Zeitschrift fur Psychologie mit Zeitschrift fur angewandte Psychologie最新文献

In a first study we confirm the general evidence concerning the influence of implicit knowledge structures on sentence and text comprehension. In addition the results suggest a differentiation in the availability of prior knowledge. The level of activation is dependent on the type of semantic relations between prior knowledge and the explicit sentence information. This result can be explained by a theoretical framework in which different levels of cognitive effort can be related to activation or production of such relations. The main point of our second experiment is to prove the influence of aging on the process of knowledge integration mentioned above. We compared the results of a subject group of young (25 years) with old adults (75 years) in a recognition task. The experimental data support a slowdown for primarily sensorical and motorical and nonlexical components for the higher age group but they do not confirm a deficit in the critical process of knowledge integration. Finally we discuss a differentiation of such integration procedures dependent on demand of memory capacities (activation vs. operations) and the advantage of such a classification on identification of specific cognitive deficits.

This study reports data on intellectual functioning in old and very old age from the Berlin Aging Study (N = 516; age range = 70-103 years; mean age = 85 years). A psychometric battery of 14 tests was used to assess five cognitive abilities: reasoning, memory, and perceptual speed from the broad fluid-mechanical as well as knowledge and fluency from the broad crystallized-pragmatic domains. Cognitive abilities had a negative linear relationship with age, with more pronounced age-based reductions in fluid-mechanical than crystallized-pragmatic abilities. At the same time, ability intercorrelations formed a highly positive manifold, and did not follow the fluid-crystallized distinction. Interindividual variability was of about equal magnitude across the entire age range studied. There was, however, no evidence for substantial sex differences. As to origins of individual differences, indicators of sensory and sensorimotor functioning were more powerful predictors of intellectual functioning than cultural-biographical variables, and the two sets of predictors were, consistent with theoretical expectations, differentially related to measures of fluid-mechanical (perceptual speed) and crystallized pragmatic (knowledge) functioning. Results, in general indicative of sizeable and general losses with age, are consistent with the view that aging-induced biological influences are a prominent source of individual differences in intellectual functioning in old and very old age. Longitudinal follow-ups are underway to examine the role of cohort effects, selective mortality, and interindividual differences in change trajectories.

This article focuses on two-wave change measurement and initial value dependence. Initially, some general methodological limitations associated with individual change measurement in a two assessment context are discussed. The method of "intra-individual and group-differential measurement of change" (Rueckert, 1989) is next evaluated. Use of a structural equation modeling approach is advocated in two-wave designs where the intention is to estimate the degree of interrelationship between growth or decline in a repeatedly assessed psychological construct and other variables. This approach is applied with the recently developed program RAMONA to the study of practice effects in a cognitive intervention study of plasticity in fluid intelligence of aged adults (Baltes, Dittmann-Kohli, & Kliegl, 1986).

An experiment using a simulated spaceflight scenario was applied to 32 adolescent subjects of both sexes in order to investigate human security and arousal regulation. In adolescence, these motivational systems play a key role in achieving two reorientations: the detachment from primary caregivers and the upcoming interest in strangers, which eventually establishes a new and mature form of attachment. Based on a control model proposed in an earlier article of this series, a parameter estimation was performed which allowed for a satisfactory simulation of the actual flight behavior of most subjects. A psychologically plausible interpretation of the parameters was possible. In particular, the results obtained indicate a gender specific differentiation in the development of both motivational systems during adolescence.

This paper deals with the development of empathy during the second year of life. Empathy is defined as understanding another person's emotional state by vicariously sharing this state. In contemporary discussion, empathy is not clearly distinguished from emotional contagion, in which the Subject is indistinctly incorporated into the other person's mood. Most authors must therefore stipulate additional cognitive mechanisms, such as perspective taking, or even a theory of mind, to supply the empathic observer with the insight that it is, and remains, another person's emotional state which he shares. Contrary to this notion, the present paper proposes that insight is mediated by the particular quality of the empathical response itself and that self-objectification is the only relevant precondition of empathy, since it allows drawing a clearcut distinction between the emotional domains of self and other. Since self-objectification is also responsible for recognizing oneself in a mirror, empathy should emerge simultaneously with self-recognition. This was tested in an investigation on 36 girls and boys aged 14 to 22 months. In two separate sessions the subjects underwent a "rouge test" for self-recognition and were confronted with a person in need, who demonstrated grief. Empathy was operationalized by prosocial interventions. The study replicates the results of a previous investigation (Bischof-Köhler, 1988, 1991) with a modified empathy-eliciting situation. In both experiments, only those Subjects who recognized themselves tried to help, whereas non-recognizers stayed indifferent.

Spatial ability is one of the primary mental abilities which has been subject of many empirical studies--especially in the factor analytical research. Analysing the mental processes when solving space tasks, e. g. by means of retrospective verbal reports, two different strategies can be distinguished. The first strategy (called "holistical" strategy) can be described as a mental rotation of the given stimulus, the second one (called "analytical" strategy) is characterised by nontransformal mental processes, e. g. pattern matching processes. In order to identify those different strategies, test items are required, which have different solution probabilities when being solved with different strategies. The "cube tasks" of the IST and IST-70 by Amthauer (1953, 1970) are of this type, as Putz-Osterloh (1977) has found in an experiment. The hypothesis of individual differences in solving space tasks was tested in two different samples. First the "cube tasks" of the IST-70 were administrated to 264 applicants for the pilot job. Data analyses using the mixed-Rasch-model (Rost, 1990) confirmed the hypothesis of an "analytical" and "holistical" strategy. In the second study 2558 pupils of the 7th grade were tested with the "cube tasks" of the IST. A latent class analysis of their response patterns revealed basically the "holistical" and "analytical" strategy and, in addition, four strategies which can be explained by motivational factors.

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of effort on timing and force of simple reactions. To do this, we performed an experiment, arranged like a video-game, in which these variables were measured under different time-pressure conditions. In accordance with our expectations reaction time was shorter and force amplitude larger when the time for responses was limited. These findings are discussed within the framework of Sanders' (1983) model of stress.

Oppel (1860/1861) first described the phenomenon that an equidistantly divided line usually looks longer than an undivided line of equal length (Oppel-Kundt illusion, OKI). The present paper begins with a discussion of the Hering-Kundt hypothesis (HKH) of the OKI. The HKH comprises two assumptions: (1) An assumption concerning the perceptual integration of the length of a single part of the divided line and the number of such parts; (2) an assumption about the psychophysical function of line length. There is no doubt that the HKH is empirically not tenable. However, nothing is known about the validity of the perceptual integration assumption when considered in isolation. It is shown that the HKH can be conceived as a special case of a more general information-integration model. According to this model, the subjective total length of a divided line is equal to the subjective length of one part of the line multiplied by the subjective number of parts. Two experiments with a total of 15 subjects are reported. The model is shown to be valid without any exception. On the background of these results published data on the OKI are re-analyzed, looking at whether they contain information about the psychophysical function for line length. It is shown that certain qualitative aspects of these data are inconsistent with a power function hypothesis while, at the same time, being compatible with a logarithmic (Fechner-) function.

Two problems are essential to current theoretical discussion on eye movements in reading: what information is being acquired during a fixation and what is the basis for the decision when and where to move the eye with a saccade? Following a discussion of empirical evidence related to these issues preliminary results of an extensive reading study are reported. The distribution of saccade landing sites in words of different length (preferred viewing position) as well as relations between initial fixation position and refixation frequency (optimal viewing position) indicate that word fixation patterns primarily depend on low-level percepto-oculomotor factors.

The present study compares the ability of humans with the ability of neural networks to determine similarities between several graphic patterns. The simulated neural network was designed as a novelty filter. The stimulus material consisted of 8 different polarity profiles which were judged for their similarity under different conditions: (1) simultaneous presentation and (2) serial presentation. The judgments were collected by using the method of paired comparisons. The profile patterns were fed into the neural network to calculate novelty (similarity) values. As a further criterion for the correspondence of the profiles, a correlation coefficient (Q-coefficient) was taken. The comparison of the resulting similarity matrices shows that the performance of the novelty filter is in a good competition with the performance of a human observer. Furthermore, in both conditions the correspondence between the similarity-judgments of the subjects and the novelty values was higher than the correspondence between the judgments and the Q-coefficient. Despite this advantage the standardization of the novelty values raises some methodological problems.