Spearman’s Law of Diminishing Returns and national ability

This research examined Spearman’s Law of Diminishing Returns (SLODR) using national ability as the unit of analysis. National ability was estimated using international standardized tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Factor analysis estimated the national G loadings of tests for high and low ability nations. Consistent with SLODR, the G loadings of tests were lower for higher ability nations. The pattern was confirmed after correcting for school attendance and age biases. Because a test’s g loading is directly related to its predictive validity (correlation with outcomes), our results imply that the predictive validity of tests may be lower for higher ability nations.     

Life Satisfaction from Late Adolescence to Mid-Life The Impact of Life Success and Success Evaluation on the Life Satisfaction of Former Gymnasium Students Between Ages 30 And 43

In order to be satisfied with one's life, one has to adapt goals to opportunities; from this, two hypotheses follow: Life satisfaction should be more strongly determined by success evaluation rather than life success, and more strongly by late rather than early life success. Both hypotheses are examined in a longitudinal study of former Gymnasium students from age 16 to 43.Dependent variables are the satisfaction with occupational and with private life at age 43. Independent variables are life success in occupational and private life between ages 16 and 43, satisfaction with occupational and private life at age 30, and strategies of coping with and attributing of success at age 43. As hypothesized, satisfaction with occupational and with private life are determined more strongly by success evaluation rather than by life success and by late rather than early life success. Furthermore, occupational satisfaction is more strongly determined by the former occupational career than private satisfaction by the private career.     

Psychische Störungen und Psychotherapie in der spätmodernen Gesellschaft

The development into a globalized network capitalism has brought enduring change to everyday experiences of humans and affected their self-images and concepts of normality. The new capitalism offered us a specific disturbance panorama which, however, in the language game of clinical diagnostics cannot be named and classified in its social framework. Here is a gap in professional reflection. Psychotherapy needs social diagnostics and for its part can contribute to it. Moreover, it is necessary for psychotherapy to develop its therapeutic technical operating level by a critical alertness for the structural conditions of human life and human suffering.     

Localization of targets across saccades: Role of landmark objects

Saccadic eye movements are required to bring different parts of the visual world into the foveal region of the retina. With each saccade, the images of the objects drastically change their retinal positions—nevertheless, the visual world appears continuous and does not seem to jump. How does the visual system achieve this continuous and stable percept of the visual world, despite the gross changes of its retinal projection that occur with each saccade? The present paper argues that an important factor of this type of space constancy is formed by the reafferent information, i.e., the visual display that is found when the eyes land. Three experiments demonstrate that objects present across the saccade can serve as landmarks for postsaccadic relocalization. The basic experimental manipulation consisted of a systematic displacement of these landmark objects during the saccade. The effectiveness of the landmarks was determined by analysing to what degree they modify the perceived shift of a small saccade target that was blanked for 200 ms during and after the saccade. A first experiment studied the spatial range where objects become effective as landmarks. The data show that landmarks close to the saccade target and horizontally aligned with the target are specifically effective. The second experiment demonstrates that postsaccadic localization is normally based on relational information about relative stimulus positions transferred across the saccade. A third experiment studied the effect of a prominent background frame on transsaccadic localization; the results suggest that background structures contribute only little to transsaccadic localization.     

Attention and suppression affect tactile perception in reach-to-grasp movements

Reaching with the hand is characterized by a decrease in sensitivity to tactile stimuli presented to the moving hand. Here, we investigated whether tactile suppression can be canceled by attentional orienting. In a first experiment, participants performed a dual-task involving a goal-directed movement paired with the speeded detection of a tactile pulse. The pulse was either delivered to the moving or stationary hand, during movement preparation, execution, or the post-movement phase. Furthermore, stimulation was delivered with equal probability to either hand, or with a higher probability to either the moving or resting hand. The results highlighted faster RTs under conditions of higher probability of stimulation delivery to both moving and resting hands, thus indicating an attentional effect. For the motor preparation period, RTs were faster only at the resting hand under conditions where tactile stimulation was more likely to be delivered there. In a second experiment, a non-speeded perceptual task was used as a secondary task and tactile discrimination thresholds were recorded. Tactile stimulation was delivered concomitantly at both index fingers either in the movement preparation period (both before and after the selection of the movement effector had taken place), in the motor execution period, or, in a control condition, in the time-window of motor execution, but the movement of the hand was restrained. In the preparation period, tactile thresholds were comparable for the two timings of stimulation delivery; i.e., before and after the selection of the movement effector had taken place. These results therefore suggest that shortly prior to, and during, the execution of goal-directed movements, a combined facilitatory and inhibitory influence acts on tactile perception.     

Different effects of eyelid blinks and target blanking on saccadic suppression of displacement

Displacements of visual stimuli during saccadic eye movements are often not noticed. We have demonstrated that saccadic suppression of image displacement can be eliminated by blanking the stimulus for a short period during and after the saccade (Deubel, Schneider, & Bridgeman, 1996). Here we report an experiment in which target visibility was interrupted after the saccade, either by distal target blanking or by voluntary eyeblink. The data show that the effect of blinking is different from blanking; interruption of vision due to a blink did not enable subjects to detect target displacements any better than they had done in the no-blank condition. The results provide evidence for an extraretinal signal that distinguishes between endogenous and exogenous sources of temporary object disappearance after the saccade.