Validity of retrospective time‐use reports in old age

In a sample of N=83 participants aged between 72 and 97, we assessed the accuracy of time budgets originating from the Yesterday Interview (YI; Moss and Lawton, 1982) by means of comparison with in‐situ assessments based on the Experience‐Sampling Method (ESM; e.g. Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1987). We examined convergent and discriminant correlation patterns from indices of activity participation, location, company, and mood collected via both methods. The correspondence between the two methods appeared acceptable. Furthermore, we explored whether (a) length of the retention interval, (b) congruence with pre‐existing knowledge, and (c) congruence of the locations of encoding and retrieval accounted for (in)accuracy of recall. We also analysed the degree to which age and cognitive functioning explained performance differences. While we found discrepancies between YI and ESM to be hardly attributable to context effects or differences in cognitive functioning, there was an age effect. Finally, the sensitivity of the two methods to detect differences between groups was found to be largely equivalent but hardly sufficiently convergent. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Context and Complexity in Incremental Sentence Interpretation: An ERP Study on Temporal Quantification

The present event-related potential (ERP) study used picture–sentence verification to investigate the neurolinguistic correlates of the online processing of compositional-semantic information. To this end, we examined context effects on sentences involving temporal adverbial quantification likeJana war jeden Morgen schwimmen an den Arbeitstagen (“Jana went for a swim every morning during the working week”). We tested whether the conceptual complexity associated with quantifying over time intervals leads to delayed predictions regarding the upcoming words in a sentence. The present study replicated previous results relating to quantification over individuals, which are conceptually less complex than time intervals. Analogous to previous studies, false vs. true sentences elicited an N400 whenever contextual cues did not permit a potential revision of a locally assigned truth value. The present results are compatible with an approach under which contextual cues are immediately considered for predicting how a sentence continues. The fact that the contextual complexity did not lead to processing delays indicates that the processing system quickly abstracts away from the conceptual complexity associated with the linguistic input if such an abstraction is possible.     

Mental rotation with egocentric and object-based transformations

Two experiments were conducted to address methodological issues with past studies investigating the influence of egocentric and object-based transformations on performance and sex differences in mental rotation. In previous work, the egocentric and object-based mental rotation tasks confounded the stimulus type (embodied vs. non-embodied) and transformation task (egocentric vs. object-based). In both experiments presented here, the same stimuli were used regardless of the type of transformation but task instructions were modified to induce either egocentric (left–right judgment) or object-based (same–different judgment) processing. Experiment 1 used pairs of letters whereas Experiment 2 presented pairs of line-drawings of human hands. For both experiments, it was hypothesized that the mental rotation slope for response time would be steeper for object-based than for egocentric transformations. This hypothesis was verified in both experiments. Furthermore, Experiment 2 showed a reduced male advantage for egocentric compared to object-based rotations, whereas this pattern was reversed for Experiment 1. In conclusion, the present study showed that the influence of the type of transformation involved in mental rotation can be examined with the same set of stimuli simply by modifying task instructions.     

Stimulus size matters: do life-sized stimuli induce stronger embodiment effects in mental rotation?

Against the background of the embodied cognition approach this experiment investigated the influence of motor expertise on object-based vs. egocentric transformations in a chronometric mental rotation (MR) task using images of either the own or another person’s body as stimulus material. The present study aimed to clarify two issues: (1) whether stimulus size (life size vs. small) is able to induce embodiment effects and (2) which role self-awareness processes play when using stimuli of the own body. The same design was conducted twice using both small stimuli (Study 1) and life-size human figures (Study 2). Using life-sized figures in Study 2 resulted in an explicit advantage of self-related stimuli and improved performance for motor experts compared to non-motor experts in both object-based and egocentric transformations. In conclusion, these results suggest that life-sized figures do indeed induce stronger embodiment effects in MR.     

Pathologischer PC-/Internetgebrauch

An increasing number of people have difficulties in limiting private PC/internet use. Especially, MMORP games (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) like ?World of Warcraft“, action games (?Ego-shooters“) like ?Counterstrike“, surfing and chatting are very time-consuming and for some people can reach a pathological level. When real life disappears from a person’s sight and he is almost permanently focusing on the virtual world, we speak about ?pathological PC/internet use“. The great amount of time spent online for non-work or non-school related purposes is one major symptom. In the AHG clinic Münchwies an in-patient program for pathological PC/internet users has been developed. which focuses on group therapy and is based on integrative cognitive behavioural therapy. Difficulties with motivation, compliance, interaction, attachment organisation and self-structuring of those patients are addressed in addition to the core symptoms. A major goal is to centre the patient’s activities and interests back towards real life in order to establish functioning social-interactive relationships again and to reduce the PC/internet use strictly to professional and necessary private activities.     

Fill the Gap! Combining Pragmatic and Prosodic Information to Make Gapping Easy

Two studies investigated the effects of prosody and pragmatic context on off-line and on-line processing of sentences like John greeted Paul yesterday and Ben today. Such sentences are ambiguous between the so-called ‘nongapping’ reading, where John greeted Ben, and the highly unpreferred ‘gapping’ reading, where Ben greeted Paul. In the first experiment, participants listened to dialogues and gave a speeded response as to which reading of an ambiguous target sentence first comes to mind. In the second experiment, they also responded to a visual probe that was presented during the presentation of the ambiguous target. The results show that context and prosody have independent and strong effects on both on-line processing and off-line interpretation of gapping; in the right combination they can make gapping as easy as the normally preferred nongapping reading.     

Test of Nyborg's General Trait Covariance (GTC) model for hormonally guided development by means of structural equation modeling

Nyborg's General Trait Covariance (GTC) model for hormonally guided development investigates the influence of gonadal hormones and fluid intelligence on body build, achievement, and socioeconomic variables. According to the model, testosterone should be negatively related to height, fat/muscle ratio, intelligence, income, and education. It is conceived that this influence should be determined to a great extent by mutual relationships between these variables. The model was tested by means of structural equation modeling (SEM) in a sample of 4375 males who had served in the United States Armed Forces. The results largely confirm Nyborg's androtype model but in addition reflect the relationships between the variables included in a quantitative causal manner. It could be shown that testosterone has a negative influence on crystallized intelligence and that this effect is mainly mediated by the negative influence of testosterone on education. An additional multiple group analysis testing for structural invariance across age groups revealed that the mediating role of education is more pronounced in old veterans. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personality and reciprocal inhibition theory: The link between aggression and sexual reactivity

The study tries to relate two approaches often discussed in the context of aggression and violence in combination with sexual arousal, the reciprocal inhibition theory (Wolpe, 1958) and an approach from personality psychology which emphasizes the psychoticism dimension (P) according to Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) as a mediator of violent sexual offence. The effects of preexposure to a violent vs. neutral movie on sexual reactivity to violent and non-violent sexual stimuli (audioplays and pictures) was studied in a male student population (N=64). Sexual reactivity was measured by self-ratings, inspection time and electrodermal activity. Results could not confirm reciprocal inhibition theory but revealed that sexual reactivity for subjects scoring high vs. low on the psychoticism/aggressiveness dimension were differently affected by preexposure to violence.     

Spatial cognition and motor development: a study of children with spina bifida

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between motor development and spatial cognition. The sample was 20 children with Spina bifida (M age: 11.4 yr., SD = 1.7) and 20 healthy children as controls (M age: 11.8, SD = 1.8 yr.). An experimental assessment of motor development in spatial cognition in a simulated virtual maze by school-age children is lacking. In this study children with Spina bifida, who were impaired in walking since birth, completed four visuospatial tasks in a small-scale space (Mental Rotation, Water-Level Task, Embedded Figures Test, Visual Short-term Memory Test), and a spatial behaviour and knowledge task in a virtual maze. These children showed poorer performance than children in the control group on most measures. The results are discussed with respect to theoretical implications and further research.     

The link between maternal interaction style and infant action understanding

The present study investigates whether the maternal interaction style is related to 6-month-old infants' action interpretation. We tested 6-month-olds ability to interpret an unfamiliar human action as goal-directed using a modified version of the paradigm used by Woodward, A. L. (1999). Infant's ability to distinguish between purposeful and non-purposeful behaviours. Infant Behavior & Development, 22, 145-160 and Király, I., Jovanovic, B., Prinz, W., Aschersleben, G., & Gergely, G. (2003). The early origins of goal attribution in infancy. Consciousness & Cognition, 12, 732-751. Additionally, all infants and their mothers participated in a free play situation to assess maternal interaction styles as measured by the CARE-Index. According to mothers' distinct interaction styles, infants were divided into three groups. Results suggest that at 6 months of age infants of mothers with a modestly controlling interaction style are better at interpreting a human action as goal-directed than infants of sensitive and relative unresponsive mothers. The ability to understand human action as goal-directed might be a corollary of an adaptive strategy in infancy.