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Human beings are supposed to possess an approximate number system (ANS) dedicated to extracting and representing approximate numerical magnitude information as well as an object tracking system (OTS) for the rapid and accurate enumeration of small sets. It is assumed that the OTS and the ANS independently contribute to the acquisition of more elaborate numerical concepts. Chinese children have been shown to exhibit more elaborate numerical concepts than their non-Chinese peers, but it is still an open question whether similar cross-national differences exist with regard to the underlying systems, namely the ANS and the OTS. In the present study, we investigated this question by comparing Chinese and German preschool children with regard to their performance in a non-symbolic numerical magnitude comparison task (assessing the ANS) and in an enumeration task (assessing the OTS). In addition, we compared children’s counting skills. To ensure that possible between-group differences could not be explained by differences in more general performance factors, we also assessed children’s reasoning ability and processing speed. Chinese children showed a better counting performance and a more accurate performance in the non-symbolic numerical magnitude comparison task. These differences in performance could not be ascribed to differences in reasoning abilities and processing speed. In contrast, Chinese and German children did not differ significantly in the enumeration of small sets. The superior counting performance of Chinese children was thus found to be reflected in the ANS but not in the OTS.
Stress often has a negative influence on sports performance. Stress-induced decreases in performance can be especially disastrous for risk sports athletes, who often put their life at risk when practicing their sport. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify protective factors in stressful situations in risk sports. On average, risk sports athletes score extremely high on the personality trait sensation seeking. At the same time, theoretical considerations about dispositional mindfulness suggest that mindful athletes can handle stress more effectively. The main goal of this experiment is to examine the influence of sensation seeking and mindfulness on the stress response to a risk sport-specific stressor. To induce stress, 88 male students completed the Heidelberg Risk Sport-Specific Stress Test (HRSST) which utilizes fear of falling as the stressful event during a climbing exercise. Psychological (anxiety) and physiological (cortisol) responses were measured at multiple time points before and after the HRSST to determine the severity of the stress response. In reaction to the stressor, a significant increase in self-reported state anxiety, but no significant increase in cortisol were observed. The mindfulness subscale external observation correlated positively with anxiety in the climbing wall, sensation seeking and the anxiety scales after the jump correlated negatively and sensation seeking predicted anxiety subscales after the jump in hierarchical regression analyses. However, mindfulness did not predict anxiety measures. Neither sensation seeking nor mindfulness correlated significantly with cortisol levels. The results suggest that high sensation seekers perceive a risk sport-specific stressor as less stressful. The missing physiological response might be explained by the Cross-Stressor-Adaptation-Hypothesis and particularities of the sample. Good internal observers might be especially aware of their need of stimulation and new experiences, which in turn might explain the higher experience-seeking scores. Future studies should further examine the role of mindfulness in stressful situations and the interaction of its subscales with sensation seeking. The current experiment offers new possibilities for adjoining research fields at the interface between sports sciences, psychology and medicine: The findings can be transferred to high risk professions such as police officers, firefighters and military forces (e.g., for selection processes or for interventions).
The arrangement of the contents of real-world scenes follows certain spatial rules that allow for extremely efficient visual exploration. What remains underexplored is the role different types of objects hold in a scene. In the current work, we seek to unveil an important building block of scenes—anchor objects. Anchors hold specific spatial predictions regarding the likely position of other objects in an environment. In a series of three eye tracking experiments we tested what role anchor objects occupy during visual search. In all of the experiments, participants searched through scenes for an object that was cued in the beginning of each trial. Critically, in half of the scenes a target relevant anchor was swapped for an irrelevant, albeit semantically consistent, object. We found that relevant anchor objects can guide visual search leading to faster reaction times, less scene coverage, and less time between fixating the anchor and the target. The choice of anchor objects was confirmed through an independent large image database, which allowed us to identify key attributes of anchors. Anchor objects seem to play a unique role in the spatial layout of scenes and need to be considered for understanding the efficiency of visual search in realistic stimuli.
Following a brief review of current efforts to identify the neuronal correlates of conscious processing (NCCP) an attempt is made to bridge the gap between the material neuronal processes and the immaterial dimensions of subjective experience. It is argued that this "hard problem" of consciousness research cannot be solved by only considering the neuronal underpinnings of cognition. The proposal is that the hard problem can be treated within a naturalistic framework if one considers not only the biological but also the socio-cultural dimensions of evolution. The argument is based on the following premises: perceptions are the result of a constructivist process that depends on priors. This applies both for perceptions of the outer world and the perception of oneself. Social interactions between agents endowed with the cognitive abilities of humans generated immaterial realities, addressed as social or cultural realities. This novel class of realities assumed the role of priors for the perception of oneself and the embedding world. A natural consequence of these extended perceptions is a dualist classification of observables into material and immaterial phenomena nurturing the concept of ontological substance dualism. It is argued that perceptions shaped by socio-cultural priors lead to the construction of a self-model that has both a material and an immaterial dimension. As priors are implicit and not amenable to conscious recollection the perceived immaterial dimension is experienced as veridical and not derivable from material processes—which is the hallmark of the hard problem. These considerations let the hard problem appear as the result of cognitive constructs that are amenable to naturalistic explanations in an evolutionary framework.
The information and communication technology (ICT) sector within the Netherlands is a major driver of globalization, the country’s economic growth and innovation. The Dutch ICT sector’s performance is increasingly becoming dependent upon employee driven innovations in order to address the needs of the sectors they service. In other words, the ICT sector within the Netherlands is largely dependent upon the performance and innovative capacity of its employees; both of which are functions of employee engagement. Given the high demand, and low supply of talent within this sector, ICT organizations need to develop innovative ways to enhance the performance capacities of its people. Developing an engaged and highly innovative workforce seems to be an efficient way to activate employees’ performance. As such, the aim of this paper was to investigate the mediating function of employee driven innovative work behaviors in the relationship between work engagement and task performance within the a Dutch ICT consulting firm. A cross-sectional survey-based research design, employing a census-based sampling method, was employed to obtain data from a global ICT consulting firm within the Netherlands (n = 232). The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, the Innovative Work Behavior Scale and the Task Performance Scale was used to assess the associative subjective experiences of ICT employees. The results showed that work engagement is a significant driver for innovative work behaviors, which in turn affects the task performance of employees. Further, innovative work behaviors are therefore important to translate the engaging energies of employees into performance. This paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
A hypothesis regarding the development of imitation learning is presented that is rooted in intrinsic motivations. It is derived from a recently proposed form of intrinsically motivated learning (IML) for efficient coding in active perception, wherein an agent learns to perform actions with its sense organs to facilitate efficient encoding of the sensory data. To this end, actions of the sense organs that improve the encoding of the sensory data trigger an internally generated reinforcement signal. Here it is argued that the same IML mechanism might also support the development of imitation when general actions beyond those of the sense organs are considered: The learner first observes a tutor performing a behavior and learns a model of the the behavior's sensory consequences. The learner then acts itself and receives an internally generated reinforcement signal reflecting how well the sensory consequences of its own behavior are encoded by the sensory model. Actions that are more similar to those of the tutor will lead to sensory signals that are easier to encode and produce a higher reinforcement signal. Through this, the learner's behavior is progressively tuned to make the sensory consequences of its actions match the learned sensory model. I discuss this mechanism in the context of human language acquisition and bird song learning where similar ideas have been proposed. The suggested mechanism also offers an account for the development of mirror neurons and makes a number of predictions. Overall, it establishes a connection between principles of efficient coding, intrinsic motivations and imitation.
Die Psychologie unterscheidet interpersonelle Konflikte – also Konflikte zwischen verschiedenen Personen – von intrapsychischen Konflikten – also Konflikten, die sich innerhalb einer Person abspielen. Psychotherapeutisch behandelt werden können Konflikte, wenn alle Konfliktparteien anwesend sind und angesprochen werden können. Insofern kann die Psychoanalyse einzelner Personen vor allem bei intrapsychischen Konflikten helfen, die nach unserem Verständnis psychischen Problemen und Störungen zugrunde liegen. Interpersonelle Konflikte können von Psychotherapeuten in Paar- oder Familientherapien angegangen werden.
The lateralization of neuronal processing underpinning hearing, speech, language, and music is widely studied, vigorously debated, and still not understood in a satisfactory manner. One set of hypotheses focuses on the temporal structure of perceptual experience and links auditory cortex asymmetries to underlying differences in neural populations with differential temporal sensitivity (e.g., ideas advanced by Zatorre et al. (2002) and Poeppel (2003). The Asymmetric Sampling in Time theory (AST) (Poeppel, 2003), builds on cytoarchitectonic differences between auditory cortices and predicts that modulation frequencies within the range of, roughly, the syllable rate, are more accurately tracked by the right hemisphere. To date, this conjecture is reasonably well supported, since – while there is some heterogeneity in the reported findings – the predicted asymmetrical entrainment has been observed in various experimental protocols. Here, we show that under specific processing demands, the rightward dominance disappears. We propose an enriched and modified version of the asymmetric sampling hypothesis in the context of speech. Recent work (Rimmele et al., 2018b) proposes two different mechanisms to underlie the auditory tracking of the speech envelope: one derived from the intrinsic oscillatory properties of auditory regions; the other induced by top-down signals coming from other non-auditory regions of the brain. We propose that under non-speech listening conditions, the intrinsic auditory mechanism dominates and thus, in line with AST, entrainment is rightward lateralized, as is widely observed. However, (i) depending on individual brain structural/functional differences, and/or (ii) in the context of specific speech listening conditions, the relative weight of the top-down mechanism can increase. In this scenario, the typically observed auditory sampling asymmetry (and its rightward dominance) diminishes or vanishes.
Congenitally blind individuals have been shown to activate the visual cortex during non-visual tasks. The neuronal mechanisms of such cross-modal activation are not fully understood. Here, we used an auditory working memory training paradigm in congenitally blind and in sighted adults. We hypothesized that the visual cortex gets integrated into auditory working memory networks, after these networks have been challenged by training. The spectral profile of functional networks was investigated which mediate cross-modal reorganization following visual deprivation. A training induced integration of visual cortex into task-related networks in congenitally blind individuals was expected to result in changes in long-range functional connectivity in the theta-, beta- and gamma band (imaginary coherency) between visual cortex and working memory networks. Magnetoencephalographic data were recorded in congenitally blind and sighted individuals during resting state as well as during a voice-based working memory task; the task was performed before and after working memory training with either auditory or tactile stimuli, or a control condition. Auditory working memory training strengthened theta-band (2.5-5 Hz) connectivity in the sighted and beta-band (17.5-22.5 Hz) connectivity in the blind. In sighted participants, theta-band connectivity increased between brain areas typically involved in auditory working memory (inferior frontal, superior temporal, insular cortex). In blind participants, beta-band networks largely emerged during the training, and connectivity increased between brain areas involved in auditory working memory and as predicted, the visual cortex. Our findings highlight long-range connectivity as a key mechanism of functional reorganization following congenital blindness, and provide new insights into the spectral characteristics of functional network connectivity.