Zur Validität der Operationalisierten Psychodynamischen Diagnostik (OPD)

In this paper the validity of the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis System is discussed. The discussion for each OPD axis is guided by the common scientific criteria like content-, criterion-, and construct validity. Reliability studies on OPD are summarized as an introduction to the validity issue. The studies show good to satisfying scores for interrater agreement for the research context. The results derived from the validity studies support the validity of the OPD system. There are also hints for improvements of multiple categories or items within each axis. For clinical routine OPD should become even more practice oriented. Therefore the OPD task force intends to construct a shorter version which will base on the results discussed in this article.     

A high implicit affiliation motive does not always make you happy: A corresponding explicit motive and corresponding behavior are further needed

Satisfaction of the implicit affiliation motive is known to be positively related to emotional well-being, whereas the frustration of the implicit affiliation motive leads to impairment of well-being. In the present research we specified two conditions that are responsible for the satisfaction and frustration of the implicit motive. Referring to research on the congruence of implicit and explicit motives, we assumed that a corresponding explicit affiliation motive leads to satisfaction of the implicit motive. Corresponding affiliation behavior constitutes the second condition. Three studies confirmed the hypothesis that both conditions must be fulfilled in order to positively connect the implicit affiliation motive to emotional well-being. Participants with high implicit and explicit affiliation motives and who additionally showed a large amount of affiliation behavior reported the lowest negative affectivity and the highest life satisfaction compared to participants who lacked one of the conditions.

Dynamic instabilities as mechanisms for emergence

That competences may emerge given appropriate environmental and behavioral context is a long-standing theme in developmental research. Work in the motor domain, but also in cognitive development, has made it possible to transform this idea into a mechanistic account closely linked to empirical evidence. In dynamic systems thinking, such capacities as keeping a motor goal in mind, remembering a location, or resisting a motor habit, are all understood in terms of the generation of stable patterns of neuronal activation. These may be input-driven, but also be stabilized by interactions within neuronal representations. A key theoretical insight is that whether a particular pattern of activation is stable or not is not determined by any single factor, learning process, or structural parameter. Instead, ongoing activity, recent activation history, current input, all may affect when a particular dynamic regime is reachable. In spite of such broad interdependence, sharp transitions may characterize the onset of a skill in any given context. Dynamic instabilities are the mechanistic basis for this phenomenon and thus form the basis for understanding development in terms of emergence. We exemplify the concepts of instability and emergence around the phenomenon of infant perseverative reaching and discuss implications for identifying key markers of development and their link to neuronal processes.     

Lack of Inhibition: A Motivational Deficit in Children With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Children With Traumatic Brain Injury*

Recent research has demonstrated that both brain-injured children and children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suffer from response inhibition deficits. To investigate whether these deficits can be influenced by motivational factors, the stop-signal task was performed with and without reward contingencies for successful inhibition. Three groups of children between 8 and 12 years of age, participated in the study: 31 children with ADHD, 37 with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), and 26 normal controls. Results indicated that, although all groups showed comparable learning effects, reward contingencies had different effects on the groups. Whereas the performance of children with ADHD under reward contingencies were brought up to the performance level of normal controls, rewards were found less effective at improving response inhibition in children with TBI. The results further support a motivational/energetic explanation of the inhibitory deficit in children with ADHD, and of a primary response inhibition deficit due to structural brain damage in children with TBI.     

Processing of Ambiguous Facial Affect in Adolescents with Depressive Symptoms Prior to and Following Social Exclusion: The Role of Perceptual Sensitivity and Response Bias

Depressive symptoms in adolescents are an important mental health issue and are associated with adverse developmental outcomes. Impairments in facial affect processing are considered an important factor in the etiology of depression. However, studies on facial affect processing in youth with depressive symptoms are lacking. This study investigated alterations in facial affect processing and the underlying mechanisms (perceptual sensitivity vs. response bias) related to adolescent depression, as well as the potential impact of negative social experiences. Sixty adolescents (M age?=?13.24, SD?=?1.03, 66.7 % female) with high (HD) and low (LD) depressive symptoms rated the predominant affective expression in ambiguous stimuli with varying intensity (happy-sad, happy-angry, sad-angry) prior to and following a negative (social rejection), positive (social inclusion), or no social experience with the depicted model identities. There were no baseline differences between groups. The LD group exhibited an increased perceptual sensitivity to happy expressions depicted by benevolent and stranger models, whereas the HD exhibited a higher sensitivity toward happy expressions depicted by rejecting social partners. The results suggest that depressive symptoms in adolescents may be associated with an altered processing of facial affect for partners who had previously rejected them. Implications of these findings for development and maintenance of adolescent depression are discussed.     

Wanting, having, and needing: integrating motive disposition theory and self-determination theory

Four studies explored the motivational and experiential dynamics of psychological needs, applying both self-determination theory and motive disposition theory. In all 4 studies, motive dispositions toward achievement and affiliation ("wanting" particular experiences) predicted corresponding feelings of competence and relatedness ("having" those experiences). Competence and relatedness in turn predicted well-being, again indicating that these 2 experiences may really be "needed." Illuminating how wanting gets to having, in Studies 2 and 3, participants reported greater self-concordance for motive-congruent goals, which, in longitudinal Study 3, predicted greater attainment of those goals and thus enhanced well-being. Study 4 replicated selected earlier results using an implicit as well as an explicit motive disposition measure. Supporting the presumed universality of competence and relatedness needs, in no studies did motive dispositions moderate the effects of corresponding need-satisfaction on well-being. Discussion focuses on a "sequential process" model of psychological needs that views needs as both motives that instigate and outcomes that reward behavior.     

The dynamics of embodiment: a field theory of infant perseverative reaching

The overall goal of this target article is to demonstrate a mechanism for an embodied cognition. The particular vehicle is a much-studied, but still widely debated phenomenon seen in 7-12 month-old-infants. In Piaget's classic "A-not-B error," infants who have successfully uncovered a toy at location "A" continue to reach to that location even after they watch the toy hidden in a nearby location "B." Here, we question the traditional explanations of the error as an indicator of infants' concepts of objects or other static mental structures. Instead, we demonstrate that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering. We offer a formal dynamic theory and model based on cognitive embodiment that both simulates the known A-not-B effects and offers novel predictions that match new experimental results. The demonstration supports an embodied view by casting the mental events involved in perception, planning, deciding, and remembering in the same analogic dynamic language as that used to describe bodily movement, so that they may be continuously meshed. We maintain that this mesh is a pre-eminently cognitive act of "knowing" not only in infancy but also in everyday activities throughout the life span.     

Detection costs and contingent attentional capture

Peripheral cues reduce reaction times (RTs) to targets at the cued location with short cue-target SOAs (cueing benefits) but increase RTs at long SOAs (cueing costs or inhibition of return). In detection tasks, cueing costs occur at shorter SOAs and are larger compared with identification tasks. To account for effects of task, detection cost theory claims that the integration of cue and target into an object file makes it more difficult to detect the target as a new event, which is the principal task-requirement in detection tasks. The integration of cue and target is expected to increase when cue and target are similar. We provided evidence for detection cost theory in the modified spatial cueing paradigm. Two types of cues (onset, color) were paired with two types of targets (onset, color) in separate blocks of trials. In the identification task, we found cueing benefits with matching (i.e., similar) cue-target pairs (onset-onset, color-color) and no cueing effects with nonmatching cue-target pairs (onset-color, color-onset), which replicates previous work. In the detection task, cueing effects with matching cues were reduced and even turned into cueing costs for onset cues with onset targets, suggesting that cue-target integration made it more difficult to detect targets at the cued location as new events. In contrast, the results for nonmatching cue-target pairs were not affected by task. Furthermore, the pattern of false alarms in the detection task provides a measure of similarity that may explain the size of cueing benefits and costs.     

Personality in cyberspace: personal Web sites as media for personality expressions and impressions

This research examined the personality of owners of personal Web sites based on self-reports, visitors' ratings, and the content of the Web sites. The authors compared a large sample of Web site owners with population-wide samples on the Big Five dimensions of personality. Controlling for demographic differences, the average Web site owner reported being slightly less extraverted and more open to experience. Compared with various other samples, Web site owners did not generally differ on narcissism, self-monitoring, or self-esteem, but gender differences on these traits were often smaller in Web site owners. Self-other agreement was highest with Openness to Experience, but valid judgments of all Big Five dimensions were derived from Web sites providing rich information. Visitors made use of quantifiable features of the Web site to infer personality, and the cues they utilized partly corresponded to self-reported traits.