The effect of articulatory suppression and manual tapping on serial recall

Concurrent tasks, such as articulatory suppression and manual tapping, are used to understand the mechanisms underlying short-term memory by overloading domain-specific resources. The present study addresses the debate regarding the theoretical frameworks accounting for interference in serial recall by comparing the effects of both the modality of concurrent tasks (verbal vs. spatial) as well as the state of the tasks (steady vs. changing) in both verbal and spatial recall. The findings indicate that the verbal changing-state concurrent task significantly impaired digit recall, whereas the spatial changing-state concurrent task significantly impaired block recall. The theoretical implications are discussed in the context of a multimodal working memory model with domain-specific resources and a unitary approach to short-term memory.     

Relevant dimensions of cyberbullying — Results from two experimental studies

Cyberbullying is a prevalent problem of adolescents. However, several conceptual and measurement questions, regarding its defining characteristics and relevant dimensions in comparison to conventional bullying, remain unanswered. To this end we conducted two studies with experimental methods. Study I shows that power imbalance in terms of perceived popularity is relevant for the affective, cognitive, and behavioral experience of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying by a popular bully is more distressing than cyberbullying by an unpopular bully. Study II shows that factors unique to cyberbullying are also relevant for the experience of cyberbullying, namely the media and the type of cyberbullying. For example, different types of cyberbullying are related to different patterns of relevant coping strategies. Therefore, cyberbullying seems both a unique phenomenon and closely related to conventional bullying.     

Can readers ignore implausibility? Evidence for nonstrategic monitoring of event-based plausibility in language comprehension

We present evidence for a nonstrategic monitoring of event-based plausibility during language comprehension by showing that readers cannot ignore the implausibility of information even if it is detrimental to the task at hand. In two experiments using a Stroop-like paradigm, participants were required to provide positive and negative responses independent of plausibility in an orthographical task (Experiment 1) or a nonlinguistic color judgment task (Experiment 2) to target words that were either plausible or implausible in their context. We expected a nonstrategic assessment of plausibility to interfere with positive responses to implausible words. ANOVAs and linear mixed models analyses of the response latencies revealed a significant interaction of plausibility and required response that supported this prediction in both experiments, despite the use of two very different tasks. Moreover, it could be shown that the effect was not driven by the differential predictability of plausible and implausible words. These results suggest that plausibility monitoring is an inherent component of information processing.     

Boosting One's Social Identity: Effects of Social Exclusion on Ethnocentrism

The present research examined the effects of social exclusion on ethnocentrism. It was reasoned that expressions of ethnocentrism boost one's social identity, which can serve as a buffer to the thwarted need to belong. In fact, Study 1 revealed that social exclusion, relative to a neutral control condition, increased participant's expressions of ethnocentrism. A second study replicated this finding and showed that social exclusion experiences also increase ethnocentrism relative to a social acceptance and a negative, non-rejection condition. These findings suggest that the effects of social exclusion on ethnocentrism are specific to the thwarted need to belong.     

Failing to Establish Evaluative Conditioning Effects for Indirect Intergroup Contact on Facebook

On Facebook, connections between users are published within “friends” lists. Therefore, ties between in- and outgroup members may be easily observed. We simulated this novel form of indirect intergroup contact through an evaluative conditioning (EC) procedure and tested if intergroup attitudes may be influenced positively. To be specific, we presented outgroup members as conditioned stimuli (CSs) and mutual friendship as positively valenced unconditioned stimulus (US). To test our hypotheses, we carried out eight studies measuring explicit and implicit attitudes as well as prosocial intentions toward a target outgroup. However, results demonstrate consistently that the EC procedure did not improve attitudes.     

What moderates implicit—explicit consistency?

Implicit and explicit indicators of attitudes or personality traits are positively, and variably, related. This review places the question of implicit ‐ explicit consistency into the tradition of attitude/trait ‐ behaviour consistency (e.g., Wicker, 1969). Drawing on dual-process models, such as the recent distinction between associative and propositional representations (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), we identify a working model of implicit ‐ explicit consistency that organises the empirical evidence on implicit ‐ explicit moderation into five factors: translation between implicit and explicit representations (e.g., representational strength, awareness), additional information integration for explicit representations (e.g., need for cognition), properties of explicit assessment (e.g., social desirability concerns), properties of implicit assessment (e.g., situational malleability), and research design factors (e.g., sampling bias, measurement correspondence).     

Working memory as internal attention: Toward an integrative account of internal and external selection processes

Working memory (WM) and attention have been studied as separate cognitive constructs, although it has long been acknowledged that attention plays an important role in controlling the activation, maintenance, and manipulation of representations in WM. WM has, conversely, been thought of as a means of maintaining representations to voluntarily guide perceptual selective attention. It has more recently been observed, however, that the contents of WM can capture visual attention, even when such internally maintained representations are irrelevant, and often disruptive, to the immediate external task. Thus, the precise relationship between WM and attention remains unclear, but it appears that they may bidirectionally impact one another, whether or not internal representations are consistent with the external perceptual goals. This reciprocal relationship seems, further, to be constrained by limited cognitive resources to handle demands in either maintenance or selection. We propose here that the close relationship between WM and attention may be best described as a give-and-take interdependence between attention directed toward either actively maintained internal representations (traditionally considered WM) or external perceptual stimuli (traditionally considered selective attention), underpinned by their shared reliance on a common cognitive resource. Put simply, we argue that WM and attention should no longer be considered as separate systems or concepts, but as competing and influencing one another because they rely on the same limited resource. This framework can offer an explanation for the capture of visual attention by irrelevant WM contents, as well as a straightforward account of the underspecified relationship between WM and attention.     

Remarks on Violence and Intersubjectivity

The article connects a sociological perspective on violence to the problem of intersubjectivity. After an overview of sociological and cultural accounts of violence, we turn to a fundamental problem caused by the experience of violence. In dialogue with Frances Chaput Wakslers book on The New Orleans Sniper (2010) we discuss a case in which the problem of intersubjectivity figures prominently. The erratic nature of violent acts committed by an unseen sniper is experienced as existential crisis in which the question of subjectivity loses its certainty for the social actors involved. As a consequence the problem of intersubjectivity but also questions of framing past events are opened up for sociological research.     

Self-Compassion in Depression: Associations With Depressive Symptoms,Rumination, and Avoidance in Depressed Outpatients

Self-compassion involves being kind to oneself when challenged with personal weaknesses or hardship and has been claimed to be associated with resilience in various areas. So far, there are only a handful of studies that investigate self-compassion and its relation to clinical depression. Therefore, the principal goals of the present study were (a) to compare self-compassion in clinically depressed patients and never-depressed subjects, (b) to investigate self-compassion and its relation to cognitive-behavioral avoidance and rumination in depressed outpatients, and (c) to investigate rumination and avoidance as mediators of the relationship between self-compassion and depressive symptoms. One hundred and forty-two depressed outpatients and 120 never-depressed individuals from a community sample completed a self-report measure of self-compassion along with other measures. Results indicate that depressed patients showed lower levels of self-compassion than never-depressed individuals, even when controlled for depressive symptoms. In depressed outpatients, self-compassion was negatively related to depressive symptoms, symptom-focused rumination, as well as cognitive and behavioral avoidance. Additionally, symptom-focused rumination and cognitive and behavioral avoidance mediated the relationship between self-compassion and depressive symptoms. These findings extend previous research on self-compassion, its relation to depression, as well as processes mediating this relationship, and highlight the importance of self-compassion in clinically depressed patients. Since depressed patients seem to have difficulties adopting a self-compassionate attitude, psychotherapists are well advised to explore and address how depressed patients treat themselves.     

Symptomattributionsstile bei Hypochondrie

Background

Somatic symptom attributions are of central importance in cognitive-behavioral models of the development, maintenance and treatment of hypochondriasis. However, the mode of symptom attribution has rarely been systematically investigated in these patients. Is a somatic mode of symptom attribution indeed specific for hypochondriasis and furthermore, how strongly is it associated with “doctor shopping”, a typical behavioral consequence of hypochondriasis?

Patients and methods

In this study 88 hypochondriacal, 52 depressive and 52 healthy persons were asked to complete the symptom interpretations questionnaire and several standardized symptom questionnaires. They also took part in two structured clinical interviews for the diagnosis of hypochondriasis and various other psychological disorders according to DSM-IV.

Results

Somatic symptom attributions were associated specifically with hypochondriasis, while normalizing attributions characterized persons with low health anxiety. When examined as predictors in multiple regression models, in particular somatic attributions and the total of somatoform complaints predicted the intensity of health anxiety (R ²?=?0.69) and “doctor shopping” (R ²?=?0.48).

Conclusion

In the cognitive-behavioral treatment of hypochondriasis, patients should be encouraged to test normalizing explanations as alternatives to habitual somatic attributions of somatic disturbances.