New Perspectives on an Old Debate: Friedrich Schleiermacher's Essay on Election

Abstract: This article analyses Schleiermacher's essay on election, which has not received the attention it deserves. I argue that it presents a significant advance in the debate about unconditional grace and the relation between redemption and predestination. While Schleiermacher defends the Augustinian‐Calvinist view of election, he criticizes the ideas of double predestination and eternal damnation (for the unbelievers). Thus, he wants to provide a new basis for Lutherans and Calvinists to settle or, at least, reconsider their longstanding controversy over the matter. After the publication of the essay in 1819, Schleiermacher's doctrine of election remained unchanged, except for minor modifications.     

Are country level prevalences of rule violations associated with knowledge overclaiming among students?

Cultural norms of behaviour influence desirable and problematic behaviours of individuals. In particular, cultural norms should influence individuals' dishonesty. In a recent Nature study, prevalence of rule violations was introduced as a new country‐level measure of behavioural norms. However, information on individuals' actual honesty was not available due to characteristics of the experimental design. Overcoming this limitation, we show that country‐level behavioural norms are related to individual‐level knowledge overclaiming behaviour (i.e., claiming to know concepts that do not exist, a measure of individuals' actual behavioural dishonesty) among 290,954 students from 57 countries (from the 2012 PISA study). Our study represents a crucial test of the argument that cultural norms influence individual's behaviour and of the validity of the measurement of countries' prevalences of rule violations. These results imply that shaping the behaviour of today's students may result in new behavioural norms that emphasise honesty and rule adherence more strongly.     

Zur Prävalenz von Depersonalisation und Derealisation in der stationären Psychotherapie

Depersonalization (DP) and derealization (DR) remain poorly recognized in clinical routine. Active exploration through structured interviews is strongly recommended, because patients rarely describe spontaneously their experiences with DP/DR. 143 psychosomatic, first-admission inpatients were interviewed about the 1-month prevalence of DP/DR using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV dissociative disorders. Additionally, the German questionnaires of the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale, the Dissociative Experiences Scale, the SCL-90-R and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems were used. In the sample we found a prevalence of 23.1% (N=33) for depersonalization-derealization syndrom (ICD-10 F48.1) and 7% (N=10) for secondary pathological DP/DR. A total percentage of 62.9% reported DP/DR to some degree or other. There was a noticeably high co-occurrence of anxiety disorders in patients with pathological DP/DR. Patients with pathological DP/DR were generally more impaired, suffered many more interpersonal problems and were particularly characterized by introversion. Considering the high prevalence of this phenomenon, more attention should be paid to DP/DR in routine diagnostic procedures, treatment and research.     

Importance effects on performance in event-based prospective memory tasks

In the present study we manipulated the importance of performing two event-based prospective memory tasks. In Experiment 1, the event-based task was assumed to rely on relatively automatic processes, whereas in Experiment 2 the event-based task was assumed to rely on a more demanding monitoring process. In contrast to the first experiment, the second experiment showed that importance had a positive effect on prospective memory performance. In addition, the occurrence of an importance effect on prospective memory performance seemed to be mainly due to the features of the prospective memory task itself, and not to the characteristics of the ongoing tasks that only influenced the size of the importance effect. The results suggest that importance instructions may improve prospective memory if the prospective task requires the strategic allocation of attentional monitoring resources.     

The redundant target effect is affected by modality switch costs

When participants have to respond to stimuli of two modalities, faster reaction times are observed for simultaneous, bimodal events than for unimodal events (the redundant target effect [RTE]). This finding has been interpreted as reflecting processing gains for bimodal relative to unimodal stimuli, possibly due to multisensory interactions. In random stimulus sequences, reaction times are slower when the stimulus is preceded by a stimulus of a different modality (modality switch effect [MSE]). Simple reaction time redundant target experiments with auditory-visual, visual-tactile, and auditory-tactile stimulus combinations were run to determine whether the RTE may be partly explained by MSEs because bimodal stimuli do not require a modality switch. In all three modality pairings, significant MSEs and RTEs were observed. However, the RTE was still significant after reaction times were corrected for the MSE, supporting the hypothesis that coactivation occurs independently of modality switch costs.     

Being seaward-handed: a computational model of the acquisition of language-specific spatial references

Empirical findings of cross-linguistic studies reveal three different frames of spatial reference: intrinsic, relative, and absolute. Of special interest are relative and absolute systems because they have antagonistic logical implications concerning the dependence on standpoint and orientation of the speaker/hearer. On the background of these findings it becomes crucial to show how an agent can form such language-specific spatial representations. In this paper, the system Locator is introduced as a model of concept formation in the spatial domain. It is assumed that an agent creates necessary discriminative features in processes of self-organization and selection and cannot just discover or find them in its environment. A number of simulations show that agents successfully create concepts of either a relative system (German) or an absolute system (Marquesan), relying solely on multimodal input (visual and linguistic).

The lay assessment of subclinical depression in daily life

This study examined how laypersons assess subclinical depression in others on the basis of information about their daily lives. For 2 days, 96 participants were tracked with the Electronically Activated Recorder, a naturalistic observation method that samples ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. Judges rated participants' levels of depression after listening to the sampled ambient sounds. Participants' depressive symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. Overall, judges showed little accuracy at determining participants' levels of depressive symptoms from the ambient sounds. Exploratory analyses, however, revealed that judges were more accurate among moderately and severely depressed participants, presumably because the cues judges used to assess depression (e.g., spending time alone, not socializing, not laughing) discriminated successfully only at high levels of subclinical depression.     

Psychosocial stress enhances time-based prospective memory in healthy young men

Forgetting of intentions (such as to take one's medication) is the most frequent everyday memory failure. No study so far has looked into the possible consequences stress might exert on memory for intentions (i.e., prospective memory). Twenty healthy young male adults were exposed to a psychosocial stress test and a non-stress condition. After a delay of 15 min, a time- and an event-based prospective memory task were administered during the peak of cortisol concentrations. Results show that participants performed significantly better in the time-based memory task after stress in comparison to the non-stress condition. In contrast, there was no stress effect on event-based prospective memory. The results demonstrate that prospective memory might be enhanced when participants are exposed to stress prior to the memory task and that this effect is associated to stress-related glucocorticoid effects.     

Serotonergic dysfunction: Brain imaging and behavioral correlates

Identification of gene-environment and gene-gene interactions has become increasingly important in understanding psychiatric disorders. Dysfunction of central serotonergic neurotransmission has been implicated in alcoholism, depression, and anxiety. We review the literature on nonhuman primates that assesses the interaction between the genetic constitution of the regulatory region of the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) and environmental factors. Prospective studies in nonhuman primates that underwent social stress found a reduction of the serotonin turnover rate among carriers of one or two short alleles in a functional polymorphism of the 5-HTT promoter. In these primates, brain imaging studies showed a relative increase in the availability of raphe serotonin transporters. A low serotonin turnover rate and a high availability of serotonin transporters were associated with reduced response to excessive alcohol intake, anxiety, and impulsive aggression. Animal experiments point to a relationship between serotonergic dysfunction, negative mood states, and excessive alcohol intake, which may in part be mediated by reduced alcohol-induced sedation.