Correction to: A psychophysiological investigation of mourning: There are two sides to the story

Motivation and Emotion - Mourning constitutes an important human emotion, which might cause—among other things—major depressive symptoms when lasting for too long. To date, no study...     

Effects of post-encoding wakeful rest and study time on long-term memory performance

Recent work shows that post-encoding wakeful rest, in contrast to a cognitive task delay period, supports memory performance. The present study aimed at investigating whether study time modulates the impact of post-encoding rest on delayed memory performance. Healthy young adults were allocated to one of two “study time” groups (fixed-paced vs. self-paced). Participants encoded two word lists. After immediate recall of one word list, participants wakefully rested for 8?min, after the other, they performed a visual problem solving task. A delayed recall took place at the end of the experimental session (Experiment 1) and again after 7 days (Experiment 1?+?2). We found that participants in the self-paced group outperformed those in the fixed-paced group. In Experiment 1, participants showed higher memory performances after 7 days in the resting condition independent of study time. No significant differences between post-encoding (rest vs. problem solving) and study time conditions were found in Experiment 2. Combined analyses of both experiments revealed that an additional recall (Experiment 1) supported memory retention in both post-encoding conditions. Our findings suggest that resting is beneficial over the long term, but only when the encoded information is repeatedly retrieved at the end of a learning session.     

Validation of a German version of the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS28) and motivation analysis in competitive mountain runners

This study validated a German version of the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS28) and investigated the sex-specific and age-related differences in motivation of competitive mountain runners. Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the SMS28 was based on translation and back-translation methodology. Acceptable validity of the German version of the SMS28 was indicated by the high correlations (.81 to .98) of scores on the seven subscales for the English and German versions completed by 15 subjects. Motivation analysis was performed with 127 competitive male and female mountain runners. The seven subscales of the German version showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's coefficient alphas .70 to .85). Findings on motivation of competitive mountain runners were a decline across age groups of Intrinsic motivation toward accomplishment for both sexes and an age-related decline of External regulation only for females. These motivational changes might well be associated with the observed diminishing numbers of older participants in mountain running competitions.     

Constitutional hypermobility as a problem in the rehabilitation of "vertebragenous" pain syndromes

Load-dependent pain in the locomotion system in generally a sign of muscular incoordinations. The type of muscle disturbance is used as an indicant for purposeful physiotherapy. Patients with "constitutional hypermobility" belong to the physiotherapeutic problem patients. Such patients show signs of minimal brain dysfunction like those described by Janda for adults. It is suspected that constitutional hypermobility is only a single expression of a complex motor control disturbance in which muscular hypotonia plays an important role. This always involves considerable problems in connection with rehabilitation.     

Eyes as windows to the soul: Gazing behavior is related to personality

Gazing is a fundamental human behavior with important cognitive, affective, motivational, and social underpinnings that is likely to have produced individual differences linking it to major personality traits. If traits play a substantial role in gazing, they should predict eye movement parameters above and beyond stimuli without meaningful and topical information. The current eye-tracking study (N = 242) demonstrated with linear mixed models that personality (Big Five, Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System) predicts number of fixations, mean fixation duration, and dwelling time in two different abstract animations. Specifically, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and the Behavioral Activation System were related to eye movement parameters. Prospective research in studying links between dispositions and gazing is discussed.     

A psychophysiological investigation of mourning: There are two sides to the story

Motivation and Emotion - Mourning constitutes an important human emotion, which might cause—among other things—major depressive symptoms when lasting for too long. To date, no study...     

Effects of wakeful resting versus social media usage after learning on the retention of new memories

Communication and information sharing via social media platforms is a common and popular activity. The majority of existing studies indicate that social media usage has detrimental effects on learning and memory. However, it is an open question as to whether social media usage affects memory even after learning. To test this, healthy young adults learned and immediately recalled a vocabulary list. Subsequent to recall, participants either wakefully rested for 8 min or used social media for 8 min. A delayed recall test took place after the wakeful resting condition and the social media condition and again after 1 day. Our results showed that social media usage, compared with wakeful resting, had detrimental effects on memory performance over both retention intervals. We assume that social media usage interfered with memory consolidation of learned vocabularies and suggest that learners opt for wakeful resting over social media usage as a learning-break activity.     

Handwriting or Typewriting? The Influence of Pen- or Keyboard-Based Writing Training on Reading and Writing Performance in Preschool Children

Digital writing devices associated with the use of computers, tablet PCs, or mobile phones are increasingly replacing writing by hand. It is, however, controversially discussed how writing modes influence reading and writing performance in children at the start of literacy. On the one hand, the easiness of typing on digital devices may accelerate reading and writing in young children, who have less developed sensory-motor skills. On the other hand, the meaningful coupling between action and perception during handwriting, which establishes sensory-motor memory traces, could facilitate written language acquisition. In order to decide between these theoretical alternatives, for the present study, we developed an intense training program for preschool children attending the German kindergarten with 16 training sessions. Using closely matched letter learning games, eight letters of the German alphabet were trained either by handwriting with a pen on a sheet of paper or by typing on a computer keyboard. Letter recognition, naming, and writing performance as well as word reading and writing performance were assessed. Results did not indicate a superiority of typing training over handwriting training in any of these tasks. In contrast, handwriting training was superior to typing training in word writing, and, as a tendency, in word reading. The results of our study, therefore, support theories of action-perception coupling assuming a facilitatory influence of sensory-motor representations established during handwriting on reading and writing.