that one way of how people deal with this conflict is by taking a closer look at the target's individual attributes, especially at those indicating the target's benevolence. Findings of Experiment 1 (N = 96), in which we manipulated intercultural dissimilarity between participants and a (fictitious) recipient of help and normative pressure to help as two factors affecting motivational conflict, support this basic assumption. Specifically, response latencies analyses confirmed that participants assigned a culturally highly dissimilar target spent more time on inspecting target‐related information when normative pressure, and thus motivational conflict, was high than when it was low. Experiment 2 (N = 141) extended these findings by demonstrating that providing potential helpers with explicit information about an outgroup member's benevolence increased helping intentions through reducing their negative interaction expectancies (and thus motivational conflict). As expected, this mediational relationship could only be observed for participants assigned a culturally highly dissimilar target. Experiment 3 (N = 46) replicated these mediation findings in a within‐subjects design. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Human melody singing by bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrula) gives hints about a cognitive note sequence processing

We studied human melody perception and production in a songbird in the light of current concepts from the cognitive neuroscience of music. Bullfinches are the species best known for learning melodies from human teachers. The study is based on the historical data of 15 bullfinches, raised by 3 different human tutors and studied later by Jürgen Nicolai (JN) in the period 1967–1975. These hand-raised bullfinches learned human folk melodies (sequences of 20–50 notes) accurately. The tutoring was interactive and variable, starting before fledging and JN continued it later throughout the birds’ lives. All 15 bullfinches learned to sing alternately melody modules with JN (alternate singing). We focus on the aspects of note sequencing and timing studying song variability when singing the learned melody alone and the accuracy of listening-singing interactions during alternatively singing with JN by analyzing song recordings of 5 different males. The following results were obtained as follows: (1) Sequencing: The note sequence variability when singing alone suggests that the bullfinches retrieve the note sequence from the memory as different sets of note groups (=modules), as chunks (sensu Miller in Psychol Rev 63:81–87, 1956). (2) Auditory–motor interactions, the coupling of listening and singing the human melody: Alternate singing provides insights into the bird’s brain melody processing from listening to the actually whistled part of the human melody by JN to the bird’s own accurately singing the consecutive parts. We document how variable and correctly bullfinches and JN alternated in their singing the note sequences. Alternate singing demonstrates that melody-singing bullfinches did not only follow attentively the just whistled note contribution of the human by auditory feedback, but also could synchronously anticipate singing the consecutive part of the learned melody. These data suggest that both listening and singing may depend on a single learned human melody representation (=coupling between perception and production).     

Comparing Correlates of Civic Engagement Between Immigrant and Majority Youth in Belgium,Germany, and Turkey

Drawing on data from a large-scale international project, this research examined predictors of civic engagement between immigrant (n = 599) and majority youth (n = 1,027) in Belgium, Germany, and Turkey. In all three countries immigrants were found to be more civically engaged than their majority peers. Further, based on the assumptions of the civic voluntarism model, civic engagement was predicted by resources, social experiences, and psychological engagement (i.e., internal political efficacy). The results showed that predictors differed by ethnic background. Although internal political efficacy beliefs were only found to be a significant predictor of civic engagement among majority youth, involvement in social networks was found to be a more meaningful predictor among immigrant youth. These results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.     

Text–Picture Integration: How Delayed Testing Moderates Recognition of Pictorial Information in Multimedia Learning

When learning with multimedia, text and pictures are assumed to be integrated with each other. Arndt, Schüler, and Scheiter (Learning & Instruction, 35, 62–72, 2015) confirmed the process of text picture integration for sentence recognition, not, however, for picture recognition. The current paper investigates the underlying reasons for the latter finding. Two experiments are reported, where subjects memorized text–picture stimuli that differed in the specificity of information contained in either sentences or pictures. In a subsequent picture recognition test, subjects showed no integration effect after a 30‐minute delay (Experiments 1 and 2), but only after a 1‐week delay (Experiment 2). Furthermore, eye‐tracking data showed that participants sufficiently processed the pictures during learning (Experiment 1). This data pattern speaks in favor of the assumption that after a short delay participants had available a short‐lived pictorial surface representation, which masked the integration effect for pictorial recognition.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.