Collective school-type identity: predicting students' motivation beyond academic self-concept

In Germany, according to their prior achievement students are tracked into different types of secondary school that provide profoundly different options for their future educational careers. In this paper we suggest that as a result, school tracks clearly differ in their social status or reputation. This should translate into different collective school‐type identities for their students, irrespective of the students’ personal academic self‐concepts. We examine the extent to which collective school‐type identity systematically varies as a function of the school track students are enrolled in, and the extent to which students’ collective school‐type identity makes a unique contribution beyond academic self‐concept and school track in predicting scholastic motivation. In two cross‐sectional studies a measure of collective school‐type identity is established and applied to explain motivational differences between two school tracks in Berlin. In Study 1 (N = 39 students) the content of the collective school‐type identity is explored by means of an open format questionnaire. Based on these findings a structured instrument (semantic differential) to measure collective school‐type identity is developed. In Study 2 (N = 1278 students) the assumed structure with four subscales (Stereotype Achievement, Stereotype Motivation, Stereotype Social, and Compensation) is proved with confirmatory factor analysis. This measure is used to compare the collective school‐type identity across school tracks and predict motivational outcomes. Results show large differences in collective school‐type identity between students of different school tracks. Furthermore, these differences can explain motivational differences between school tracks. Collective school‐type identity has incremental predictive power for scholastic motivation, over and above the effects of academic self‐concept and school track.     

Interplay between acoustic/phonetic and semantic processes during spoken sentence comprehension: an ERP study

When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with signal instabilities such as sudden breaks, mispronunciations, interfering noises or reverberations potentially causing disruptions at the acoustic/phonetic interface and preventing efficient lexical access and semantic integration. The physiological mechanisms allowing listeners to react instantaneously to such fast and unexpected perturbations in order to maintain intelligibility of the delivered message are still partly unknown. The present electroencephalography (EEG) study aimed at investigating the cortical responses to real-time detection of a sudden acoustic/phonetic change occurring in connected speech and how these mechanisms interfere with semantic integration. Participants listened to sentences in which final words could contain signal reversals along the temporal dimension (time-reversed speech) of varying durations and could have either a low- or high-cloze probability within sentence context. Results revealed that early detection of the acoustic/phonetic change elicited a fronto-central negativity shortly after the onset of the manipulation that matched the spatio-temporal features of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) recorded in the same participants during an oddball paradigm. Time reversal also affected late event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting semantic expectancies (N400) differently when words were predictable or not from the sentence context. These findings are discussed in the context of brain signatures to transient acoustic/phonetic variations in speech. They contribute to a better understanding of natural speech comprehension as they show that acoustic/phonetic information and semantic knowledge strongly interact under adverse conditions.     

Toward an exploration of feeling of strangeness in schizophrenia: perspectives on acousmatic and everyday listening

The aim of this study was to investigate abnormal perceptual experiences in schizophrenia, in particular the feeling of strangeness, which is commonly found in patients' self-reports. The experimental design included auditory complex stimuli within 2 theoretical frameworks based on "sensory gating deficit" and "aberrant salience," inspired from conventional perceptual scales. A specific sound corpus was designed with environmental (meaningful) and abstract (meaningless) sounds. The authors compared sound evaluations on 3 perceptual dimensions (bizarre, familiar, and invasive) and 2 emotional dimensions (frightening and reassuring) between 20 patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and 20 control participants (CTL). The perceptual judgment was rated on independent linear scales for each sound. In addition, the conditioning-testing P50 paradigm was conducted on 10 SCZ and 10 CTL. Both behavioral and electrophysiological data confirmed the authors' expectations according to the 2 previous theoretical frameworks and showed that abnormal perceptual experiences in SCZ consisted of perceiving meaningful sounds in a distorted manner and as flooding/inundating but also in perceiving meaningless sounds as things that become meaningful by assigning them some significance. In addition, the use of independent scales to each perceptual dimension highlighted an unexpected ambivalence on familiarity and bizarreness in SCZ compatible with the explanation of semantic process impairment. The authors further suggested that this ambivalence might be due to a conflicting coactivation of 2 types of listening, that is, every day and musical (or acousmatic) listening.     

Zuckerman's revised alternative five-factor model: validation of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire in four French-speaking countries

The aim of this study was to analyze the replicability of Zuckerman's revised Alternative Five-factor model in a French-speaking context by validating the Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire (ZKA-PQ) simultaneously in 4 French-speaking countries. The total sample was made up of 1,497 subjects from Belgium, Canada, France, and Switzerland. The internal consistencies for all countries were generally similar to those found for the normative U.S. and Spanish samples. A factor analysis confirmed that the normative structure replicated well and was stable within this French-speaking context. Moreover, multigroup confirmatory factor analyses have shown that the ZKA-PQ reaches scalar invariance across these 4 countries. Mean scores were slightly different for women and men, with women scoring higher on Neuroticism but lower on Sensation Seeking. Globally, mean score differences across countries were small. Overall, the ZKA-PQ seems an interesting alternative to assess both lower and higher order personality traits for applied or research purposes.     

Are feeling-of-knowing and judgment-of-learning different? Evidence from older adults

This study aims to assess age differences between Judgments-of-learning (JOLs) and Feeling-of-knowing (FOKs) as they are typically studied. The novel contribution of the present study is a comparison between these two metacognitive judgments in a within subject design. Young and older adults were tested on their JOL accuracy and were asked to predict future recall during learning. All participants were also asked to predict future recognition of unrecalled items (FOK judgments). Results showed that although older adults had similar low levels of memory performance in the JOL task and in the FOK task, metacognitive impairments were only found on the resolution of FOKs. Furthermore, an analysis of covariance showed that age differences on memory performance explained the age effect observed on the FOK, thus supporting the memory constraint hypothesis (Hertzog et al., 2010). Results are discussed in relation to contemporary models of memory.     

Processing speed and executive functions in cognitive aging: How to disentangle their mutual relationship?

The processing-speedtheory and the prefrontal-executivetheory are competing theories of cognitive aging. Here we used a theoretically and methodologically-driven framework to investigate the relationships among measures classically used to assess these two theoretical constructs. Twenty-eight young adults (18-32 years) and 39 healthy older adults (65-80 years) performed a battery of nine neuropsychological and experimental tasks assessing three executive function (EF) components: Inhibition, Updating, and Shifting. Rate of information processing was evaluated via three different experimental and psychometric tests. Partial correlations analyses suggested that 2-Choice Reaction Time (CRT) performance is a more pure measure of processing speed than Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) performance in the elderly. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that, although measures of processing speed and EF components share mutual variance, each measure was independently affected by chronological age. The unique adverse effect of age was more important for processing speed than for EF. The processing-speed theory and the prefrontal-executive theory of cognitive aging were shown not to be mutually exclusive but share mutual variance. This implies the need to control for their mutual relationship before examining their unique potential role in the explanation of age-related cognitive declines. Caution has still to be taken concerning the tasks used to evaluate these theoretical constructs.     

Functions and timescale of self-cutting in participants suffering from borderline personality disorder

The purpose of this study was to examine the meanings and timescale of self-cuttings in a cohort of 22 outpatients suffering from borderline personality disorder. Sixty-one events were recorded using the newly developed self-cutting-checklist (SCUC) designed to investigate the severity of self-cuttings, and intent to die, suicidal ideation, inner tension, sense of relief and anesthesia, and consequences associated with this behavior. We found that typical self-cuttings were associated with a decrease in inner tension and suicidal ideation. Moreover self-cuttings associated with a desire to die differentiated from those associated with no desire to die by significantly less reduction in inner tension. Finally, self-cuttings occurred significantly more often during evenings and nights than during daytime. In conclusion, self-cuttings can be reasonably addressed by self-report. Attention to specific issues such as intent to die and the time of the self-cuttings may improve the outcome of these particularly high-risk subjects.     

“Get it out the way. The wait's killing me.” hastening and hiding during soccer penalty kicks

ObjectivesIt has been suggested that hastening and hiding—rushing through penalty preparation and not looking at the goal when preparing the penalty kick—are associated with negative penalty taking performance. In the present study, we investigated how opposing players perceived these nonverbal behaviors, how they affect outcome expectations, and how they affect the behavior of opposing goalkeepers.DesignThe present study employs an experimental research design (Experiment 1: 2 (gaze behavior) × 3 (preparation time) design; Experiment 2: 2 (gaze behavior) × 2 (preparation time) design).MethodWe examined the perception of nonverbal hastening and hiding behavior using the point-light technique during the soccer penalty kick among goalkeepers (Experiment 1a; n = 20), and among outfield soccer players (Experiment 1b; n = 29). Furthermore, we analyzed how these respective penalty preparation strategies influenced the behavior of high-level goalkeepers (n = 12) under in situ conditions (Experiment 2).ResultsThe results from Experiment 1 demonstrated that penalty takers showing hastening and hiding behaviors are perceived more negatively by both soccer goalkeepers and outfield players: (i) they are considered to possess less positive attributes, (ii) to have less accuracy in their penalties, and (iii) likely to perform less well in penalty situations. Experiment 2 provided first evidence that goalkeepers initiate their movement later following the observation of hastening and hiding behaviors during the penalty preparation.ConclusionsOur findings demonstrate the importance of investigating nonverbal behavior in sports as these have a major impact on impression formation, expected performance, and actual behavior of opposing players in the soccer penalty situation.     

Motion prediction and the velocity effect in children

In coincidence‐timing studies, children have been shown to respond too early to slower stimuli and too late to faster stimuli. To examine this velocity effect, children aged 6, 7.5, 9, 10.5, and adults were tested with two different velocities in a prediction‐motion task which consisted of judging, after the occlusion of the final part of its path, the moment of arrival of a moving stimulus towards a specified position. A similar velocity effect, resulting in later responses for the faster velocities than for the slower, was found primarily in the three younger groups of children (for the longer occlusion conditions: 600–1,320 milliseconds). However, this effect was not seen in all children in these groups. Individual analyses showed that this velocity effect, when present, is linked to the use of distance rather than time information, or to the confusion between these in extrapolating the occluded trajectories. The tendency to use one type of information or the other is a good predictor of accuracy and variability in this task and a good indicator of the development stage of the participants. Across development, children tend to initially use distance information with poor accuracy but relative consistency in responses. In a second stage, they use time and distance information alternatively across trials trying to find a better source of information with still poor accuracy and now great variability. In a final stage, they use time information to reach consistency and accuracy in their responses. This chronology follows the stages proposed by Savelesbergh and Van der Kamp (2000) explaining development with an initial stage of ‘freezing’ non‐optimal relationships between information and movement, then a ‘freeing’ stage during which new solutions are searched for, and finally an ‘exploiting’ stage with an optimal relationship between information and movement.