Gender differences in personality: Biological and/or psychological?

The results of three empirical studies are reported in which the hypothesis is tested that differences in personality variables between the morphophenotype sexes can be explained by psychological sex-role orientation variables. Furthermore, it was expected that normative sex-role orientations (measured with the SRO-S and the AWS-S Scales) and gender-related self-concepts (femininity, masculinity, and androgyny measured with a modified BSRI) explain more variance in personality variables than morphophenotype sex. Besides these sex-role orientation variables, test and questionnaire data on verbal fluency, spatial reasoning, self-concept, anxiety, and aggressiveness were obtained in Study I from 50 young adults and their same-sex parents; in Study II, data on verbal fluency, spatial reasoning, self-concept, anxiety, and neuroticism were obtained from 120 university students; and in Study III, data on anxiety, locus of control, and Machiavellianism were obtained from 226 university students. The results confirm both hypotheses for the two aspects of intelligence studied, domain-specific self-concepts, different aspects of anxiety and aggressiveness, neuroticism, powerful others' externality in locus of control, and Machiavellianism. For all these personality variables the effect sizes of the psychological gender variables were larger than those of morphophenotype sex and reached medium to large values.     

Subgroup analysis of sex difference on the Vandenberg-Kuse mental rotation test

A large sex difference has been elicited on the Vandenberg-Kuse mental rotation test. Prior research emphasizes the biological root of this sex difference. In recent experiments we confirmed this viewpoint. A large sample was administered the test, and the distributions of scores for men and women (N = 138; 68 men and 70 women: ages 19 to 23 years). The mean scores were used as cut-off points to group the men and the women in different subgroups (Low/Women, High/Women, Low/Men, High/Men). There were large differences among all subgroups, reinforcing Kimura's testosterone hypothesis for sex differences in spatial ability.     

Multifractal formalisms of human behavior

With the mounting realization that variability is an inevitable part of human behavior comes the need to integrate this phenomenon in concomitant models and theories of motor control. Among other things, this has resulted in a debate throughout the last decades about the origin of variability in behavior, the outcome of which has important implications for motor control theories. To date, a monofractal formalism of variability has been used as the basis for arguing for component- versus interaction-oriented theories of motor control. However, monofractal formalism alone cannot decide between the opposing sides of the debate. The present theoretical overview introduces multifractal formalisms as a necessary extension of the conventional monofractal formalism. In multifractal formalisms, the scale invariance of behavior is numerically defined as a spectrum of scaling exponents, rather than a single average exponent as in the monofractal formalism. Several methods to estimate the multifractal spectrum of scaling exponents – all within two multifractal formalisms called large deviation and Legendre formalism – are introduced and briefly discussed. Furthermore, the multifractal analyses within these two formalisms are applied to several performance tasks to illustrate how explanations of motor control vary with the methods used. The main section of the theoretical overview discusses the implications of multifractal extensions of the component- and interaction-oriented models for existing theories of motor control.     

Frequent Versus Non-frequent Prompts and Task Performance in Persons with Severe Intellectual Disability

Abstract

This study extended the evaluation of frequent vs non-frequent prompts to support task performance with people with severe intellectual disability. Three participants were involved in the study. The data indicated that the frequent prompts strategy promoted higher levels of on-task behaviour and correct responding for 2 participants and on-task behaviour for 1 participant. The relation of these data with previous findings and their implications for daily occupation programmes for persons with severe developmental disabilities are discussed     

Lehrbuch der experimentellen Psychologie. 2. und 3. umgearb

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Our minds and their bodies

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Our minds and their bodies

     

Confirmation of the three-factor model of problematic internet use on off-line adolescent and adult samples

As the Internet became widely used, problems associated with its excessive use became increasingly apparent. Although for the assessment of these problems several models and related questionnaires have been elaborated, there has been little effort made to confirm them. The aim of the present study was to test the three-factor model of the previously created Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ) by data collection methods formerly not applied (off-line group and face-to-face settings), on the one hand, and by testing on different age groups (adolescent and adult representative samples), on the other hand. Data were collected from 438 high-school students (44.5 percent boys; mean age: 16.0 years; standard deviation=0.7 years) and also from 963 adults (49.9 percent males; mean age: 33.6 years; standard deviation=11.8 years). We applied confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the measurement model of problematic Internet use. The results of the analyses carried out inevitably support the original three-factor model over the possible one-factor solution. Using latent profile analysis, we identified 11 percent of adults and 18 percent of adolescent users characterized by problematic use. Based on exploratory factor analysis, we also suggest a short form of the PIUQ consisting of nine items. Both the original 18-item version of PIUQ and its short 9-item form have satisfactory reliability and validity characteristics, and thus, they are suitable for the assessment of problematic Internet use in future studies.     

Control of stimulus-response translation in dual-task performance

In contradiction to stimulus-response- (S-R-) translation bottleneck models of dual-task control, stimulus processing in a primary task is affected by its compatibility with the response in a secondary, later performed task (Hommel, 1998a)- an indication of parallel S-R translation. Here we show that this backward-compatibility effect is independent of working-memory load, whether this is induced by an extra memory task (Experiment 1) or by increasing the number of S-R alternatives in the primary task (Experiment 2). However, backward effects occur even when the secondary task is no longer carried out (Experiment 3) and they are strongly affected by the inconsistency of previously used S-R mappings (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that S-R translation is (or can be) capacity-independent and automatic even under multiple-task conditions, and that it is mediated by direct S-R associations that emerge after only little practice.     

Multisensory integration and age-dependent sensitivity to body representation modification induced by the rubber hand illusion

The aim of the present study was to compare junior and senior healthy participants for their multimodal integration capability. The instrument used for the investigation was the rubber hand illusion (RHI) where synchronous and asynchronous multimodal stimulation were applied. The study focused on assessing the rate of integration for visuo-tactile and visuo-proprioceptive stimuli. Methods: From a large sample of right-handed volunteers, 50 senior employees (containing younger and middle age adults) and 51 senior retired (senior adults) participants were recruited. Results: The between-subject analyses revealed that individuals both the junior and the senior participants responded to induction of RHI with vivid ownership and disownership experiences and a higher mislocalization error in the synchronous condition. However, the between-group analysis showed that participants in the senior group reported less vivid ownership and less vivid total RHI experiences scores compared to members of the junior group, but no mislocalization error differences were found between the groups. Conclusion: The results indicated that when visuo-tactile stimuli synchronously presented, the gain in multisensory integration decreased in seniors group. In contrast, in the case of visuo-proprioceptive synchronous presentation, the efficiency of multisensory integration remained unchanged across the lifespan.