Non-musicians also have a piano in the head: evidence for spatial–musical associations from line bisection tracking

The spatial representation of ordinal sequences (numbers, time, tones) seems to be a fundamental cognitive property. While an automatic association between horizontal space and pitch height (left-low pitch, right-high pitch) is constantly reported in musicians, the evidence for such an association in non-musicians is mixed. In this study, 20 non-musicians performed a line bisection task while listening to irrelevant high- and low-pitched tones and white noise (control condition). While pitch height had no influence on the final bisection point, participants’ movement trajectories showed systematic biases: When approaching the line and touching the line for the first time (initial bisection point), the mouse cursor was directed more rightward for high-pitched tones compared to low-pitched tones and noise. These results show that non-musicians also have a subtle but nevertheless automatic association between pitch height and the horizontal space. This suggests that spatial–musical associations do not necessarily depend on constant sensorimotor experiences (as it is the case for musicians) but rather reflect the seemingly inescapable tendency to represent ordinal information on a horizontal line.     

A data-driven algorithm for offline pupil signal preprocessing and eyeblink detection in low-speed eye-tracking protocols

Event detection is the conversion of raw eye-tracking data into events—such as fixations, saccades, glissades, blinks, and so forth—that are relevant for researchers. In eye-tracking studies, event detection algorithms can have a serious impact on higher level analyses, although most studies do not accurately report their settings. We developed a data-driven eyeblink detection algorithm (Identification-Artifact Correction [I-AC]) for 50-Hz eye-tracking protocols. I-AC works by first correcting blink-related artifacts within pupil diameter values and then estimating blink onset and offset. Artifact correction is achieved with data-driven thresholds, and more reliable pupil data are output. Blink parameters are defined according to previous studies on blink-related visual suppression. Blink detection performance was tested with experimental data by visually checking the actual correspondence between I-AC output and participants’ eye images, recorded by the eyetracker simultaneously with gaze data. Results showed a 97% correct detection percentage.     

Measuring Growth in a Longitudinal Large-Scale Assessment with a General Latent Variable Model

The aim of the research presented here is the use of extensions of longitudinal item response theory (IRT) models in the analysis and comparison of group-specific growth in large-scale assessments of educational outcomes.     

Dissociation predicts poor response to Dialectial Behavioral Therapy in female patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

A substantial proportion of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) patients respond by a marked decrease of psychopathology when treated with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). To further enhance the rate of DBT-response, it is useful to identify characteristics related to unsatisfactory response. As DBT relies on emotional learning, we explored whether dissociation-which is known to interfere with learning- predicts poor response to DBT. Fifty-seven Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) patients (DSM-IV) were prospectively observed during a three-month inpatient DBT program. Pre-post improvements in general psychopathology (SCL-90-R) were predicted from baseline scores of the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) by regression models accounting for baseline psychopathology. High DES-scores were related to poor pre-post improvement (β = -0.017 ± 0.006, p = 0.008). The data yielded no evidence that some facets of dissociation are more important in predicting DBT-response than others. The results suggest that dissociation in borderline-patients should be closely monitored and targeted during DBT. At this stage, research on treatment of dissociation (e.g., specific skills training) is warranted.     

To do or not to do? Prospective memory versus response inhibition in autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

In the present research, event-based prospective memory and response inhibition (RI) abilities were investigated in children with ASD (Study 1), with ADHD (Study 2), and their matched neurotypical controls. Children engaged in a categorisation (ongoing) task and, concurrently, in either an event-based prospective memory (PM) or a Go/No-Go secondary task. Results showed that, as compared to their matched controls, ASD children's performance was more impaired in the PM task than in the Go/No-Go task, while the performance pattern of ADHD children was reversed. In the ongoing task, ASD children were as accurate as, but significantly slower than, controls, independently of conditions. ADHD children did not differ from controls in the presence of a concurrent PM task, while they were less accurate than controls in the presence of the go/no-go task. Overall, the two patterns of findings suggest important differences in the way ASD and ADHD children remember and realise intentions requiring opposite behaviours (acting vs stopping).     

Does being attractive always help? Positive and negative effects of attractiveness on social decision making

Previous studies of organizational decision making demonstrate an abundance of positive biases directed toward highly attractive individuals. The current research, in contrast, suggests that when the person being evaluated is of the same sex as the evaluator, attractiveness hurts, rather than helps. Three experiments assessing evaluations of potential job candidates (Studies 1 and 3) and university applicants (Study 2) demonstrated positive biases toward highly attractive other-sex targets but negative biases toward highly attractive same-sex targets. This pattern was mediated by variability in participants' desire to interact with versus avoid the target individual (Studies 1 and 2) and was moderated by participants' level of self-esteem (Study 3); the derogation of attractive same-sex targets was not observed among people with high self-esteem. Findings demonstrate an important exception to the positive effects of attractiveness in organizational settings and suggest that negative responses to attractive same-sex targets stem from perceptions of self-threat.     

Explicit Persuasive Intent and Its Impact on Success at Persuasion—The Determining Roles of Attractiveness and Likeableness

The effect on the impact of a message of explicitly stating a desire to persuade can depend on the communicator's physical attractiveness. Experiment 1 confirmed this possibility. Attractive male and female salespersons induced more positive attitudes and stronger intentions to purchase a product when they explicitly stated their desire to influence potential buyers. In contrast, unattractive salespersons were less likely to induce a favorable attitude toward the product under these conditions. Experiment 2 replicated these effects and provided evidence that they are mediated by the attribution of self‐serving motives to the salesperson. A 2‐step process of impression formation and attribution was used to describe the mechanisms underlying these effects.     

The Intended Reader of Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Judeo-Spanish Reading Culture

This essay explores rabbinic musar literature in Ladino from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries within the context of the emerging Ladino reading-culture in the Ottoman Empire. Rabbinic literature in the Judeo-Spanish vernacular opened the field of rabbinic knowledge for the first time to social groups hitherto excluded from the study of rabbinic literature: those who were ignorant of Hebrew, and women, to whom the rabbis now reached out explicitly in Ladino writings. Whereas the preferred forum for the reading and studying of vernacular rabbinic literature was the study group, or meldado, Ladino literature opened the opportunity of individual reading to an average Ottoman Jewish reading public, men and women alike. The rabbis clearly saw the dangers of individual reading and tried to contain its undesired consequences by encouraging reading with the mediating guidance by a talmid hakham. Nevertheless, ample evidence from at least the mid-nineteenth century demonstrates that individual readers challenged the rabbinical monopoly over the communication of traditional knowledge and its interpretation. It was this increasingly independent and critical reading public that would prove a most receptive audience for the secular genres of Ladino literature that developed at this time. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Konfliktresolution beim Sprachverstehen

Conflict resolution in sentence comprehension Summary. Online sentence comprehension often involves the resolution of conflicts induced by the (quasi-) simultaneous application of mutually incompatible principles or preferences. This paper draws upon a range of empirical results from experimental techniques with a high temporal resolution in order to outline several important aspects of how such processing conflicts are resolved. Firstly, it is argued that the hierarchical temporal application of different information sources (e.g. such that word category information is available before all other information types) may lead to earlier principles blocking the application of later ones. If several principles apply within the same time range, however, these may interact with one another. Furthermore, the relation between global principles/preferences (e.g. the preference for subject-initiality) and local principles contradicting these is stressed. Here, it is suggested that local principles often impede or facilitate processing within a very restricted time range, though their effects are overridden by those of global principles during subsequent processing. Zusammenfassung. Die Verarbeitung von Sprache beinhaltet häufig die Lösung von lokalen Konflikten, die dadurch entstehen, dass gleichzeitig miteinander nicht vereinbare Prinzipien oder Präferenzen interagieren. In dem vorliegenden Aufsatz werden auf der Basis empirischer Befunde, die mittels zeitlich hochauflösender Methoden erhoben wurden, unterschiedliche Aspekte dieser Konfliktlösung vorgestellt und diskutiert. Als Ausgangspunkt wird gezeigt, dass die Konfliktlösung eine Funktion der zeitlichen Zugänglichkeit der jeweiligen kritischen Informationen ist. Darüber hinaus gestatten experimentelle Studien die Annahme, dass Informationen unterschiedlicher sprachlicher Domänen miteinander interagieren, wenn diese gleichzeitig aktiviert werden können. In einem abschließenden Teil wird das Zusammenwirken globaler und lokaler Konfliktlösungsstrategien vorgestellt und es wird gezeigt, dass Mechanismen der Online-Verarbeitung durch globale Präferenzen korrigiert werden können bzw. aus einer Gesamtsatzperspektive verdeckt werden.