Walking on music

The present study focuses on the intricate relationship between human body movement and music, in particular on how music may influence the way humans walk. In an experiment, participants were asked to synchronize their walking tempo with the tempo of musical and metronome stimuli. The walking tempo and walking speed were measured. The tempi of the stimuli varied between 50 and 190 beats per minute. The data revealed that people walk faster on music than on metronome stimuli and that walking on music can be modeled as a resonance phenomenon that is related to the perceptual resonance phenomenon as described by Van Noorden and Moelants (Van Noorden, L., & Moelants, D. (1999). Resonance in the perception of musical pulse. Journal of New Music Research, 28, 43-66).     

Effects of object complexity and type on the gaze behavior of children with pervasive developmental disorder

The looking behavior of children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) and age- and IQ-matched normal control children was studied using infrared oculography. Stimuli varying in complexity and topic were presented to test whether children with PDD have specific abnormalities in looking behavior to complex stimuli and/or to faces. All children showed more and longer fixations on the complex objects than on the simple objects, especially the complex nonsense figure, but group differences were not found. The results show no evidence for specific abnormalities in looking behavior to either faces or to complex stimuli in high functioning children with PDD.     

Effect of colour pop-out on the recognition of letters in crowding conditions

The crowding effect of adjacent objects on the recognition of a target can be reduced when target and flankers differ in some feature, that is irrelevant to the recognition task. In this study, the mechanisms of this effect were explored using targets and flankers of the same and different colours. It was found that facilitation nearly equal to that of differently coloured targets and flankers can be observed with a differently coloured background blob in the location of the target. The different-colour effect does not require advance knowledge of the target and flanker colours, but the effect increases in the course of three trials with constant mapping of colours. The results are consistent with the notion of exogenous attention that facilitates the processing at the most salient locations in the visual field.     

The visual light field

Human observers are sensitive to the '(physical) light field' in the sense that they have expectations of how a given object would appear if it were introduced in the scene in front of them at some arbitrary location. Thus the 'visual light field' is defined even in the 'empty space' between objects. In that sense the light field is akin to visual space considered as a 'container'. The visual light field at any given point can be measured in psychophysical experiments through the introduction of a suitable 'gauge object' at that position and letting the observer adjust the appearance of that gauge object (eg through suitable computer rendering) so as to produce a 'visual fit' into the scene. The parameters of the rendering will then be considered as the measurement result. We introduced white spheres as gauge objects at various locations in stereoscopically presented photographic scenes. We measured the direction ('direction of the light'), diffuseness ('quality of the light' as used by photographers and interior decorators), and intensity of the light field. We used three very different scenes, with very different physical light fields. The images were geometrically and photometrically calibrated, so we were in a position to correlate the observations with the physical 'ground truth'. We report that human observers are quite sensitive to various parameters of the physical light field and generally arrive at close to veridical settings, although a number of comparatively minor systematic deviations from veridicality can be noted. We conclude that the visual light field is an entity whose existence is at least as well defined as that of visual space, despite the fact that the visual light field hardly appears as prominently in vision science as it does in the visual arts.     

What Research Has to Say About Gender-Linked Differences in CMC and Does Elementary School Children’s E-mail Use Fit This Picture?

This paper first reviews the literature on computer mediated communication (CMC) to examine whether claims about gender-linked differences in specific attitudes, styles and content in CMC have been validated. Empirical studies were limited, with considerable variation in audiences, tasks, and contexts that was related to varied outcomes. The paper next describes an empirical study on the e-mail communication of elementary school children from ten Dutch classrooms. No gender-linked preference for a person or task-oriented attitude was found. Girls significantly more often employed an elaborate style. Differences between boys and girls on content of communication were subtle rather than robust. The conclusion discusses the functional embedding of CMC and the need to examine jointly antecedents, language acts and consequences.     

The structure of paradigm change

I propose a concise picture of the core structure of paradigm change. It consists of the three basic steps which, I suggest, are common to all forms of paradigm change, individual as well as collective and in every conceptual domain. These steps are formularized so as to stimulate more precise theorizing about, and comparisons between various alleged forms of paradigm change. I explain the idea and give evidence for it using examples from the fields of cognitive psychology, moral psychology, and the history of science.     

Anxiety Sensitivity Moderates Relations Among Tobacco Smoking,Panic Attack Symptoms,and Bodily Complaints in Adolescents

The present study evaluated associations among smoking and anxiety sensitivity (fear of anxiety and anxiety related sensations) in predicting panic attack symptomatology, somatic complaints, and depressive symptomatology in a community sample of adolescents (ages 12 to 17 years; N=206). As predicted, the combination of high levels of anxiety sensitivity and being a current smoker predicted panic symptomatology and somatic complaints, but not depressive symptomatology. These findings suggest anxiety sensitivity may moderate the relation between smoking and prototypical panic psychopathology variables (panic attacks and somatic complaints) even after controlling for gender and negative affectivity, and that these associations are specific to panic-relevant processes. The primary implication of the study findings is that there may be segments of the adolescent population who are at relatively greater risk for panic-related problems by virtue of individual differences in AS and smoking status.

Differential susceptibility to discipline: the moderating effect of child temperament on the association between maternal discipline and early childhood externalizing problems.

This study investigated the interaction of child temperament and maternal discipline in the prediction of externalizing problems in early childhood. Interaction effects were evaluated in a sample of 227 one- to three-year-old children with relatively high externalizing problems scores on the Child Behavior Checklist/1 1/2-5. Child temperament was reported by the mothers, maternal discipline was observed in a laboratory session, and child outcome measures included both mother-reported externalizing problems and observed physical aggression. Results indicate that children with difficult temperaments are more susceptible to negative discipline (i.e., they showed more externalizing problems) as well as more susceptible to positive discipline (i.e., they showed fewer externalizing problems and less physical aggression), as compared with children with relatively easy temperaments. These findings provide empirical evidence for the differential susceptibility hypothesis and suggest directions for enhancing the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing early childhood externalizing problems.     

Emotional Design; Application of a Research-Based Design Approach

In this paper, we discuss an approach to ‘design for wow’ that focuses on the emotions that constitute a wow-experience. In this approach, the eliciting conditions of these emotions are used to define a product character with a high wow-impact. In addition to the approach, a measurable wow-index is introduced. First, a concept of wow is described in which wow is explained as a combination of fascination, pleasant surprise, and desire. The eliciting conditions of these three emotions are examined and combined to a ‘wow-appraisal.’ This concept is applied in the design of a mobile telephone. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods was used to formulate concern themes relevant for the wow-appraisal. These themes were used to create a layered product character and a prototype of the final design. An evaluation study demonstrated that the product designed with this approach rated higher on the wow-index than alternative products.     

Posttraumatische Belastungssymptome als Spätfolge von Kindheiten im Zweiten Weltkrieg

Psychological late-life sequelae of war childhood have rarely been examined. The study evaluated posttraumatic symptoms and current psychopathology in a sample of former German war children of which 10.8% reported significant posttraumatic symptoms indicating a possible posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The presence of PTSD symptoms was significantly associated with current psychopathological distress, even 6 decades after World War II. Our data underline the urgent need for research in this field. Clinical implications for a psychotherapeutic approach are discussed.