Severity Indices of Personality Problems (SIPP-118): development, factor structure, reliability, and validity

This article describes a series of studies involving 2,730 participants on the development and validity testing of the Severity Indices of Personality Problems (SIPP), a self-report questionnaire covering important core components of (mal)adaptive personality functioning. Results show that the 16 facets constituted homogeneous item clusters (i.e., unidimensional and internally consistent parcels) that fit well into 5 clinically interpretable, higher order domains: self-control, identity integration, relational capacities, social concordance, and responsibility. These domains appeared to have good concurrent validity across various populations, good convergent validity in terms of associations with interview ratings of the severity of personality pathology, and good discriminant validity in terms of associations with trait-based personality disorder dimensions. Furthermore, results suggest that the domain scores are stable over a time interval of 14-21 days in a student sample but are sensitive to change over a 2-year follow-up interval in a treated patient population. Taken together, the final instrument, the SIPP-118, provides a set of 5 reliable, valid, and efficient indices of the core components of (mal)adaptive personality functioning.     

Detecting the presence of a singleton involves focal attention

It has been claimed that the detection of a feature singleton can be based on activity in a feature map that allows coarse coding that something unique is present in the visual field. In the present study, participants detected the presence or absence of a color singleton. Even though the letter form of the color singleton was task-irrelevant, we showed that repeating the letter form of the singleton resulted in repetition priming on the next trial. Such repetition priming was not found when a nonsingleton letter was repeated as the singleton. Since the letter form of the color singleton could only be picked up by focal attention, the repetition priming effect indicates that focal attention is allocated to the feature singleton even in the simplest present-absent feature detection tasks. We showed that this effect is equally strong in conditions of low and high perceptual load. These results are inconsistent with theories that it is possible to detect a feature singleton without directing some form of attention to its location.     

Stimulus frequency influences spontaneous perceptual reversals in ambiguous apparent motion

The temporal integration of continuous sensory information into a temporally extended percept becomes evident in spontaneous reversals of ambiguous apparent motion. To study the temporal relation of spontaneous percept reversals and temporal stimulus properties, we systematically varied presentation frequency in an ambiguous-apparent-motion paradigm. Moreover, we triggered percept reversals in a manner that was not consciously perceived by manipulating the duration of single frames. We found that the reversal rate depended on the stimulus frequency (with higher frequencies resulting in faster percept reversals) and that we could externally trigger perceptual reversals. Our findings support the idea that spontaneous reversals of ambiguous apparent motion are influenced by bottom-up effects at early processing levels. The paradigm allows for specific contrasts of spontaneous and externally triggered (but otherwise identical) perceptual reversals and, by this means, for further study of the underlying mechanisms.     

On use of student samples for scale construction

This research note responds to the question of whether a convenience sample of undergraduate students may be successfully utilized in concept development and in scale construction, and in what way the results are comparable to the findings of a representative national sample. The results of a Mokken analysis in both samples support the hypothesis that convenience samples have utility in concept development and in developing measures that can also be used in representative samples.     

Jugendgewalt als Lebensbewältigungsprozess

Aggression und Gewalt bei Jugendlichen stilisieren sich zum Sinnbild für unsere „kranke Gesellschaft“. Was sich bei jüngeren Jugendlichen noch – oft als Lausbuben-Verhalten bagatellisiertes – Herumschubsen und Rangeln im Pausenhof ?u?ert, tritt in Form von Bullying und Mobbing immer st?rker zutage. Jugendliche, die trinken, stehlen, Drogen zu sich nehmen, Mitschüler oder Gruppenmitglieder bedrohen und Gegenst?nde ?ffentlichen Gutes besch?digen etc., stehen auf der Tagesordnung. Selbst Erpressung von Mitschülern ist kein Einzeldelikt mehr.     

Harbour seals (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Phoca vitulina</Emphasis>) can steer by the stars

Offshore orientation in marine mammals is still a mystery. For visual orientation during night-time foraging and travelling in the open seas, seals cannot rely on distant terrestrial landmarks, and thus might use celestial cues as repeatedly shown for nocturnally migrating birds. Although seals detect enough stars to probably allow for astronavigation, it was unclear whether they can orient by the night sky. The widely accepted cognitive mechanism for bird night-time orientation by celestial cues is a time-independent star compass with learned geometrical star configurations used to pinpoint north as the rotational centre of the starry sky while there is no conclusive evidence for a time-compensated star compass or true star navigation. Here, we present results for two harbour seals orienting in a custom made swimming planetarium. Both seals learned to highly accurately identify a lodestar out of a pseudo-randomly oriented, realistic projection of the northern hemisphere night sky. Providing the first evidence for star orientation capability in a marine mammal, our seals’ outstanding directional precision would allow them to steer by following lodestars of learned star courses, a celestial orientation mechanism that has been known to be used by Polynesian navigators but has not been considered for animals yet.     

Emotional scenes in peripheral vision: selective orienting and gist processing, but not content identification

Emotional-neutral pairs of visual scenes were presented peripherally (with their inner edges 5.2 degrees away from fixation) as primes for 150 to 900 ms, followed by a centrally presented recognition probe scene, which was either identical in specific content to one of the primes or related in general content and affective valence. Results indicated that (a) if no foveal fixations on the primes were allowed, the false alarm rate for emotional probes was increased; (b) hit rate and sensitivity (A') were higher for emotional than for neutral probes only when a fixation was possible on only one prime; and (c) emotional scenes were more likely to attract the first fixation than neutral scenes. It is concluded that the specific content of emotional or neutral scenes is not processed in peripheral vision. Nevertheless, a coarse impression of emotional scenes may be extracted, which then leads to selective attentional orienting or--in the absence of overt attention--causes false alarms for related probes.     

Note on Some Fixed Point Constructions in Provability Logic

We present a quite simple proof of the fixed point theorem for GL. We also use this proof to show that Sambin's algorithm yields a fixed point.     

Semantic Values for Natural Deduction Derivations

Drawing upon Martin-Löf’s semantic framework for his constructive type theory, semantic values are assigned also to natural-deduction derivations, while observing the crucial distinction between (logical) consequence among propositions and inference among judgements. Derivations in Gentzen’s (1934–5) format with derivable formulae dependent upon open assumptions, stand, it is suggested, for proof-objects (of propositions), whereas derivations in Gentzen’s (1936) sequential format are (blue-prints for) proof-acts.     

Physicalism and strict implication

The aim of this paper is to determine the plausibility of Robert Kirk’s strict implication thesis as an explication of physicalism and its relation to Jackson and Chalmer’s notion of application conditionals, to the notion of global supervenience and to a posteriori identities. It is argued that the strict implication thesis is subject to the same objection that affects the notion of global supervenience. Furthermore, reference to an idealised physics in the formulation of strict implication threatens to make the thesis vacuous. Third, Kirk’s claim that the strict implication thesis does not entail reduction of the mental to the physical (excluding phenomenal properties) is untenable if a functional model of reduction is preferred over Nagel’s classical model. Finally, Kirk’s claim that the physical facts entail in an a priori way the fact that certain brain states feel somehow seems to be unfounded.