The effect of fearful faces on the attentional blink is task dependent

In a set of three rapid serial visual presentation experiments, we investigated the effect of fearful and neutral face stimuli on the report of trailing scene targets. When the emotional expression of the face stimuli had to be indicated, fearful faces induced a stronger attentional blink (AB) than did neutral faces. However, with identical physical stimulation, the enhancement of the AB by fearful faces disappeared when participants had to judge the faces’ gender. If faces did not have to be reported, no AB was observed. Thus, fearful faces exhibited an effect on the AB that crucially depended on the observer’s attentional set. Hence, the AB can be influenced by an emotional T1 when T1 has to be reported, but this influence is modulated by task context. This result indicates a close connection between temporal attention and emotional processing that is modulated by task context.     

Affective processing within 1/10th of a second: High arousal is necessary for early facilitative processing of negative but not positive words

Lexical decisions to high- and low-arousal negative words and to low-arousal neutral and positive words were examined in an event-related potentials (ERP) study. Reaction times to positive and high-arousal negative words were shorter than those to neutral (low-arousal) words, whereas those to low-arousal negative words were longer. A similar pattern was observed in an early time window of the ERP response: Both positive and high-arousal negative words elicited greater negative potentials in a time frame of 80 to 120 msec after stimulus onset. This result suggests that arousal has a differential impact on early lexical processing of positive and negative words. Source localization in the relevant time frame revealed that the arousal effect in negative words is likely to be localized in a left occipito-temporal region including the middle temporal and fusiform gyri. The ERP arousal effect appears to result from early lexico-semantic processing in high-arousal negative words.     

Predictors of Early Termination in a University Counseling Training Clinic

Despite the existence of counseling dropout research, there are limited predictive data for counseling in training clinics. Potential predictor variables were investigated in this archival study of 380 client files in a university counseling training clinic. Multinomial logistic regression, predictive discriminant analysis, and classification and regression trees converged on the use of a 4‐predictor model (client age, income, perceived difficulty, and functional impairment) for classifying counseling dropouts. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The memorizing effort heuristic in judgments of learning: A developmental perspective

Recent work on adult metacognition indicates that although metacognitive monitoring often guides control operations, sometimes it follows control operations and is based on the feedback from them. Consistent with this view, in self-paced learning, judgments of learning (JOLs) made at the end of each study trial decreased with the amount of time spent studying the item, suggesting that JOLs are based on the memorizing effort heuristic that easily learned items are more likely to be remembered. Study 1 extended investigation to primary school children. Whereas for third to sixth graders (9- to 12-year-olds) JOLs decreased with increasing study time (ST), no such relationship was found for first and second graders (7- and 8-year-olds). For both age groups, however, recall decreased with ST, supporting the validity of the memorizing effort heuristic. Self-reports (Study 2) disclosed the belief that recall should tend to increase with ST. The results bring to the fore the importance of mnemonic cues that shape metacognitive feelings even among primary school children. These cues lie in the very feedback that learners gain on-line from task performance rather than in metacognitive knowledge, and their use may also contribute to increased monitoring accuracy with age.     

The Experiences of Bystanders of Workplace Ethnic Harassment

The present research examined the experiences of individuals who witnessed or knew about ethnic harassment of their coworkers. Through 3 studies, we found that knowledge of other people's harassment was differentiated from personal experiences as a target and was associated with deleterious occupational, health-related, and psychological consequences beyond those accounted for by direct harassment and affective disposition. Ethnicity and gender did not moderate these relationships. Knowledge of others' ethnic harassment can therefore be construed as bystander harassment. Results also indicated that bystander and direct harassment were relatively common occurrences. Both harassment types contributed to how ethnic conflict is experienced. The consequences of ethnic harassment are not restricted to ethnic minority employees. Rather, everyone is at risk from such behaviors.     

Gain control in the auditory system: absolute identification of intensity within and across the two ears

A number of studies have suggested that the auditory system employs nonlinear gain control to modulate its response to a broad range of stimulus intensities (e.g., Parker, Murphy, & Schneider, 2002), but the precise location and nature of this mechanism remains uncertain. To address these issues, we investigated the extent to which gain control in one ear was influenced by auditory events in the other ear. Listeners were asked to identify which of four sounds, varying in intensity (25, 30, 35, and 40 dB [SPL]), had been presented to the left ear. Subsequent test sets included an 80-dB (SPL) stimulus presented to either the left (ipsilateral) or the right (contralateral) ear. Ipsilateral presentations of the 80-dB (SPL) stimulus produced a greater reduction in identification accuracy among the original four sounds than did contralateral presentations, but both presentations caused a reduction in gain. In a second experiment, the perceived laterality of a sound was manipulated by presenting the same sound to both ears with an interaural time delay. When the 80-dB (SPL) stimulus was added to the set of quiet sounds (which were presented to both ears but were perceived to be in the left ear because of the interaural time delay), identification accuracy was reduced by the same amount, independently of whether the 80-dB (SPL) stimulus was perceived only in the ipsilateral ear or only in the contralateral ear.     

Dokumentation auf einer Station für psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie

The documentation system for a psychosomatic-psychotherapeutic ward must integrate and process medical and psychotherapeutic treatment in a way that allows, over and above transparence and completeness, the constructive use of the collected information. But how to describe the increasingly complex picture of the patient during a stay on the ward, and how to utilize it effectively for his treatment? The search for satisfying answers has led the Department of Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy of the Clinic of the University of Münster to develop a new documentation system that will meet such demands. The system is innovative in visualizing and using the progression of the different therapeutic offers, in addition to introducing a “synopsis” of the dysfunctional relationship patterns and the individual psychodynamic background, which permits a swift overview of a patient’s treatment during his whole stay. This allows optimization of the multimodal treatment concept.