Seelische Entwicklung in virtuellen Welten

Electronic screen media such as television, computers and video game consoles have to a large extent replaced the natural living human environment—and most evidently the world of children and teenagers in a measurable way. This impact is the result not only of the ubiquitous presence of screen media but also of the differing properties of the programs, which display a toxic potential that varies from case to case. It appears prudent, therefore, to classify electronic media as invasive or non-invasive according to their toxic potential. It is now possible to describe the clinical results of these cataclysmic changes in the lives of children and teenagers with a fair degree of precision even from a psychoanalytical perspective. The consequences in the form of educational and psychotherapeutic actions can be derived directly from these findings.     

Overcoming fixed mindsets: The role of affect

When there is an established strategy to solve a problem, we often approach the problem with a mindset that makes us blind for more efficient solutions. We examined the role of affect in overcoming such blinding effects of mindsets. As positive affect is known to broaden and negative affect to narrow thought–action repertoires, we speculated that positive affect facilitates and negative affect impedes the overcoming of a current mindset. To induce a mindset, participants initially solved 60 similar problems which were only solvable using the same complex strategy. After a short break in which positive or negative affect was induced, participants continued to work on the problems. Critically, there now was an additional simple way to solve the problems. Participants experiencing positive affect were more likely to detect the simple solution than participants experiencing negative affect. These findings reveal that affect modulates how much we are constrained by current mindsets.     

The effects of affective states on the formation of performance expectancies

Positive vs. negative affective states are associated with the use of broad vs. specific knowledge structures. These findings were applied to the field of performance expectancies. It was predicted that individuals with positive mood should infer their performance expectancies concerning a specific task from their general self-concept, whereas given negative mood, performance expectancies should be inferred from the relevant specific self-concept. In an experiment, positive vs. negative mood was induced in 158 university students. General and specific self-concepts were assessed. Furthermore, we assessed task-specific performance expectancies and task performance. Specific self-concept was predictive of expectancies given negative mood, whereas with positive mood, expectancies could only be predicted on the basis of the general self-concept. Furthermore, mean expectancies were higher and less accurate with positive mood. The results are in line with the theoretical predictions. They underline that affective states also influence the formation of motivational variables like performance expectancies.     

Cognitive mediation of intervention effects on physical exercise: Causal models for the adoption and maintenance stage

Objective: To investigate how the effects of a group-based intervention program (MoVo-LISA) on exercise behaviour were mediated by cognitive variables. Different causal models mapping the short-term (adoption) and long-term (maintenance) intervention effects were tested using path analyses.

Design: N?=?220 in-patients of a rehabilitation clinic were assigned to an usual care or intervention group (quasi-experimental design). Questionnaire-based assessment was conducted at baseline; discharge; and at six weeks, six months and 12 months post discharge.

Measures: The potential mediator variables were outcome expectations, self-efficacy, strength of goal intention (intention strength), self-concordance, action planning and barrier management.

Results: Observed intervention effects on exercise behaviour (p?<?0.05) were mediated by intention strength at the adoption and maintenance stages, by action planning only at the adoption, and by barrier management only at the maintenance stage. Self-efficacy and outcome expectations were only indirectly involved in these mediations by affecting intention strength and self-concordance.

Conclusion: This is the first study to track the cognitive mediation processes of intervention effects on exercise behaviour over a long time-period by differentiating the adoption and maintenance stages of behaviour change. The findings emphasise the importance of deconstructing intervention effects (modifiability vs. predictive power of a mediator) to develop more effective interventions.     

Types of boredom: An experience sampling approach

The present study investigated different types of boredom as proposed in a four-categorical conceptual model by Goetz and Frenzel (2006; doi:10.1026/0049-8637.38.4.149). In this model, four types of boredom are differentiated based on degrees of valence and arousal: indifferent, calibrating, searching, and reactant boredom. In two studies (Study 1: university students, N = 63, mean age 24.08 years, 66 % female; Study 2: high school students, grade 11, N = 80, mean age 17.05 years, 58 % female), real-time data were obtained via the experience-sampling method (personal digital assistants, randomized signals). Boredom experiences (N = 1,103/1,432 in Studies 1/2) were analyzed with respect to the dimensions of valence and arousal using multilevel latent profile analyses. Supporting the internal validity of the proposed boredom types, our results are in line with the assumed four types of boredom but suggest an additional, fifth type, referred to as “apathetic boredom.” The present findings further support the external validity of the five boredom types in showing differential relations between the boredom types and other affective states as well as frequency of situational occurrence (achievement contexts vs. non-achievement contexts). Methodological implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

Who wants to learn harder? The relationship between conservatism and liberalism,desirable difficulties,and academic learning

Social Psychology of Education - Previous work has shown that challenging learning strategies like desirable difficulties improve long-term learning. Nonetheless, because they might be regarded as...     

Always look on the broad side of life: happiness increases the breadth of sensory memory

Research has shown that positive affect increases the breadth of information processing at several higher stages of information processing, such as attentional selection or knowledge activation. In the present study, we examined whether these affective influences are already present at the level of transiently storing incoming information in sensory memory, before attentional selection takes place. After inducing neutral, happy, or sad affect, participants performed an iconic memory task which measures visual sensory memory. In all conditions, iconic memory performance rapidly decreased with increasing delay between stimulus presentation and test, indicating that affect did not influence the decay of iconic memory. However, positive affect increased the amount of incoming information stored in iconic memory. In particular, our results showed that this occurs due to an elimination of the spatial bias typically observed in iconic memory. Whereas performance did not differ at positions where observers in the neutral and negative conditions showed the highest performance, positive affect enhanced performance at all positions where observers in the neutral and negative conditions were relatively "blind." These findings demonstrate that affect influences the breadth of information processing already at earliest processing stages, suggesting that affect may produce an even more fundamental shift in information processing than previously believed.     

How affective states, task difficulty, and self-concepts influence the formation and consequences of performance expectancies

Positive versus negative affective states are associated with the use of broad versus specific knowledge structures. We predicted that specific self-concepts and task difficulty would affect performance expectancies only for individuals in a negative mood; for individuals in a positive mood, only the general self-concept, but not task difficulty, would affect performance expectancies. In an experiment, we manipulated task difficulty and mood, and we assessed self-concepts, performance expectancies, and task performance. The expected interactions for the formation of performance expectancies (mood × general self-concept, mood × specific self-concept, mood × difficulty) were found. Concerning the consequences of performance expectancies, we predicted that expectancies would affect actual performance only if the task was difficult and if task difficulty was taken into account when the expectancy is generated. This hypothesis was supported: The relationship between performance expectancies and actual performance was significant only for difficult tasks and given negative mood.     

Read-out of emotional information from iconic memory: the longevity of threatening stimuli

Previous research has shown that emotional stimuli are more likely than neutral stimuli to be selected by attention, indicating that the processing of emotional information is prioritized. In this study, we examined whether the emotional significance of stimuli influences visual processing already at the level of transient storage of incoming information in iconic memory, before attentional selection takes place. We used a typical iconic memory task in which the delay of a poststimulus cue, indicating which of several visual stimuli has to be reported, was varied. Performance decreased rapidly with increasing cue delay, reflecting the fast decay of information stored in iconic memory. However, although neutral stimulus information and emotional stimulus information were initially equally likely to enter iconic memory, the subsequent decay of the initially stored information was slowed for threatening stimuli, a result indicating that fear-relevant information has prolonged availability for read-out from iconic memory. This finding provides the first evidence that emotional significance already facilitates stimulus processing at the stage of iconic memory.     

Die Validit?t dynamisch-ver?nderbarer Risikofaktoren bei der Vorhersage einschl?giger R��ckf?lle p?dosexueller Straft?ter

The present study examines the predictive validity of dynamic risk factors for the prediction of sexual recidivism in a sample of pedosexual offenders (N?=?135) released from the Austrian prison system between 2002 and 2005. Static-99 was used to rate static risk factors and in order to measure dynamic risk factors Stable-2000 and Stable-2007 were applied. In addition to the demonstration of results about the interrater reliability the results about the predictive and incremental validity of the dynamic risk assessment are presented. After a mean follow-up period of 5½ years Static-99, Stable-2000 and Stable-2007 showed excellent interrater reliability and good predictive validity for the prediction of sexual recidivism. Furthermore, Stable-2007 showed better predictive accuracy than its predecessor and added incremental predictive validity beyond Static-99.