Dynamic Interviewing Program (DIP): automatic online interviews via the instant messenger ICQ.

A Dynamic Interviewing Program (DIP) is presented for automated online interviewing via the instant messaging service ICQ. DIP can conduct parallel structured interviews with several ICQ users at a time, 24 hours a day. The interview itself can be dynamic (branched testing), which means that each question depends on the answer given to the previous one. An online ICQ address book offers the possibility to validate demographic data in order to evaluate data quality. Experiences with DIP and a first empirical study open up new perspectives for Internet-based automatic interviewing.     

Emotional granularity and borderline personality disorder

This study examined the affective dysregulation component of borderline personality disorder (BPD) from an emotional granularity perspective, which refers to the specificity in which one represents emotions. Forty-six female participants meeting criteria for BPD and 51 female control participants without BPD and Axis I pathology completed tasks that assessed the degree to which participants incorporated information about valence (pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (calm-activated) in their semantic/conceptual representations of emotions and in using labels to represent emotional reactions. As hypothesized, participants with BPD emphasized valence more and arousal less than control participants did when using emotion terms to label their emotional reactions. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

On the locus of speed-accuracy trade-off in reaction time: inferences from the lateralized readiness potential

Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were used to determine the stage(s) of reaction time (RT) responsible for speed-accuracy trade-offs (SATs). Speeded decisions based on several types of information were examined in 3 experiments, involving, respectively, a line discrimination task, lexical decisions, and an Erikson flanker task. Three levels of SAT were obtained in each experiment by adjusting response deadlines with an adaptive tracking algorithm. Speed stress affected the duration of RT stages both before and after the start of the LRP in all experiments. The latter effect cannot be explained by guessing strategies, by variations in response force, or as an indirect consequence of the pre-LRP effect. Contrary to most models, it suggests that SAT can occur at a late postdecisional stage.     

Scientific LogAnalyzer: A Web-based tool for analyses of server log files in psychological research

Scientific LogAnalyzer is a platform-independent interactive Web service for the analysis of log files. Scientific LogAnalyzer offers several features not available in other log file analysis tools—for example, organizational criteria and computational algorithms suited to aid behavioral and social scientists. Scientific LogAnalyzer is highly flexible on the input side (unlimited types of log file formats), while strictly keeping a scientific output format. Features include (1) free definition of log file format, (2) searching and marking dependent on any combination of strings (necessary for identifying conditions in experiment data), (3) computation of response times, (4) detection of multiple sessions, (5) speedy analysis of large log files, (6) output in HTML and/or tab-delimited form, suitable for import into statistics software, and (7) a module for analyzing and visualizing drop-out. Several methodological features specifically needed in the analysis of data collected in Internet-based experiments have been implemented in the Web-based tool and are described in this article. A regression analysis with data from 44 log file analyses shows that the size of the log file and the domain name lookup are the two main factors determining the duration of an analysis. It is less than a minute for a standard experimental study with a 2 × 2 design, a dozen Web pages, and 48 participants (ca. 800 lines, including data from drop-outs). The current version of Scientific LogAnalyzer is freely available for small log files. Its Web address ishttp://genpsylab-logcrunsh.unizh.ch/.     

Diagnosis and repair of negative polarity constructions in the light of symbolic resonance analysis

In a post hoc analysis, we investigate differences in event-related potentials of two studies (Drenhaus et al., 2004, Drenhaus et al., to appear, Saddy et al., 2004a and Saddy et al., 2004b) by using the symbolic resonance analysis (Beim Graben & Kurths, 2003). The studies under discussion, examined the failure to license a negative polarity item (NPI) in German: Saddy et al. (2004a) reported an N400 component when the NPI was not accurately licensed by negation; Drenhaus et al., 2004 and Drenhaus et al., to appear considered additionally the influence of constituency of the licensor in NPI constructions. A biphasic N400-P600 response was found for the two induced violations (the lack of licensor and the inaccessibility of negation in a relative clause). The symbolic resonance analysis (SRA) revealed an effect in the P600 time window for the data in Saddy et al., which was not found by using the averaging technique. The SRA of the ERPs in Drenhaus et al., showed that the P600 components are distinguishable concerning the amplitude and latency. It was smaller and earlier in the condition where the licensor is inaccessible, compared to the condition without negation in the string. Our findings suggest that the failure in licensing NPIs is not exclusively related to semantic integration costs (N400). The elicited P600 components reflect differences in syntactic processing. Our results confirm and replicate the effects of the traditional voltage average analysis and show that the SRA is a useful tool to reveal and pull apart ERP differences which are not evident using the traditional voltage average analysis.     

The neurophysiological basis of word order variations in German

This paper aims to dissociate grammatical and general cognitive (e.g., working-memory based) accounts of the processing costs elicited by word order variations in German. To this end, we present a study using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), in which dislocated arguments were instantiated either by non-pronominal or by pronominal noun phrases. This manipulation allows for a dissociation of the two competing accounts, since only a dislocation of non-pronominal arguments gives rise to a non-canonical structure. The results show that (a) in sentences with non-pronominal arguments, the determiner of a non-canonical noun phrase elicited a broadly distributed negativity, and (b) in sentences with pronominal arguments, no differences were observed for object- vs. subject-initial word orders. These findings show that the human parser is sensitive to fine-grained grammatical regularities. We therefore argue that the negativity is a reflection of a local syntactic mismatch, rather than of an increase in working-memory load.     

Determining subprocesses of visual feature search with reaction time models

After the classic serial/parallel dichotomy of visual search mechanisms has been increasingly doubted, we investigated what search mechanisms are used between the two poles termed "pop-out" and "strictly serial search" in an overt feature search paradigm. Since reaction time slopes do not contain sufficient information for this purpose, we developed a novel technique for analyzing reaction times. Individual reaction times are modeled as sums of the durations of successive search steps. Model parameters are task characteristics (similarity, number and arrangement of target and distractors) and processing characteristics of the participant (e.g., attention dwell and shift durations). In Experiment 1, several model variants were fitted numerically to empirical reaction times. The best fitting model suggested that more than one item can be processed in a single fixation, movement of attention is abrupt and not continuous, and even in pop out search, attention is often explicitly moved to the target. In Experiment 2, we measured the central model parameter, the so-called range of attention, more directly and thereby validated the model. The model provides an explanation for the strong variation in the slope of reaction time functions, which is not based on an explicit distinction between parallel and serial search processes.