The impact of cognitive control on children’s goal monitoring in a time-based prospective memory task

The present study investigated whether developmental changes in cognitive control may underlie improvements of time-based prospective memory. Five-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds (N = 166) completed a driving simulation task (ongoing task) in which they had to refuel their vehicle at specific points in time (PM task). The availability of cognitive control resources was experimentally manipulated by imposing a secondary task that required divided attention. Children completed the driving simulation task both in a full-attention condition and a divided-attention condition where they had to carry out a secondary task. Results revealed that older children performed better than younger children on the ongoing task and PM task. Children performed worse on the ongoing and PM tasks in the divided-attention condition compared to the full-attention condition. With respect to time monitoring in the final interval prior to the PM target, divided attention interacted with age such that older children’s time monitoring was more negatively affected by the secondary task compared to younger children. Results are discussed in terms of developmental shifts from reactive to proactive monitoring strategies.     

Structural Equation Modeling of Spatial Presence: The Influence of Cognitive Processes and Traits

This article examines the formation process of spatial presence, which is conceived as a two-step process involving the construction of a mental model of the mediated environment, followed by the emergence of spatial presence. During both stages, cognitive processes and user traits are in effect. We present data derived from a pooled set of data of three studies using the same virtual environment. Structural equation modeling is used to confirm the proposed theoretical model. The results show that attention and the trait of visual spatial imagery are positive predictors of the mental model of the mediated environment. In the second step, the formation of spatial presence is governed by involvement, the suspension of disbelief, and the domain-specific interest, together with the mental model.     

On the relationship between mobbing factors,and job content,social work environment,and health outcomes

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between mobbing, job characteristics, social environment variables, and psychological ill-health. The Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terrorization (LIFT) was factor analysed and led to seven factors in two samples of mobbing victims (N = 50 and N = 99): Mobbing by organizational measures, social isolation, attacking the victim's private life, attacking the victim's attitudes, physical violence, verbal aggression, and rumours. Mobbing was correlated with bad job content, a bad social environment, and psychological ill-health. The findings suggest that the more social support supervisors gave, the less the victims reported being shouted at, being constantly criticized, and receiving verbal threats. In contrast, the more social support the victims received from their colleagues the less they reported being socially isolated or being ridiculed with regard to their private life. Moreover, having private life attacked showed the strongest correlation with psychological ill-health. The data suggest that organizational factors are potential causes of mobbing at work.     

The impact of accountability on teachers’ assessments of student performance: a social cognitive analysis

Research on teachers’ judgments of student performance has demonstrated that educational assessments may be biased or may more correctly take the achievements of students into account depending on teachers’ motivations while making the judgment. Building on research on social judgment formation the present investigation examined whether the accountability of teachers has an influence on judgment formation. We predicted that unaccountable teachers would activate social categories and use them for the assessment, whereas accountable teachers’ attention would be directed to individual attributes of students. Using secondary school teachers as participants, three studies investigating teachers’ assessments, inferences and memory for students’ attributes supported these hypotheses. Thus, accountability appears to be a moderator of social information processing and judgment formation in the domain of educational assessments.     

Cognitive functions of gamma-band activity: memory match and utilization

Oscillatory neural activity in the gamma frequency range (>30Hz) has been shown to accompany a wide variety of cognitive processes. So far, there has been limited success in assigning a unitary basic function to these oscillations, and critics have raised the argument that they could just be an epiphenomenon of neural processing. We propose a new framework that relates gamma oscillations observed in human, as well as in animal, experiments to two underlying processes: the comparison of memory contents with stimulus-related information and the utilization of signals derived from this comparison. This model attempts to explain early gamma-band responses in terms of the match between bottom-up and top-down information. Furthermore, it assumes that late gamma-band activity reflects the readout and utilization of the information resulting from this match.     

Law and Force: 20th Century radical legal philosophy,post-modernism and the foundations of law

The foundations of law have been the object ofintense philosophical scrutiny since antiquity.Most importantly, it has been asked whetherthere are really any foundations other thansheer force to be found once more comfortingillusions are abandoned. This paperinvestigates four influential theorists ofradical legal philosophy and postmodern thought(Benjamin, Schmitt, Luhmann, Derrida) who dealwith this problem in comparable ways despitetheir different theoretical outlooks. Themerits of these theories having been assessed,mentalism in ethics and law is introduced as apossible alternative to both the widespreadfoundationalism of the past and theanti-foundationalism of the postmodern present.     

Using Response Times to Model Not-Reached Items due to Time Limits

Missing values at the end of a test typically are the result of test takers running out of time and can as such be understood by studying test takers’ working speed. As testing moves to computer-based assessment, response times become available allowing to simulatenously model speed and ability. Integrating research on response time modeling with research on modeling missing responses, we propose using response times to model missing values due to time limits. We identify similarities between approaches used to account for not-reached items (Rose et al. in ETS Res Rep Ser 2010:i–53, 2010) and the speed-accuracy (SA) model for joint modeling of effective speed and effective ability as proposed by van der Linden (Psychometrika 72(3):287–308, 2007). In a simulation, we show (a) that the SA model can recover parameters in the presence of missing values due to time limits and (b) that the response time model, using item-level timing information rather than a count of not-reached items, results in person parameter estimates that differ from missing data IRT models applied to not-reached items. We propose using the SA model to model the missing data process and to use both, ability and speed, to describe the performance of test takers. We illustrate the application of the model in an empirical analysis.

     

Media use and school achievement – boys at risk?

In work done at the German Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) various methods have been used to investigate how specific inappropriate media usage patterns affect academic performance in children and adolescents. The findings are paralleled by current international research indicating a negative relationship between these two variables. Based on a cross‐sectional survey of 5,529 fourth grade students and a longitudinal panel study with 1,157 primary schoolchildren, a key finding can be demonstrated: the more time students spend on consuming media and the more violent its contents are, the worse are their marks at school, even when controlling for vital factors such as family, educational, or immigrant background. In particular, boys who gender‐specifically are better equipped with electronic media devices, who partially have extensive media usage times and who strongly prefer violent media content, are at the risk of showing poor school performance. In fact, a decrease in academic performance of boys can be observed in German school statistics. By presenting first results of a school‐based intervention programme, a promising approach to the reduction of detrimental effects of electronic media use on school performance is introduced.