Review

Ohne Zusammenfassung

---

Review

     

Über einen methodisch geordneten Aufbau der speziellen Relativitätstheorie

About a methodically ordered reconstruction of the theory of special relativity. One of the main results of the theory of special relativity is that our basic concepts concerning space and time must be revised, because there is new experimental evidence. But on the other hand it was meant to move in a circular procedure, if the usual methods of measuring distances and temporal durations are refused on the ground of experimental results that are based on even these measuring methods. Thus a reconstruction of the theory of special relativity was demanded. It consists of a finite number of steps and basicly one may presuppose that each step may at best include the results of undertaken steps. This reconstruction will be discussed in this article. It begins with the socalled proto-physics (Protophysik) that reflects the production of measuring rods and clocks without recurring on the existence of other clocks or measuring rods. Then Newtonian mechanics, electrodynamics, the refinement of classical mechanics, the formalism of transforming according to the Lorentz Group and the construction of moved systems of reference are brought into a methodically correct order. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Anxiety responses to a divergent production task among high and low divergent performers

Undergraduate psychology students (4 men, 17 women) completed the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, wrote down as many uses as they could think of for each of a list of 30 items, and completed the anxiety inventory again. Divergent performance was defined as the total number of uses a subject listed. The hypothesis that divergent performance would be correlated with a reduction in state anxiety was confirmed.     

The empirical relevance of Perelman's New Rhetoric

Perelman's work has been very influential in various disciplines, among them philosophy, rhetoric and law. Especially the typology of argumentative schemes which he developed together with L. Olbrechts-Tyteca has been considered as an excellent classification of arguments in natural language. There are, however, some weaknesses of this typology which make its application to empirical research quite difficult, namely, the lack of explicitness and the absence of clear criteria of demarcation. Still, the typology is highly relevant for empirical research, if these weaknesses are removed. This is illustrated with an example: the scheme called the division of the whole into its parts by Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca is described explicitly and then applied to the analysis of a sample of everyday arguments (mostly taken from newspapers).     

Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool

Science and Engineering Ethics - Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public...     

Assessing attention control in goal pursuit: a component of dispositional self-regulation

We examined the psychometric properties of the Self-Regulation Scale (SRS; Schwarzer, Diehl, & Schmitz, 1999), a measure of attention control in goal pursuit, in 2 independent studies. Study 1 included young adults (N = 443), whereas Study 2 included young, middle-aged, and older adults (N = 330). In both studies, the SRS showed good internal consistency. In Study 1, the SRS also showed satisfactory test-retest reliability over a 6-week period. We found support for the criterion validity of the SRS in terms of positive correlations with measures of general and domain-specific self-efficacy, proactive coping, and positive affect and in terms of negative correlations with depressive symptoms and negative affect. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that attention control accounted for unique portions of variance in relevant outcome variables above and beyond measures of self-efficacy and proactive coping.     

Circaseptan aspects of self-assessed sleep protocols covering 70 nights on 33 clinically healthy persons

This study aimed to describe quantitatively some changes in sleep behavior. During 70 consecutive nights, 28 women and 3 men, 30 to 40 years of age and presumably clinically healthy, recorded the time of each awakening. Time of falling asleep were estimated from markings at 10-min. intervals from the times of lying down to sleep as an indication that the subject had not yet fallen asleep. Sleep duration and an index of effective sleep derived therefrom were analyzed by rhythmometric methods. On a group basis, anticipated components with periods of 1 and 0.5 wk., synchronized with the social schedule, were detected with statistical significance. Until long-term polysomnographic monitoring can readily cover the week automatically rather than only one or a few daily sleep spans, the self-monitoring of sleep behavior, yielding the circaseptan endpoints derived herein, may serve as a cost-effective tool in sleep research. By virtue of their relative simplicity, they could be part of a protocol designed to assess pharmacologic or nonpharmacologic interventions of sleep disturbance aimed at restoring undisturbed sleep.     

Primary versus secondary insomnia in older adults: subjective sleep and daytime functioning

Most psychological research on insomnia has centered on primary insomnia (PI). Secondary insomnia (SI), though more common than PI, has received little attention because of its presumed unresponsiveness to treatment. The present study recruited older adults with PI, SI, and a comparison group of older adults with no insomnia (NI). Self-report assessments of sleep revealed no significant difference between the 2 insomnia groups. Daytime functioning measures found significant differences in impairment between the 3 groups with SI having the worst daytime functioning, followed by PI, which was worse than NI. Further analyses found substantial independence between sleep and daytime functioning. Implications of these findings for the clinical management of SI are discussed.