Finger spreading as an indicator of psychomotor activity and laterality

In 23 healthy right- and left-handers and in 8 psychotic patients the angels between fingers were measured after maximal spreading. It can be demonstrated, that there are differences in spreading out between right- and lefthanders. The dominance of the right hand in right-handers is fluctuating. In depressiv psychotics and patients after schizophrenia we found decrease of spreading out. The laterality imbalance in psychoses we interprete as a sign of hemispherial dysfunktion.     

Visually controlled space orientation in endogenous psychoses

The visual controlled behaviour in space is measured in 30 psychotic patients. In a room with a row of 8 equal chairs we measured the right-left-choice and the choice of distance. The neglect of the left chairs in patient with "distrust" and "delusion" let us suppose a right hemispherical dysfunction. There is no correlation between psychosis and choice of distance, but a good correlation between disturbed parental home and near distance.     

Mood and memory for tightly organized social information

The frequently cited finding that mood-congruent information can be better recalled than mood-incongruent information is tested using categorically organized stimulus material which imposes a systematic structure on the recall process. A target person was described with respect to six categories of social behaviour, with predominantly desirable behaviours in some categories and predominantly undesirable behaviours in others. Participants were induced either an elated mood state or a neutral state using Velten's procedure. Instructions (impression formation versus memory) were also manipulated. Although the mood manipulation apparently worked and did influence the impression judgments of the target person, it did not selectively facilitate the recall of mood-congruent material, neither at the level of specific items nor at the categorical level. However, when only deviating behaviours are considered which do not fit the structural constraints, mood-congruent information is indeed better recalled. To interpret these results, it is argued that the manifestation of mood effects depends on the restrictions of different tasks or response modes. Three other findings were obtained: Superior recall of redundant, structurally consistent information compared with deviating information; an advantage of positive over negative information which is confined to the impression formation condition; and, surprisingly, an incongruency effect for the encoding mood which may reflect the deeper processing of incongruent material.     

Drinking behavior in the chronic phase of alcoholism

40 patients in the chronic phase of alcohol addition were questioned in order to identify drinking stereotypes with regard to consumption in the course of the day and year. Alcohol intake reaches a maximum between 8 and 9 PM. No clear differences were found in this respect between days of abstinence for social reasons and days without such social pressures. In the course of the year, alcohol consumption reaches a maximum in autumn and a minimum in spring. The uniform, repetitive drinking rituals are suspected to have become habitual in the course of several years until they are finally unaffected by environment. This leads to a convergence of addiction forms, but the duration of the daily abstinence period still permits differentiation between gamma and delta addicts even when addiction has reached an advanced stage.     

The Burden of Proof and Its Role in Argumentation

The notion of “the burden of proof” plays an important role in real-world argumentation contexts, in particular in law. It has also been given a central role in normative accounts of argumentation, and has been used to explain a range of classic argumentation fallacies. We argue that in law the goal is to make practical decisions whereas in critical discussion the goal is frequently simply to increase or decrease degree of belief in a proposition. In the latter case, it is not necessarily important whether that degree of belief exceeds a particular threshold (e.g., ‘reasonable doubt’). We explore the consequences of this distinction for the role that the “burden of proof” has played in argumentation and in theories of fallacy.     

Now I see it but you don't: 14-month-olds can represent another person's visual perspective

Twelve- and 14-month-old infants' ability to represent another person's visual perspective (Level-1 visual perspective taking) was studied in a looking-time paradigm. Fourteen-month-olds looked longer at a person reaching for and grasping a new object when the old goal-object was visible than when it was invisible to the person (but visible to the infant). These findings are consistent with the interpretation that infants 'rationalized' the person's reach for a new object when the old goal-object was out of sight. Twelve-month-olds did not distinguish between test conditions. The present findings are consistent with recent research on infants' developing understanding of seeing.     

Semantic priming by irrelevant speech

To-be-ignored, task-irrelevant speech disrupts serial recall performance relative to a quiet control condition. In most studies, the content of the auditory distractors had no effect on their disruptive potential, one’s own name being one of the few exceptions. There are two possible explanations of this pattern: (1) Semantic features of the irrelevant speech are usually not processed, except for highly relevant auditory distractors, or (2) semantic processing of the irrelevant speech always occurs, but usually does not affect serial recall performance. To test these explanations, we presented to-be-ignored auditory distractor words drawn from different categories while participants memorized visual targets for serial recall. Afterwards, participants were invited to what they believed to be an unrelated norming study, in which they were required to spontaneously produce words from the categories from which the auditory distractor words were drawn. Previously ignored words were produced with a higher probability than words from a parallel, nonpresented set, demonstrating that features of to-be-ignored, task-irrelevant speech that do not interfere with immediate serial recall performance are nevertheless processed semantically and may have substantial effects on subsequent behavior.