IRTree models with ordinal and multidimensional decision nodes for response styles and trait-based rating responses

IRTree models decompose observed rating responses into sequences of theory-based decision nodes, and they provide a flexible framework for analysing trait-related judgements and response styles. However, most previous applications of IRTree models have been limited to binary decision nodes that reflect qualitatively distinct and unidimensional judgement processes. The present research extends the family of IRTree models for the analysis of response styles to ordinal judgement processes for polytomous decisions and to multidimensional parametrizations of decision nodes. The integration of ordinal judgement processes overcomes the limitation to binary nodes, and it allows researchers to test whether decisions reflect qualitatively distinct response processes or gradual steps on a joint latent continuum. The extension to multidimensional node models enables researchers to specify multiple judgement processes that simultaneously affect the decision between competing response options. Empirical applications highlight the roles of extreme and midpoint response style in rating judgements and show that judgement processes are moderated by different response formats. Model applications with multidimensional decision nodes reveal that decisions among rating categories are jointly informed by trait-related processes and response styles.     

Difficulties,uncertainty, and opportunity: The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic by early to late adolescence in the Czech Republic

The pandemic created an unfamiliar situation for adolescents, especially within the school context. Drawing on the theory of cognitive appraisal, according to which people evaluate the benefit, harm, and threat of a certain event, this study explored Czech adolescents' experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted six focus groups with early (11–12 years), middle (14–15 years), and late (18–19 years) adolescents. Using thematic analysis, we identified three themes—pandemic as difficulties, uncertainty, and a (un)seized opportunity. While some younger participants initially perceived the pandemic as exciting, others struggled immediately with isolation, online learning, and disrupted daily activities. The feelings of distressing uncertainty, but also the appraisal of the pandemic as an opportunity to utilize free time differently, which in some cases faded over time, prevailed among late adolescents. This study captured the effects of the pandemic and its appraisals on adolescents' subjective well-being and the shift in the thinking of early and late adolescents.     

Kenosis,Dynamic Śūnyatā and Weak Thought: Abe Masao and Gianni Vattimo

The verb κεν?ω (kenos) means ‘to empty’ and St. Paul uses the word ?κ?νωσεν (ekenosen) writing that ‘Jesus made himself nothing’ and ‘emptied himself’. ?ūnyatā is a Buddhist concept most commonly translated as emptiness, nothingness, or nonsubstantiality. An important kenosis–?ūnyatā discussion was sparked by Abe Masao’s paper ‘Kenotic God and Dynamic ?ūnyatā’ (in 1984). I confront the kenosis–?ūnyatā theme with Vattimo’s kenosis-based philosophy of religion. For Vattimo, kenosis refers to ‘secularization’: when strong structures such as the essence and the fulfilment of the Christian message are weakened. Parallels between Abe’s and Vattimo’s thought will be demonstrated with regard to themes current in East–West comparative philosophy: reality and emptiness, the overcoming of metaphysics, the position of the Self, the human and the divine, and the relationship between science and religion. The latter point is particularly timely because since the 1990s religious fundamentalism has pushed forward a curious ‘religion as science’ hypothesis. Both thinkers’ relationship with the idea of Nothingness will also be explored. Finally, Abe’s interpretation of ?ūnyatā will be presented as a form of ‘weak thought’. Both Abe and Vattimo design a religious attitude based on negativity without falling into the trap of anti-religious nihilism. Abe’s negation of the subject, which leads to a pluralism of beings, can very well be compared with Vattimo’s paradoxical ‘credere di credere’ (to believe to believe), through which Vattimo describes the attitude of an ego that has lost its own subjectivity. The person who does not believe but only ‘believes to believe’ is a sort of non-ego. I show that a ‘half-theistic’ way of thinking God based on kenosis can work in the service of plurality because it deconstructs the principle of reality based on faith and ‘fullness’.     

Neue Felder in der Operationalisierten Psychodynamischen Diagnostik

After the operationalized psychodynamic diagnostics (OPD) system became well established in clinical as well as research contexts, especially in German speaking countries, the OPD task force now focuses on issues, such as modules and new manuals which are related to various clinical contexts. In this article new modules and manuals are presented and discussed in summarized form: the modules for addiction disorders and for forensic patients, the new OPD-2 manual for children and adolescents, an OPD-based manual for formulating initial assessment reports for insurance companies as well as a conceptualization for an operationalized psychodynamic therapy (OPT).     

Spontaneous prospective-memory processing: Unexpected fluency experiences trigger erroneous intention executions

Event-based prospective memory is the ability to remember to execute an intention when an environmental cue occurs. It has been argued that, due to their special meaning, these cues are discrepant from their environment and therefore are sometimes spontaneously noticed. In line with this assumption, the likelihood that an intention will be executed increases with increased cue-discrepancy. It is not yet clear, however, whether these improvements are due to facilitated spontaneous noticing rather than to an increase in the efficiency of controlled cue-processing. To further investigate the spontaneous nature of cue-discrepancy benefits, we presented participants with stimuli that were unrelated to the intention but discrepant from other stimuli. Therefore, we experimentally increased the processing fluency of some stimuli for participants currently holding an intention by using different priming procedures. We found that stimuli whose fluency was increased via spaced repeated stimulus presentation (Experiment 1) or via short pre-exposure (Experiment 2a to 3) elicited a tendency to fulfill the intention despite its actual inappropriateness. Findings were inconsistent as to whether cue-memory uncertainty fosters the reliance on cue discrepancy for intention retrieval (Experiments 2a and 3). Taken together, the present findings provide converging evidence for a spontaneous discrepancy-based prospective-memory process which works independent of controlled processes.     

The Fluency Amplification Model: Fluent stimuli show more intense but not evidently more positive evaluations

Processing fluency plays a large role in forming judgments, as research repeatedly shows. According to the Hedonic Fluency Model, more fluently processed stimuli are rated more affectively positive than less fluently processed stimuli. Most research documenting such findings uses neutral or positive stimuli with low complexity, thus any potential impact of initial stimulus valence cannot be tested. In the present study, 60 IAPS stimuli ranging from very negative to very positive valence were rated on liking by participants. Processing fluency was manipulated through perceptual priming (7 ms). Results of Experiment 1 (N = 35) support the prediction of the Hedonic Fluency Model, but only for stimuli with an initially positive valence. However, when negative stimuli were processed more fluently, they were rated as more negative than when processed less fluently. Experiment 2 (N = 39) showed that enhancing the accessibility of the stimulus content (via prolonging the prime duration to 100 ms) cannot account for the results of Experiment 1, since Experiment 2 failed to replicate the findings obtained in Experiment 1. Potential factors influencing affective evaluation of negative stimuli are discussed. A model is offered for the reinterpretation of processing fluency as an amplifying factor for evaluative judgment.     

Bayesian techniques for analyzing group differences in the Iowa Gambling Task: A case study of intuitive and deliberate decision-makers

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is one of the most popular experimental paradigms for comparing complex decision-making across groups. Most commonly, IGT behavior is analyzed using frequentist tests to compare performance across groups, and to compare inferred parameters of cognitive models developed for the IGT. Here, we present a Bayesian alternative based on Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVA for comparing performance, and a suite of three complementary model-based methods for assessing the cognitive processes underlying IGT performance. The three model-based methods involve Bayesian hierarchical parameter estimation, Bayes factor model comparison, and Bayesian latent-mixture modeling. We illustrate these Bayesian methods by applying them to test the extent to which differences in intuitive versus deliberate decision style are associated with differences in IGT performance. The results show that intuitive and deliberate decision-makers behave similarly on the IGT, and the modeling analyses consistently suggest that both groups of decision-makers rely on similar cognitive processes. Our results challenge the notion that individual differences in intuitive and deliberate decision styles have a broad impact on decision-making. They also highlight the advantages of Bayesian methods, especially their ability to quantify evidence in favor of the null hypothesis, and that they allow model-based analyses to incorporate hierarchical and latent-mixture structures.     

Constructing preference from experience: the endowment effect reflected in external information search

People often attach a higher value to an object when they own it (i.e., as seller) compared with when they do not own it (i.e., as buyer)--a phenomenon known as the endowment effect. According to recent cognitive process accounts of the endowment effect, the effect is due to differences between sellers and buyers in information search. Whereas previous investigations have focused on search order and internal search processes (i.e., in memory), we used a sampling paradigm to examine differences in search termination in external search. We asked participants to indicate selling and buying prices for monetary lotteries in a within-subject design. In an experience condition, participants had to learn about the possible outcomes and probabilities of the lotteries by experiential sampling. As hypothesized, sellers tended to terminate search after sampling high outcomes, whereas buyers tended to terminate search after sampling low outcomes. These differences in stopping behavior translated into samples of the lotteries that were differentially distorted for sellers and buyers; the amount of the distortion was predictive of the resulting size of the endowment effect. In addition, for sellers search was more extended when high outcomes were rare compared with when low outcomes were rare. Our results add to the increasing evidence that the endowment effect is due, in part, to differences in predecisional information search.     

Assessing Biobehavioural Self‐Regulation and Coregulation in Early Childhood: The Parent‐Child Challenge Task

Researchers have argued for more dynamic and contextually relevant measures of regulatory processes in interpersonal interactions. In response, we introduce and examine the effectiveness of a new task, the Parent–Child Challenge Task, designed to assess the self‐regulation and coregulation of affect, goal‐directed behaviour, and physiology in parents and their preschoolers in response to an experimental perturbation. Concurrent and predictive validity was examined via relations with children's externalizing behaviours. Mothers used only their words to guide their 3‐year‐old children to complete increasingly difficult puzzles in order to win a prize (N = 96). A challenge condition was initiated midway through the task with a newly introduced time limit. The challenge produced decreases in parental teaching and dyadic behavioural variability and increases in child negative affect and dyadic affective variability, measured by dynamic systems‐based methods. Children rated lower on externalizing showed respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) suppression in response to challenge, whereas those rated higher on externalizing showed RSA augmentation. Additionally, select task changes in affect, behaviour, and physiology predicted teacher‐rated externalizing behaviours four months later. Findings indicate that the Parent–Child Challenge Task was effective in producing regulatory changes and suggest its utility in assessing biobehavioural self‐regulation and coregulation in parents and their preschoolers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.