Processing of representations in declarative and procedural working memory

The article investigates the relation between declarative and procedural working memory (WM; Oberauer, 2009). Two experiments test the assumption that representations in the two subsystems are selected for processing in analogous ways. Participants carried out a series of decisions on memorized lists of digits. For each decision, they had to select declarative and procedural representations. Regarding declarative representations, participants selected a memory set and a digit within this set as the input to each decision. With respect to the procedural representations, they selected a task set to be applied to the selected digit and a response within that task set. We independently manipulated the number of lists and the number of tasks to be switched among (one, two, or three; Experiment 1) and preparation time for a list switch (Experiment 2). For three effects commonly observed in task-switch studies, analogues in declarative WM were found: list-switch costs, mixing costs, and residual switch costs. List- and task-switch costs were underadditive, suggesting that declarative and procedural representations are selected separately and in parallel. The findings support the hypothesis of two analogous WM subsystems.     

Applying sampling theories to attitude learning in a virtual school class environment

According to sampling theories of attitude formation, evaluative learning depends on the sampling in the environment. We investigated teachers’ student evaluations in a simulated school class. Two experiments were designed to test distinct implications of experience-sampling models. While the model advanced by Fazio, Eiser, and Shook (2004) and Denrell (2005) led to the prediction of a negativity effect through asymmetric depolarization, another model (Fiedler, 1996) suggested a positivity effect through asymmetric polarization. Findings supported the latter contention. The selective tendency to oversample good students while neglecting weaker students was not radical enough to prevent the correction of negative impressions, precluding a negativity effect. Instead, extended selective sampling led to gradually increasing polarization of positive impressions, and facilitated detection of positive performance changes. While these findings can be reconciled with the Fazio–Denrell model, they highlight the crucial role of auxiliary psychological assumptions about attitude learning, as distinguished from the formal model itself.     

Kognitive Verhaltenstherapie bei schizophrenen Psychosen

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be regarded as an established intervention for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. Based on randomized clinical trials and meta-analyses, which found evidence for the efficacy of CBT, almost all evidence-based treatment guidelines recommend CBT for routine treatment. This paper demonstrates that in psychoses CBT is a disorder-specific adaptation of general principles of CBT for the treatment of patients suffering from schizophrenia. The CBT procedure draws on cognitive models of symptoms for the identification of treatment targets and focuses on everyday problems of patients by implementing a self-management approach. Fostering motivation and the application of behavioral and cognitive treatment strategies characterize this approach. If the patients live in a family, other family members should be involved in order to improve crisis management and problem solving within the family. A major challenge for the future is to improve the availability of CBT under the German conditions of routine mental health care.     

Bayesian Rationality for the Wason Selection Task? A Test of Optimal Data Selection Theory

Oaksford and Chater (1994) proposed to analyse the Wason selection task as an inductive instead of a deductive task. Applying Bayesian statistics, they concluded that the cards that participants tend to select are those with the highest expected information gain. Therefore, their choices seem rational from the perspective of optimal data selection. We tested a central prediction from the theory in three experiments: card selection frequencies should be sensitive to the subjective probability of occurrence for individual cards. In Experiment 1, expected frequencies of the p- and the q-card were manipulated independently by concepts referring to large vs. small sets. Although the manipulation had an effect on card selection frequencies, there was only a weak correlation between the predicted and the observed patterns. In the second experiment, relative frequencies of individual cards were manipulated more directly by explicit frequency information. In addition, participants estimated probabilities for the four logical cases and of the conditional statement itself. The experimental manipulations strongly affected the probability estimates, but were completely unrelated to card selections. This result was replicated in a third experiment. We conclude that our data provide little support for optimal data selection theory.     

Dual brain,creativity, and health

Abstract

The importance of the specialized functions of the right and left hemispheres is reviewed, with applications to education, treatment, creativity, and research duly noted. Experimental studies serve as indications of how alexithymia and creativity of the so‐called dual brain has been examined. Patients with com‐missurotomies, patients in psychotherapy, priests, creative subjects, and normal controls have been compared through a variety of experimental methods in terms of hemispheric specialization. The results indicate that creative and healthy subjects tend to have freer access to mutual interaction of both hemispheres without marked inhibitory or disinhibitory effects from either cerebral hemisphere.     

Values,Life Events,and Health: A Study in a Finnish Rural Community

The relationships between individual values (Schwartz, 1992), life events, and psychological symptoms were analyzed in a general population sample from a Finnish rural community. The design was a cross‐sectional survey. Data were gathered in 1993 (n = 174) and 2007 (n = 226). We investigated whether personal values would predict the number of life events. Results showed that openness to change values was positively and conservation values, negatively related to life events (those over which the individual had certain degree of control, e.g. getting a new job) in 1993. As expected, an increase in the importance of conservation values from 1993 to 2007 weakened the association between values and life events so that in 2007, only stimulation values were related to events. Although no consistent direct relations were found between single values and symptoms, we found that the higher the value congruence between individual and group values, the fewer the reported symptoms, for both time points. This research provided evidence suggesting that life events are also related to one's personal value priorities. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The de‐escalation of commitment: predecisional accountability and cognitive processes

Escalation of commitment describes the continuation of a course of action in spite of drawbacks and continuing insecurity of goal achievement. To prevent escalation and its associated costs, de‐escalation techniques are valuable. The present study investigates predecisional accountability to an unknown audience as a de‐escalation technique. In addition, the evolution of cognitive processes (reasons for persisting) during escalation is examined. As predicted, predecisional accountability has a de‐escalating effect. In addition, escalation is accompanied by an increase of nonrational reasons for continuing the respective course of action, and decision makers without accountability provide more nonrational reasons for not quitting than those who are held accountable.     

Behavioral Differences between Rabbits and Cats

The sensory modality of a task and the modality of a retroactive interfering activity were systematically covaried in order to test Connolly and Jones' and Pick's translation models of intersensory functioning. Forty 10-year-old boys and girls were asked to recall distance and location cues of length under intrasensory and intersensory task conditions (visual and kinesthetic). Visual and kinesthetic interpolated activities were used in an attempt to provide modality specific interference with the recall of length under the various sensory task conditions. Results of the data analyses provided no support for the Connolly and Jones model of modality specific storage with translation. Rather, the findings of the study were interpreted as supportive of Pick's hypothesis which emphasizes the coding of stimulus information (regardless of modality of input) into a form specific to whatever modality is specialized for detection of the information.     

Social categorization and group‐motivated interindividual–intergroup discontinuity

Research on the interindividual–intergroup discontinuity effect has demonstrated that intergroup relations are often less cooperative than interindividual relations. The aim of the present paper is to test whether mere social categorization suffices to create a group‐motivated discontinuity effect. In two experiments, we manipulated actors' personal versus social identity salience, whereas controlling for actors' outcome independence (1 : 1) versus interdependence (3 : 3). Making actors' social identity salient using a minimal group treatment was sufficient to increase defection in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game, irrespective of whether this was in an interindividual or intergroup interaction (Experiment 1). Using a Mutual Fate Control matrix in Experiment 2, results indicate that this effect can be attributed to actors' increased motivation to maximize relative differences to outgroup opponents under social identity salience. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychoanalyse und Traumatherapie

The author is of the opinion that for patients with combined traumas of commitment and violence a psychoanalytical long-term treatment which takes into consideration the peculiarities of this group of patients will continue to be the therapy of choice. Special ??trauma therapies?? may be useful after acute traumas and in cases in which external conditions exclude psychoanalytical treatment. Depending on the situation of the individual case, though, specific modifications of the technique may be necessary, which possibly include proven specific trauma therapeutic techniques as parameters. Based on the parallelism of the economic aspect of the trauma and the aspect of object relationship, a decisive role in the therapeutic process befits the recognition of the traumatic reality and the working out of traumatic transference, which, however, must not traumatize under any circumstances. This is accompanied by the restitution of a good interior object, which only becomes possible within a frame giving security and support. The establishment and preservation of this frame may also be due to especially required parameters derived from trauma therapies, the psychodynamic significance of which must be analyzed with the individual patient. The author's approach is clarified by two case vignettes in which the theoretical reflections have led to very different technical procedures. The author comes to the conclusion that the psychoanalytical trauma therapy shows how therapeutic concepts aiming at an optimum result must still be tailored to the individual case.