Preference,Expectations, and Attributional Bias: Two Field Studies1

Two quasi-experiments were conducted to test the relationship among a perceiver's preference, expectations, and causal attributions for an event, when the outcome of the event ran for and counter to expectation and preference. Following the 1976 Superbowl, fans of Dallas and Pittsburgh and fans with no preference were asked to attribute causality for a series of game events, counterbalanced for (un)favorability for each team. Following the 1976 Presidential election, fans of Carter and Ford were asked to attribute causality for the election outcome and estimate its repeatability and mutability. Both studies revealed that fans exhibit a biased attributional pattern, offering more credit to their own side for their successes than to the opponents for their successes. Furthermore, fans see their side's successes as replicable and their side's failures as nonreplicable. The implications of the data patterns for real world manifestations of attributional bias are discussed.     

Some Concomitants of Underachievement at the Elementary School Level

This study compared a group of fourth-grade underachieves with a control group in the areas of peer relationships and measured personality variables. The underachievers were identified by predicting their grade-point average (GPA) from their WISC Verbal Scale IQ score by use of a prediction equation. If the predicted GPA was .8 standard error of estimate above their obtained GPA, the student was identified as an underachiever. This resulted in the identification of 84 male and 34 female underachievers. The results of the investigation indicated that regardless of sex, underachievers are selected less frequently by their peers and have a lower level of personality adjustment.     

Depression and Anxiety: Integrating the Tripartite and Cognitive Content-Specificity Assessment Models

The cognitive content-specificity hypothesis proposes that depression and anxiety can be discriminated on the basis of unique cognitive profiles. Alternatively, the Tripartite model suggests that, although depression and anxiety share a general distress factor, anhedonia is a characteristic of depression with anxious arousal a characteristic of anxiety. Past research devoted to integrating these two models has been limited in a number of ways. To remedy these limitations, this study attempted to assess the complete Tripartite model and used a multidimensional cognitive assessment tool to handle the heterogeneity of anxious cognitive content. Results on data collected from 411 clients seeking services at a university counseling center suggested that a one-to-one mapping between Tripartite dimensions and cognitive content was possible. Further, variables from each model simultaneously explained unique variance in depression and anxiety ratings.     

Nietzsche and l’élan technique: Technics,life, and the production of time

Abstract In this paper we examine Nietzsche’s relation to the life sciences of his time and to Darwinism in particular, arguing that his account of the will to power in terms of technics eschews three metaphysical prejudices, hylemorphism, utilitarianism, and teleological thinking. Telescoping some of Nietzsche’s pronouncements on the will to power with a Bergsonian lens, our reading of the will to power, as an operation productive of time, the future or life, offers an alternative to Heidegger’s. Rather than being reducible to a technics of domination or mastery, the will to power, we argue, is best interpreted as a technics of material forces that recasts all things past and future, near and far, moment by moment.     

Pre-attentive auditory processing of lexicality

The effects of lexicality on auditory change detection based on auditory sensory memory representations were investigated by presenting oddball sequences of repeatedly presented stimuli, while participants ignored the auditory stimuli. In a cross-linguistic study of Hungarian and German participants, stimulus sequences were composed of words that were language-familiar, lexical, meaningful in Hungarian but language-unfamiliar, not lexical, meaningless in German, and words with the opposite characteristics. The roles of frequently presented stimuli (Standards) and infrequently presented one (Deviants) were fully crossed. Language-familiar and language-unfamiliar Deviants elicited the Mismatch Negativity component of the event-related brain potential. We found differences in processes of change detection depending on whether the Standard was language-familiar, or not. Whereas, the lexicality of the Deviant had no effect on the processes of change detection. Also, language-familiar Standards processed differently than language-unfamiliar ones. We suggest that pre-attentive (default) tuning to meaningful words sets up language-specific preparatory processes that affect change detection in speech sequences.     

Pharmacotherapy of seasonal affective disorder

Seasonal affective disorder is a common variant of recurrent major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. Treatment with bright artificial light has been found to be effective in this condition. However, for patients who do not respond to light therapy or those who lack compliance, conventional drug treatment with antidepressants also has been proposed. Substances with selective serotonergic or noradrenergic mechanisms should be preferred over older antidepressants. Although there are a number of open and controlled studies evaluating different compounds, these studies were often limited by relatively small sample sizes. Furthermore, there are no studies specifically addressing bipolar seasonal depression. This article will review the published literature on pharmacotherapy of seasonal affective disorder.     

Phenomenology and its Futures

Born in 1900–1901 with the publication of Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, phenomenology, as a critical method of reflection on consciousness and its cognitive achievements against its naturalisation in the natural sciences, has undergone many changes and developments. Critiques of both its methods and tasks have emerged, plus it has served as an inspiration for numerous thinkers, including Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Nancy, Michel Henry, Emmanuel Levinas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida, in their attempts to address the question of value, the meaning of being, existence, the lived body, the Other, life, art, history and language in original and fresh ways. The current paper reflects upon the question of what the fate of phenomenology in the twenty-first century could be by consider- ing some of the recent work presented at the first conference of the South African Centre for Phenomenology held at the University of Johannesburg earlier this year.     

The heart beat does not make us tick: The impacts of heart rate and arousal on time perception

According to popular models of human time perception, variations in prospective timing are caused by two factors: the pulse rate of an internal pacemaker and the amount of attention directed to the passage of time. The results concerning the effect of attention on subjective timing have been conclusive, but the mechanisms that drive the pacemaker are still far from being understood. In two experiments, we examined the impact of two factors that in the existing literature on human time perception have been argued to affect such a pacemaker: arousal and heart rate. Experienced arousal and heart rate were varied independently by means of specific physical exercises: (a) A muscle exercise increased arousal and heart rate; (b) a breath-holding exercise increased arousal but decreased heart rate; and (c) in the control condition, arousal and heart rate were held constant. The results indicate that increased subjective arousal leads to higher time estimates, whereas heart rate itself has no relevant impact on time perception. The results are discussed with respect to the underlying mechanisms of prospective time perception.     

Schmerzmanagement bei fortgeschrittener Demenz

Typischerweise liegen bei geriatrischen Patienten mehrere Erkrankungen gleichzeitig vor, die sich wechselseitig in ihrem Verlauf, aber auch in ihrer symptomatischen Auswirkung, beeinflussen. Dies gilt besonders für Zusammentreffen chronischer Schmerzen mit einer Demenz.