Fachbereich Sozialwissenschaften
Fachgebiet Psychologie II
Fachbereich Sozialwissenschaften
Fachgebiet Psychologie II
Thomas Lachmann: Basic Determinants of Specific Learning Disablilities in Reading: Experimental Exploration of Component Functions in Reading and of Deficits in their Coordination
This work addresses basic functions and their coordination in reading and reading disability. In the first part, functions of letter perception and recognition are investigated. In six choice reaction experiments, letter and non-letter targets were presented either in isolation or surrounded by a geometrical shape that could be congruent or incongruent to the target in terms of figural features. When classification required a distinction between letters and non-letters, a negative congruence effect for letters and a positive congruence effect for non-letters were obtained. When no distinction had to be made, letters and non-letters invariably showed a positive congruence effect. In two same-different experiments, letters, pseudo-letters or geometrical shapes to be compared were presented successively; the first one always in isolation, the second either isolated or surrounded by an irrelevant congruent or incongruent geometrical shape. The congruence effect for letters was shown to depend on ISI. The results were explained in terms of different feature integration strategies for letters and non-letters; the task determines the strategy used for letter processing. The second part of the work deals with deficits in the functional coordination of basic reading functions as determinant for a specific disability in learning to read. In five experiments, deficits in visual temporal integration, in auditory and phonological discrimination, and in visual-auditory integration were found to discriminate between pupils with a specific learning disability in reading and controls. Evidence for the importance of diagnostic subgroups of reading disabled children was presented. Children with problems in analytic reading skills were concluded to fail in grapheme-to-phoneme-conversion due to an auditory low-level deficit. This deficit leads to a preference of visual strategies in letter processing. Symmetry Generalization was introduced as one of these strategies. Another group of children was diagnosed as having problems in holistic reading skills. These problems were concluded to primarily result from a general temporal processing deficit.
ISSN: 1864-2578; ISBN: 978-3-939432-35-7 ----267 pages
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Saskia Jaarsveld: Creative Cognition: New Perspectives on Creative Thinking
Creativity, as it occurs in all domains, can be defined as the human cognitive ability to generate new and appropriate solutions to ill-defined problems. The present work investigated creativity in non-expert individuals who performed relatively low-level cognitive tasks. In the first study creative problem solving was contrasted with non-creative problem-solving. Whereas many studies have compared individual scores on standard intelligence and creativity tests, in this study, performance on creative and non-creative tasks that share problem domain and structure was compared. Performance on the creative thinking task could not be predicted from that on the non-creative thinking task, indicating that both tasks tap into different cognitive abilities. In the second study, a creative design process was investigated. Rather than using the think-aloud method, which provides insight into declarative and verbal aspects of the task, this study examined the structure of design sketches in order to gain insight into the procedural and non-verbal aspects of the design process. In spite of a seemingly erratic process, an underlying macro-structure, the co-operation of divergent and convergent thinking, as well as a microstructure, the evolution of sketches from their predecessors, could be observed. Contrary to results in the literature on transformations in figural imagery, it was shown that in addition to local structuring processes, global processes played a role in the initial stage of the process. In the final study the complementary role of two types of transformations in figural i agery, analysis and synthesis was investigated. Contrary to the view that creativity draws only on synthesis, the relative frequency of analysis and synthesis indicated that analysis is the true motor of creativity. Synthesis declined during the design process, because the design structure stabilised, while analysis was manifest throughout the entire process. The three studies reported provide new perspectives on creative thinking, its products and processes.
ISSN: 1864-2578; ISBN: 978-3-939432-41-8 ---- 193 pages
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Lisa Wiese: Early Social Lerning: Neutral Correlates of Social Referencing in Infants
By the end of the first year, infants use emotional messages provided by their caregiver's facial and/or vocal expressions to regulate their behavior in novel, ambiguous situations (Klinnert, 1984; Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985). This ability is referred to as “social referencing” (Campos & Stenberg, 1981). In the current study, it was investigated whether a sensitivity to social referencing is apparent in infants as young as 3-4 months of age. In particular, one important aspect of social referencing, namely association of an adult's emotional signals with the target of these signals, was examined by application of an ERP approach. Association was assessed with regard to two aspects: As a first aspect, it was explored whether infants process emotional messages differentially depending on the social significance of the message. As a result, infants were faster to attend to socially meaningful messages, as indicated by shorter peak latency of the negative component (Nc) which is thought to reflect attentional orienting. As a second aspect, it was assessed whether infants process the corresponding targets of emotional messages differentially depending on the social valence of the emotional message. ERP data revealed that infants attended more to target objects that were associated with a socially meaningful message, as indexed by larger amplitude of the Nc. Apart from the Nc, other infant ERP components like the positive slow wave (PSW), the negative slow wave (NSW) and the “positive before” (Pb) were analyzed but revealed no significant effects. Overall the results suggest that infants as young as 3-4-months of age are capable to process and to profit of emotional messages provided by adults. This finding can be interpreted as indicating an early sensitivity to social referencing emerging long before the end of the first year of life.
ISSN: 1864-2578; ISBN: 978-3-939432-60-9 ---- 85 pages
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