Theory‐Driven Subgroup‐Specific Evaluation of an Intervention to Reduce Private Car Use1

In the context of a 2‐wave panel study, we used Ajzen's (1991) theory of planned behavior (TPB) as the theoretical framework for deriving and systematically testing hypotheses as to how an intervention (a “free” ticket for public transportation) influences the travelmode choice of students. The empirical results show that this intervention caused a drastic decrease in students' car use. The effect of the intervention on behavior is mediated by the causal chain postulated by the TPB. In the second step, we analyzed whether there were subgroup‐specific reactions to the intervention. Surprisingly, the subgroup analysis shows that students with more negative attitudes toward policy measures restricting car use reacted more strongly to the intervention than did students with a more positive attitude.     

How is Well‐Being Related to Membership in New Religious Movements? An Application of Person–Environment Fit Theory

Ongoing public discussion about the consequences of membership in new religious movements (NRMs) and the lack of studies concerning the relationship between the fit of the person with his or her NRM and well‐being together call for a theoretically based investigation of the phenomenon. Hence, this German study on new members of three NRMs applied person–environment fit theory to investigate whether the fit between persons’ needs for autonomy and relatedness, on the one hand, and the commensurate supplies of the groups, on the other, are related to well‐being and mental health. The regression model following Edwards (1994) predicted satisfaction with religious affiliation, mental health, and depression, but not life satisfaction and anxiety. Results indicate that, for autonomy and relatedness, well‐being measures tend to decrease as supplies exceed needs. Little support was found for a moderator effect of centrality of religiosity. Overall, findings encourage the application of person–environment fit theory to the study of membership in (new) religious groups and call for further research. L’actuel débat public sur les conséquences de l’adhésion à un nouveau mouvement religieux et l’absence d’études sur la relation entre l’adaptation de la personne à son groupe et son bien‐être nécessitent une investigation fondée théoriquement. D’où cette recherche allemande sur les nouveaux membres de trois de ces mouvements: on est parti de la théorie de l’adéquation personne‐environnement pour savoir si l’ajustement entre les besoins personnels d’autonomie et autres besoins analogues d’une part, et les réponses du groupe dans ce domaine d’autre part, étaient reliés au bien‐être et à la santé mentale. Le modèle de régression d’ Edwards (1994) porte sur la satisfaction concernant l’engagement religieux, la santé mentale et la dépression, mais pas sur l’anxiété et la satisfaction liée à l’existence. Les résultats indiquent que, pour ce qui est de l’autonomie et ce qui en dépend, les mesures relatives au bien‐être ont tendance à décroître à mesure que l’offre excède les attentes. L’effet modérateur de la centralité de la religiosité n’a pas vraiment été confirmé. Globalement, ce que l’on a obtenu est en faveur de l’application de la théorie de l’ajustement personne‐environnement à l’étude de l’adhésion à de (nouveaux) groupes religieux et incite à développer d’autres recherches.     

“'Cause You Can't Play This by Yourself”: Athletes' Perceptions of Team Influence on Their Precompetitive Psychological States

Although correlational studies indicate that team attributes are related to athletes' precompetitive psychological states, it is unknown how team members experience these relationships. The present study's purpose was to investigate athletes' perceptions of precompetitive team influence. Consequently, we worked from a constructivist realist position and used qualitative methods (interviews with competitive team-sport athletes). An inductive content analysis revealed that athletes perceived established and novel team characteristics and processes to influence their precompetitive psychological states. Athletes perceived these influences as both adaptive and maladaptive, and it appeared that they were qualified by contextual factors as well as intuitive regulatory attempts.     

Emotional capture by fearful expressions varies with psychopathic traits

Task-irrelevant emotional expressions are known to capture attention, with the extent of “emotional capture” varying with psychopathic traits in antisocial samples. We investigated whether this variation extends throughout the continuum of psychopathic traits (and co-occurring trait anxiety) in a community sample. Participants (N?=?85) searched for a target face among facial distractors. As predicted, angry and fearful faces interfered with search, indicated by slower reaction times relative to neutral faces. When fear appeared as either target or distractor, diminished emotional capture was seen with increasing affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits. However, moderation analyses revealed that this was only when lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were low, consistent with evidence suggesting that these two facets of psychopathic traits display opposing relationships with emotional reactivity. Anxiety did not show the predicted relationships with emotional capture effects. Findings show that normative variation in high-level individual differences in psychopathic traits influence automatic bias to emotional stimuli.     

Pure optic ataxia and visual hemiagnosia – extending the dual visual hypothesis

Goodale and Milner's two visual system hypothesis is an influential model for the understanding of the primate visual system. Lesions of either the ventral (occipito‐temporal) or the dorsal (occipito‐parietal) stream produce distinct and dissociated syndromes in humans: visual agnosia is typical for ventral damage, whereas optic ataxia (OA) for dorsal damage. We studied the case of a 59‐year‐old left‐handed woman with a circumscribed lesion around the left posterior occipital sulcus, extending to the underlying white matter. Initially, she presented with a central visual field OA, which regressed to an OA to the right visual hemifield during the 3 months observation period. In addition, tachistoscopic experiments showed visual hemiagnosia to the right visual hemifield. In line with the findings of the neuropsychological experiments, the analysis of the structural MR data by means of a trackwise hodologic probabilistic approach revealed damage to the left superior longitudinal fasciculus and to the left inferior longitudinal fasciculus, indicating an impairment of both the dorsal and the ventral stream. The combination of OA and visual hemiagnosia in the same patient has never been previously described. The present case study thus provides further insights for the understanding of visual processing.     

Processing order in dual-task situations: The “first-come,first-served” principle and the impact of task order instructions

When two overlapping tasks are processed, they hit a bottleneck at a central processing stage that prevents simultaneous processing of the two tasks. Thus far, however, the factors determining the processing order of the tasks at the bottleneck are unknown. The present study was designed to (re)investigate whether the arrival times of the two tasks at the central bottleneck are a key determinant of the processing order (cf. Sigman & Dehaene, 2006). To this end, we implemented a visual–auditory dual task with a random stimulus order, in which we manipulated arrival time by prolonging the initial, perceptual processing stage (stimulus analysis) of the visual task and compared the effects of this manipulation with those of one impacting the central bottleneck stage of the visual task. Additionally, we implemented two instruction conditions: Participants were told to respond either in the order of stimulus presentation or in the order they preferred. The manipulation of the visual perception stage led to an increase in task response reversals (i.e., the response order was different from the order of stimulus presentation), whereas there was no such increase when the bottleneck stage was manipulated. This pattern provides conclusive evidence that the processing order at the bottleneck is (at least in part) determined by the arrival times of the tasks at that point. Reaction time differences between the two instruction conditions indicated that additional control processes are engaged in determining task processing order when the participants are expressly told to respond in the order of stimulus presentation.     

On the molecular genetics of flexibility: The case of task-switching,inhibitory control and genetic variants

The adjustment of behavior to changing goals and environmental constraints requires the flexible switching between different task sets. Cognitive flexibility is an endophenotype of executive functioning and is highly heritable, as indicated by twin studies. Individual differences in global flexibility as assessed by reaction-time measurement in a task-switching paradigm were recently related to a single nucleotide polymorphism in the vicinity of the dopamine d2 receptor gene DRD2. In the present study, we assessed whether the DRD2 gene is related to backward inhibition, a control mechanism that contributes to cognitive flexibility by reducing proactive interference by no longer relevant task sets. We found that carriers of the DRD2 A1+ variant who have a lower striatal dopamine d2 receptor density than A1– carriers show a larger backward inhibition effect. This is in line with previous results demonstrating increased behavioral flexibility in carriers of this genetic variant. The discussion relates the present finding to those of previous studies assessing the neurogenetic foundations of inhibitory control.     

The multinomial model of prospective memory: validity of ongoing-task parameters

The objective of this research was to provide additional experimental validation of the multinomial processing tree (MPT) model of event-based prospective memory (Smith & Bayen, 2004). In particular, the parameters that measure trial-type detection in the ongoing task were examined. In three experiments with different response instructions, event-based prospective memory tasks were embedded in ongoing color-matching tasks. The results support the validity of the MPT model, that is, manipulations of ongoing-task difficulty affected the ongoing-task parameters of the MPT model, while leaving the estimates for the prospective and the retrospective components of prospective memory unaffected.