Dimensional complexity and power spectral measures of the EEG during functional versus predicative problem solving

Electroencephalograms were recorded in 22 men while solving tasks of visual-pattern completion and during mental relaxation. They were primed (by foregoing trials) to solve these tasks either in a predicative or functional mode of thinking. Predicative thinking required that in order to complete the pattern the subject had to get involved with the logic of the static structure of the pattern and therefore had to recognize the recurrence of certain features of the elements (e.g., shape, color, and size). Functional thinking required involvement in a dynamic reading of the logic of the pattern and therefore to search for operations and actions to be performed on the pattern elements (e.g., pushing, mirroring, and rotating). The EEG complexity during predicative thinking decreased in comparison to functional thinking and mental relaxation, with this reduction being most pronounced over the right parietal cortex. A reduction in dimensional complexity during functional thinking as compared to mental relaxation, which was concentrated over the left central cortex, although significant, was less clear. The reduced EEG complexity during predicative thought, dominant over the right hemisphere, could reflect increased competitive inhibition among respective cortical neuron assemblies in association with the visual analysis of static element features, converging upon those predicates relevant for the solution.     

Self as verb and the metaphor of dance: An explanation of the self discovery experience within a constructivist framework

The concept of self discovery within a constructivist framework is difficult to explain given the central assumption of constructivism that self is a created construct rather than an entity to be discovered. Two problems are identified as impediments to constructivist accounts of the self discovery experience: first, their failure to adequately account for the embodied experience of self, and second, the difficulties inherent in using self as a noun to express a process.
It is proposed that if self is considered as a verb, as the action of a body-subject, the verbal contortionism of referring to self as a process in a language that places self as an entity may be overcome. The notion of self as verb places the individual firmly in the role of active embodied participant in the experience of self. The metaphor of "self'" as "dance" is explored to emphasize the materiality of the human animal that is argued to be central to the experience of self discovery.     

“We want the world and we want it now”: Materialism,time perspectives and problem spending tendency of Chinese

Chinese consumers' spending has been expanding rapidly in the past decade, and along with it household and credit card debt. The present research collected evidence to triangulate the contention that materialism is positively related with Chinese's problem spending tendency (PST), and that present‐time‐perspective (PTP) and future‐time perspectives (FTP) interact systematically with materialism to affect PST. A survey of the general population in Macao, China (Study 1; N = 239) confirmed that materialism was positively correlated with PST. An interaction between materialism and PTP intensified the relationship, whereas an interaction with FTP weakened the relationship. Another survey with a sample of university students (Study 2; N = 223) again found positive relationships among PST, materialism, and PTP, as measured by temporal discount rate. But further exploration showed that PST was only related with temporal discounting among high materialists, but not among low materialists. Study 3 experimentally examined the causal effects of materialism and FTP on PST. When being primed of an orientation towards materialism (n = 33), the participants' planned consumption doubled that of the control group (n = 31). A FTP prime interacted with materialism prime and put a “damper” on participants' planned spending (n = 29), compared to their counterparts who were not primed of such a time perspective.     

On a Possible Use of the Root Nodules of Leguminous Plants for Research in Neurology and Psychiatry (Preliminary Report on a Free Porphyrin-Hemoglobin System)

The study was designed to examine the trait attribution process of American female college students to male stimulus targets differing in hair length and to explore the relationship between differences in preferences for hair length and differences in S characteristics of the perceiver. In a between Ss design, groups of females (N = 90) rated male stimulus targets of various hair lengths on a number of personalogical and physical dimensions. Short-haired male targets were perceived more favorably and as resembling more the male stereotype than long-haired male targets. Females' relative preference for hair length styles were correlated with their responses to a personality questionnaire, a sexual experience inventory, and a background information questionnaire. The profiles of females who preferred short-haired males could be described as conservative in orientation, while the profiles of females who preferred long-haired males could be described as liberal in orientation. An implication of this study is that impressions and preferences for another individual are a function not only of the characteristics of the person being observed but also to some extent a function of the characteristics of the observer.     

Toward Better Prevention: Constructions of Trust in the Sexual Relationships of Young Women

Research on HIV/AIDS interventions indicates that many heterosexual women implement the construct of trust when deciding if preventive measures are necessary. The personal construct model evaluated in this experiment proposes that young women's choice to resist changing from a trust to a nontrust position can be understood in terms of the relationship between their constructs and the hierarchical organization of their construct subsystems. Findings suggest that women with well-defined networks of implications on their nonpreferred pole of the trust/mistrust construct resist HIV-preventive messages that require them to mistrust their partner because the proposed change will involve successive use of subordinate constructs that are incompatible with each other.     

The simulation of emotion experience: On the emotional foundations of theory of mind

An argument is developed that supports a simulationist account about the foundations of infants' and young children's understanding that other people have mental states. This argument relies on evidence that infants come to the world with capacities to send and receive affective cues and to appreciate the emotional states of others – capacities well suited to a social environment initially made up of frequent and extended emotional interactions with their caregivers. The central premise of the argument is that the foundation of infants' understanding of other minds is built upon an early-developing capacity to share others' emotion experiences. The emotion experiences elicited in interactions between caregivers and infants enable the elaboration of this primitive understanding into a more fully developed understanding of psychological subjects. The evidence presented in support of these claims derives from a wide range of studies of the phenomena of emotional contagion, affective communication, and emotion regulation involving infants, young children, and adults.     

Media use and school achievement – boys at risk?

In work done at the German Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) various methods have been used to investigate how specific inappropriate media usage patterns affect academic performance in children and adolescents. The findings are paralleled by current international research indicating a negative relationship between these two variables. Based on a cross‐sectional survey of 5,529 fourth grade students and a longitudinal panel study with 1,157 primary schoolchildren, a key finding can be demonstrated: the more time students spend on consuming media and the more violent its contents are, the worse are their marks at school, even when controlling for vital factors such as family, educational, or immigrant background. In particular, boys who gender‐specifically are better equipped with electronic media devices, who partially have extensive media usage times and who strongly prefer violent media content, are at the risk of showing poor school performance. In fact, a decrease in academic performance of boys can be observed in German school statistics. By presenting first results of a school‐based intervention programme, a promising approach to the reduction of detrimental effects of electronic media use on school performance is introduced.     

Social support and psychosocial competence: Explaining the adaptation to college of ethnically diverse students

Examined relationships among social support, psychosocial competence, and adaptation to college in a sample of 357 African American, Asian American, Latino, and white college students. Social support and active coping were significant predictors of adaptation to college, whereas locus of control was not. However, there was an interaction between ethnicity and locus of control indicating that although internal African American, Latino, and white students had higher adaptation-to-college scores than external students, the opposite was true for Asian Americans. The relationships among social support, internality, and active coping were also explored. Satisfaction with social support and internality were positively related to active coping, but locus of control and social support were unrelated. Active coping and internality were significantly related to each other for all groups except for African Americans. Although most relationships were the same across groups, these findings call attention to the role of ethnicity as a moderator of college adjustment processes.     

Trusting the Media? TV News as a Source of Knowledge

Abstract

Why do we trust TV news? What reasons might support a recipient’s assessment of the trustworthiness of this kind of information? This paper presents a veritistic analysis of the epistemic practice of news production and communication. The topic is approached by discussing a detailed case study, namely the characteristics of the most popular German news programme, called the ‘Tagesschau’. It will be shown that a veritistic analysis can indeed provide a recipient with relevant reasons to consider when pondering on the trustworthiness of sources of information. Moreover, it will turn out that these reasons are part of what recipients might gather from media literacy.