Immediate attributional effects of success and failure in the field: Testing some laboratory hypotheses

Investigated how team success and failure are attributed to dispositional and situational factors as a function of immediate outcome of the group performance, past success of the team, and individual performance of team members within the group. 150 Little League baseball players' attributions for the team's outcome were taken separately with regard to team- and self-factors immediately after the conclusion of a game. The results reveal that success, independent of the margin of victory, is primarily assigned to effort and ability, while clear-loss is attributed to both effort and task difficulty. Conversely, bare-loss is seen to be mainly due to task difficulty and secondarily to low effort. The results are interpreted as supporting the notion of ego-centered causal judgments, but not necessarily the motive to enhance one's self, on the basis of the new proposition that effort has a different attributional meaning in the cases of success and failure; when losing effort is treated as an external factor, and when winning, effort tends to be interpreted as an internal factor. No differences with respect to attributions exist between individual players who perform poorly and those who excell within the team performance.     

Die Religionsfreiheit im Spiegel des Staat-Kirche-Verhältnisses in Finnland

Die Beziehung von Kirche und Staat hemmt seit langem nicht mehr die vollständige Verwirklichung der Religionsfreiheit in Finnland. Für das finnische Modelle ist es Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts kennzeichnend, dass die lutherische Kirche selbst ohne äußeren Druck das Verhältnis zum Staat geklärt hat. Heutzutage gehört Finnland zu den westeuropäischen Ländern, in denen sich der Staat neutral zu den mit der Religion ihrer einzelnen Bürger verknüpften Entscheidungen hält. Dabei gehört zur Religionsfreiheit sowohl das Recht, sich zu einer bestimmten Religion zu bekennen und sie zu praktizieren, als auch ein Recht darauf, sich zu keiner Religion zu bekennen. Die Verwirklichung der Religionsfreiheit des Einzelnen setzt keine einheitliche Verhaltensweise des Staates mit allen in seinem Bereich tätigen Kirchen und religiösen Gemeinschaften voraus. Man geht aber davon aus, dass die Ungleichheit zwischen den religiösen Gemeinschaften nicht die Verwirklichung der Religionsfreiheit aller Bürger aufs Spiel setzen darf. Weil die Entwicklung in Finnland auch in Richtung einer mehr gleichgestellten Stellung religiöser Gemeinschaften führt, so stärkt dies gleichzeitig auch die gesellschaftlichen Voraussetzungen für die Realisierung der Religionsfreiheit des Einzelnen.     

Self-Controlled Practice to Achieve Neuro-Cognitive Engagement: Underlying Brain Processes to Enhance Cognitive-Motor Learning and Performance

Abstract

While self-controlled practice has been shown to be an effective practice methodology, the neuro-cognitive correlates of its effectiveness are unclear. We investigated whether learners participating in self-controlled practice exhibit increased neuro-cognitive engagement compared to externally controlled practice. Two groups (self-controlled and yoked) of 16 participants practiced and performed a golf putting task over 3 days. Working memory engagement, central executive activity, and cortical activation were assessed via electroencephalography as indicators of neuro-cognitive engagement. The self-controlled group exhibited more consistent working memory engagement, and greater central executive activity, compared to the yoked group during practice. Relationships were also observed between neuro-cognitive engagement during self-controlled practice and performance improvement, indicating that self-controlled practice uniquely benefitted from increased neuro-cognitive engagement.     

OM PROJEKTIV IDENTIFIKATION; FEM PSYKOANALYTIKER TILLÄMPAR BEGREPPET UTIFRÅN OLIKA PERSPEKTIV

Understanding another person's mind is based on a shared frame of reference that derives from primary identification. In a psychotic disorder, this metaphorical configuration becomes damaged, leaving the ego in a state of extreme helplessness. To safeguard at least a minimum of psychic survival in this situation, the helpless ego resorts to a delusion that will form a surrogate frame of reference, which is no longer linked to primary identification, but to autoerotic excitations and self-induced affect states. The treatment of a psychotic patient should aim at the recovery of the original frame of reference based on primary identification and represented by the analyst in the analytic setting. The shared understanding of the patient's extreme helplessness paves the way for the unfolding of object directional needs and wishes in the therapeutic relationship and for their gradual internalisation into a more solid psychic structure.     

Effects of Psychosocial Resources on Elite Soldiers' Completion of a Demanding Military Selection Program

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of three psychosocial resources (social support, mattering, and self-efficacy), together and separately, on soldiers' completion of a physically challenging military program when controlling for the possible mediating effects of stress. A total of 380 male soldiers entering Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course served as subjects. Results showed that the psychosocial resources were significantly and positively related to the program completion. Expected stress and cognitive stress did not mediate this effect. Of the three psychosocial resources, only the effect of self-efficacy was statistically significant. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Facilitatory and inhibitory effects of grammatical agreement: evidence from readers' eye fixation patterns

The study examined how grammatical agreement affects reading in Finnish. Readers' eye fixation patterns were recorded when they read one of three alternative versions of the same sentences, where the critical difference was the type of preceding word of the target nouns. The preceding word was (a) an agreeing modifier (mainioksi orkesteriksi='for an excellent orchestra'), (b) a non-agreeing modifier that was grammatical, unambiguous and synonymous to the agreeing modifier (kelpo orkesteriksi='for an excellent orchestra'), or (c) a baseline condition without a modifier (orkesteriksi='for an orchestra'). Two different types of agreement were used, a modifier-head agreement and a possessive agreement. The results showed that the agreeing modifiers facilitate and the non-agreeing modifiers inhibit the reading of the target nouns compared to the neutral baseline condition. These effects appeared in the second-pass reading. The pattern was similar between the two agreement structures.     

Visual processing of coherent rotation in the central visual field: an fMRI study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to determine the brain areas that process coherent motion. To reduce the activity related to eye-movement planning and self-motion perception, rotation was used as coherent motion and the stimulus was restricted to the central visual field. Coherent rotation relative to incoherent random-dot motion resulted in consistent activation in the superior parietal lobule (SPL), in the lateral occipital gyrus (presumptive kinetic occipital region, KO), and in the fusiform gyrus (FG). The main novel finding in present study is the bilateral SPL activation, which has not been found in any previous study contrasting coherent and incoherent motion. It is suggested that the SPL activation is related to form-from-motion processing. The stimulus modification that prevented abrupt appearances of dots at the borders of the stimulus field increased the strength of rolling disk-like percept of the coherent stimulus. This perception of form may also be at least partly responsible for the activation in KO and FG. With this explanation, our three consistent activation areas are in line with previous findings. Furthermore, these results demonstrate that even delicate changes in some stimulus aspects can lead to significant changes in the activation of the brain.     

Measurement Invariance of the Day Reconstruction Method: Results from the COURAGE in Europe Project

Given the growing interest in the study of subjective well-being as a measure of social progress, instruments that produce valid and reliable scores and that can be used within and across countries are needed. The aim of the present study was to analyze the measurement equivalence of the Day Reconstruction Method in its brief version, using nationally representative samples from Finland, Poland, and Spain obtained within the COURAGE in Europe project. The goodness-of-fit of a two-correlated-factors model and the reliability of the scores obtained were assessed. Cross-country invariance was tested employing a multiple group confirmatory factor analysis, through sequential constraint imposition. In each country, measurement invariance was tested across time frames (morning, afternoon and evening) and days of the week (weekday and weekend). The results found support for the hypothesis of a two-correlated-factors (positive and negative affect) structure; the reliability of the positive, the negative and the net affect scores showed appropriate values. A high equivalence across the three national samples was found: all items except one showed strong measurement invariance indicating that respondents from Finland, Poland, and Spain attribute the same meaning to the latent construct under study, and the levels of the underlying items are equal in all three countries. Similar results were found for the measurement equivalence across time frames and days of the week. Our findings support the assumption of comparability across the different samples considered; in general, higher positive affect and lower negative affect were found in Finland, in the evening and at the weekend.