Sex differences in parking are affected by biological and social factors

The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although laboratory tests prove men’s average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at different parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. Performance is related to mental rotation skills and self-assessment in beginners, but only to self-assessment in more experienced drivers. We assume that, due to differential feedback, self-assessment incrementally replaces the controlling influence of mental rotation, as parking is trained with increasing experience. Results suggest that sex differences in spatial cognition persist in real-life situations, but that socio-psychological factors modulate the biological causes of sex differences.     

Mission: Impossible? On Empirical-Normative Collaboration in Ethical Reasoning

During the 1980s, empirical social sciences and normative theory seemingly converged within ethical debates. This tendency kindled new debates about the limits and possibilities of empirical-normative collaboration. The article asks for adequate ways of collaboration by taking a closer look at the philosophy of science of empirical social sciences as well as normative theory development and its logical groundings. As a result, three possible modes of cooperation are characterized: first, the empirical assessment of conditions that actually necessitate the translation of normatively derived basic principles into practice rules; second, the empirical assessment of conditions for application of a moral norm which are formulated by bridging principles; third, the empirical assessment of social practice which allows (a) to measure whether adopted norms actually are implemented in practice or not and (b) to encounter new moral problems which are in need of ethical guidance. Finally, the article defends a symbiotic position in Weaver’s and Trevino's triad of possible approaches to empirical-normative collaboration in ethics.     

Angststörungen bei Patienten mit implantiertem Kardioverter-Defibrillator (ICD)

Patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) often show anxiety disorders as comorbid psychologycal disturbances. In a short review we discuss psychosocial aspects of the ICD-implantation. A case study of a 38 year old patient in inpatient treatment is presented for illustration of a cognitive-behavioral treatment method. The psychotherapeutic treatment was carried out in close cooperation with the clinic for cardiology.     

Emotional reactivity and interoceptive sensitivity: Exploring the role of age

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Interoceptive sensitivity (IS) refers to the ability to accurately perceive visceral afferent information, and several prominent theories of emotions suggest...     

Some thoughts on empathy and countertransference

Two aspects of countertransference-namely, the countertransference reaction and empathic understanding-must be distinguished. The term countertransference should be reserved exclusively for the conscious reactions of the analyst emerging from the preconscious by virtue of the patient's current transferences; the term empathy should be used to denote a perspective whereby the analyst employs current countertransference reactions for an understanding of the patient's inner life.     

Grasp cueing shows obligatory attention to action goals

To understand the grounding of cognitive mechanisms in perception and action, we used a simple detection task to determine how long it takes to predict an action goal from the perception of grasp postures and whether this prediction is under strategic control. Healthy observers detected visual probes over small or large objects after seeing either a precision grip or a power grip posture. Although the posture was uninformative it induced attention shifts to the grasp-congruent object within 350 ms. When the posture predicted target appearance over the grasp-incongruent object, observers' initial strategic allocation of attention was overruled by the congruency between grasp and object. These results might help to characterize the human mirror neuron system and reveal how joint attention tunes early perceptual processes toward action prediction.