Inhibition and decay of motor and nonmotor priming

Motor responses can be facilitated by congruent visual stimuli and prolonged by incongruent visual stimuli that are made invisible by masking (direct motor priming). Recent studies on direct motor priming showed a reversal of these priming effects when a three-stimulus paradigm was used in which a prime was followed by a mask and a target stimulus was presented after a delay. A similar three-stimulus paradigm on nonmotor priming, however, showed no reversal of priming effects when the mask was used as a cue for processing of the following target stimulus (cue priming). Experiment 1 showed that the time interval between mask and target is crucial for the reversal of priming. Therefore, the time interval between mask and target was varied in three experiments to see whether cue priming is also subject to inhibition at a certain time interval. Cues indicated (1) the stimulus modality of the target stimulus, (2) the task to be performed on a multidimensional auditory stimulus, or (3) part of the motor response. Whereas direct motor priming showed the reversal of priming about 100 msec after mask presentation, cue priming effects simply decayed during the 300 msec after mask presentation. These findings provide boundary conditions for accounts of inverse priming effects.     

Die therapeutische Allianz

Zusammenfassung  Im Teil 2 wird zunächst auf die kontroverse Auffassung eingegangen, dass Allianzbrüche unvermeidbar und für den Therapieerfolg nützlich sind. Dann wird der Versuch unternommen, eine Abgrenzung zu anderen Konstrukten vorzunehmen, die entweder als Moderatoren oder als prinzipiell ähnliche Zugänge zu sozialen Interaktionen aufzufassen sind. So wird z. B. in der Sozialpsychologie relativ häufig eine sehr ähnliche Thematik unter anderen Sichtweisen behandelt. Darüber hinaus gibt es auch noch weitere erwähnenswerte Zugänge, die empirische Untersuchungen einer Verbindung mit therapeutischer Allianz lohnenswert erscheinen lassen. Es wird die Schlussfolgerung gezogen, dass therapeutische Allianz, vorzugsweise als Begleitvariable zu interpretieren, ein mehrdimensionales Konstrukt ist, das unterschiedliche Verlaufsmuster aufweist, und dessen funktionale Validität weiter erforscht werden sollte.

Die „angenehmste Entfernung“ zur Betrachtung sozialer Objekte

Zusammenfassung 3 Experimente wurden durchgeführt, in denen die Versuchspersonen (39 Studenten) aufgefordert wurden, die ihnen am angenehmsten erscheinende Entfernung zu verschiedenen Reizobjekten zu wählen. Es zeigte sich, daß die Versuchspersonen näher an Personen als an Fotografien von Personen oder Gegenständen herangingen. Männliche Versuchspersonen gingen näher an weibliche als an männliche Reizpersonen heran. Es bestand außerdem die Tendenz einer größeren Annäherung an Personen, wenn diese die Versuchsperson anblickten. Die angenehmste Entfernung war individuell verschieden und über mehrere Wochen stabil. Sie war außerdem vom räumlichen Bezugssystem abhängig; in diesem Zusammenhang konnte die Ausbildung von Einstellungen gezeigt werden. Die Ergebnisse wurden im Hinblick auf ein Gleichgewichtsmodell sozialer Kräfte von Argyle u. Dean diskutiert.

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The most comfortable distance for observing social objects

Summary Three experiments were conducted in which subjects (39 students) were to choose the distance from various stimulus objects which appeared most comfortable to them. It was shown that subjects approached actual persons more closely than they did photographs of persons or objects. Male subjects approached female stimulus objects more closely than they did males. There was a tendency of greater approach if the stimulus persons gazed at the subjects. The most comfortable distance was specific for the individual and remained stable over a period of several weeks. It also depended upon the spatial frame of reference; in this connection the development of sets could be shown. The results were discussed in relation to a model for the equilibrium of social forces from Argyle and Dean.

     

Family Transitions and Developmental Processes in Panic-Disordered Patients

Although there is increasing evidence for a familial role in panic disorder, little research exists on the family interaction patterns and relational stressors that may contribute to this disorder. Using DSM-III-R criteria, 52 families were classified into Panic Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Nonclinical Control groups. A semi-structured interview and self-report measures were then used to examine family processes. MANOVA results were highly significant, suggesting that, compared to depressed and nonclinical control families, panic-disordered families had unresolved life-cycle issues, were enmeshed, used triangulation, and failed to resolve conflicts. These findings suggest that dysfunctional family processes may be involved in the expression and maintenance of panic disorder.     

Hermeneutische und hypothetisch-deduktive Methode

Journal for General Philosophy of Science - Der Wissenschaftsbegriff kann nicht einseitig auf den Begriff von „science“ eingeengt werden. Eine strenge Scheidung in...     

Time course of free-choice priming effects explained by a simple accumulator model

Unconscious visual stimuli can be processed by human observers and modulate their behavior. This has been shown for masked prime stimuli that influence motor responses to subsequent target stimuli. Beyond this, masked stimuli can also affect participants' behavior when they are free to choose one of two response alternatives. This finding demonstrates that an apparently free-choice between alternative behaviors can be subject to influences that are outside of awareness. We report three experiments which exhibit that the temporal dynamic of free-choice priming effects corresponds to that of forced-choice priming effects. Forced-choice priming effects were relatively robust against variations of prime stimuli but sensitive to physical features of target stimuli. Free-choice priming effects, in contrast, depended largely on the stimulus-response compatibility of the prime. A simple accumulator model which accounts for forced-choice response priming can also explain free-choice priming effects by the assumption that unconscious stimuli can initiate motor responses when participants are engaged in a speeded choice-reaction time task. According to our analyses free-choice priming results from a response selection mechanism which integrates conscious and unconscious information from external, stimulus driven sources and also from internal sources.     

Posttraumatic growth: why do people grow from their trauma?

In two experimental studies we found that participants who recalled a highly traumatic autobiographical event (trauma recall) compared with a lesser traumatic event (stress recall) reported having increasingly grown (posttraumatic growth, PTG). Moreover, participants who recalled a traumatic (vs. stressful) event perceived more death-related thoughts (Study 1) and reported coping with this event in a more emotion-focused and in a less problem-focused way (Study 2). Mediation analyzes revealed that the effect of trauma versus stress recall on PTG was mediated by emphasizing the positive, a subscale of emotion-focused coping. These results imply that growth resulting from traumatic events can be traced back to an illusion. No evidence was found that real PTG took place or that the effects shown resulted from death-related thoughts (terror management theory).     

Rights, Liability, and the Moral Equality of Combatants

According to the dominant position in the just war tradition from Augustine to Anscombe and beyond, there is no ??moral equality of combatants.?? That is, on the traditional view the combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war??but not vice versa (barring certain qualifications). I shall argue here, however, that in the large number of wars (and in practically all modern wars) where the combatants on the justified side violate the rights of innocent people (??collateral damage??), these combatants are in fact liable to attack by the combatants on the unjustified side. I will support this view with a rights-based account of liability to attack and then defend it against a number of objections raised in particular by Jeff McMahan. The result is that the thesis of the moral equality of combatants holds good for a large range of armed conflicts while the opposing thesis is of very limited practical relevance.     

Conceptual priming for realistic auditory scenes and for auditory words

Two experiments were conducted using both behavioral and Event-Related brain Potentials methods to examine conceptual priming effects for realistic auditory scenes and for auditory words. Prime and target sounds were presented in four stimulus combinations: Sound–Sound, Word–Sound, Sound–Word and Word–Word. Within each combination, targets were conceptually related to the prime, unrelated or ambiguous. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to judge whether the primes and targets fit together (explicit task) and in Experiment 2 they had to decide whether the target was typical or ambiguous (implicit task). In both experiments and in the four stimulus combinations, reaction times and/or error rates were longer/higher and the N400 component was larger to ambiguous targets than to conceptually related targets, thereby pointing to a common conceptual system for processing auditory scenes and linguistic stimuli in both explicit and implicit tasks. However, fine-grained analyses also revealed some differences between experiments and conditions in scalp topography and duration of the priming effects possibly reflecting differences in the integration of perceptual and cognitive attributes of linguistic and nonlinguistic sounds. These results have clear implications for the building-up of virtual environments that need to convey meaning without words.     

Hand selection for object grasping is influenced by recent motor history

Action selection processes such as those that underlie decisions about which hand to use for upcoming actions are fundamental to adaptive motor behavior. Previous research has shown that people grasp objects in ways that reflect anticipated task demands, as well as recent movement experience. However, very few studies have addressed the possible influence of recent motor history on hand selection. In the present study, participants grasped and placed objects using either their left or right hand. The results showed shorter response times to initiate successive actions when hand was repeated, even when those actions involved distinct grasp postures and object placement movements to distinct locations. Conversely, no such planning advantage was observed for repeated grasps for successive actions made with opposite hands. The findings are consistent with the idea that choices about which hand to use in the present are influenced by which hand was used in the recent past. When the same hand can be used for successive actions, planning is made more efficient, presumably because the motor parameters that specify which hand to use can be recalled from recent memory rather than formulated anew. The findings indicate that hand selection is sensitive to recent movement experience and provide novel support for computational efficiency accounts of motor history effects.