A computational method to reveal psychological constructs from text data.

When starting to formalize psychological constructs, researchers traditionally rely on two distinct approaches: the quantitative approach, which defines constructs as part of a testable theory based on prior research and domain knowledge often deploying self-report questionnaires, or the qualitative approach, which gathers data mostly in the form of text and bases construct definitions on exploratory analyses. Quantitative research might lead to an incomplete understanding of the construct, while qualitative research is limited due to challenges in the systematic data processing, especially at large scale. We present a new computational method that combines the comprehensiveness of qualitative research and the scalability of quantitative analyses to define psychological constructs from semistructured text data.

Common and distinct predictors of non-symbolic and symbolic ordinal number processing across the early primary school years.

What are the cognitive mechanisms supporting non-symbolic and symbolic order processing? Preliminary evidence suggests that non-symbolic and symbolic order processing are partly distinct constructs. The precise mechanisms supporting these skills, however, are still unclear. Moreover, predictive patterns may undergo dynamic developmental changes during the first years of formal schooling.

Enjoyment of watching pimple popping videos: An fMRI investigation.

Background: Millions of people enjoy watching videos of pimple treatments. The underlying neural mechanisms of this enjoyment have not been investigated so far.

Method: We administered a total of 96 video clips from three categories: Pimple Popping (PP), Water Fountains (WF), and Steam Cleaning (SC).

Symbolic Processing Mediates the Relation Between Non-symbolic Processing and Later Arithmetic Performance.

The nature of the relation between non-symbolic and symbolic magnitude processing in the prediction of arithmetic remains a hotly debated subject. This longitudinal study examined whether the influence of non-symbolic magnitude processing on arithmetic is mediated by symbolic processing skills. A sample of 130 children with age-adequate ( = 73) or below-average ( = 57) achievement in early arithmetic was followed from the end of Grade 1 (mean age: 86.

Laughter as a social rejection cue: gelotophobia and transient cardiac responses to other persons' laughter and insult.

Other persons' laughter, normally perceived as a signal that persons are friendly and inviting others to approach, can also be perceived as a cue of social rejection. In this study, prerecorded laughter was placed in a realistic and personally relevant context, and participants' responses were related to gelotophobia, a trait predisposing to perceiving laughter as a cue of social rejection. Individuals with gelotophobia showed marked heart rate deceleration in response to the laughter stimulus, possibly indicating a "freezing-like" response.

Differential influence of 5-HTTLPR - polymorphism and COMT Val158Met - polymorphism on emotion perception and regulation in healthy women.

Converging evidence indicates that a considerable amount of variance in self-estimated emotional competency can be directly attributed to genetic factors. The current study examined the associations between the polymorphisms of the Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT Met158Val) and the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and specific measures of the self-estimated effectiveness of an individual's emotion perception and regulation. Emotional competence was measured in a large sample of 289 healthy women by using the Self-report Emotional Ability Scale (SEAS), which includes two subscales for the assessment of emotion perception and regulation in the intra-personal domain and two subscales for the assessment of emotion perception and regulation in the inter-personal domain.

Neural efficiency as a function of task demands.

The neural efficiency hypothesis describes the phenomenon that brighter individuals show lower brain activation than less bright individuals when working on the same cognitive tasks. The present study investigated whether the brain activation-intelligence relationship still applies when more versus less intelligent individuals perform tasks with a comparable person-specific task difficulty. In an fMRI-study, 58 persons with lower ( = 28) or respectively higher ( = 30) intelligence worked on simple and difficult inductive reasoning tasks having the same person-specific task difficulty.

Statistics anxiety, state anxiety during an examination, and academic achievement.

Background: A large proportion of students identify statistics courses as the most anxiety-inducing courses in their curriculum. Many students feel impaired by feelings of state anxiety in the examination and therefore probably show lower achievements.

Aims: The study investigates how statistics anxiety, attitudes (e.

Frontal brain asymmetry and transient cardiovascular responses to the perception of humor.

The study examined the relationship of individual differences in prefrontal brain asymmetry, measured by the EEG in resting conditions, to the individual's responsivity in the context of humor (n=42). Several weeks after the EEG recording, immediate cardiovascular responses to the perception of humor and behavioral indicators of humor processing were obtained in an experimental paradigm involving non-verbal cartoons. Relatively greater resting activity in the left than right prefrontal cortex, particularly at the ventrolateral positions, was associated with faster detection of humor, a more pronounced cardiac response to the perception of humor (heart rate and cardiac output), and more accessible internal positive affective states (indicated by faster reports of amusement levels).

Potential markers of aggressive behavior: the fear of other persons' laughter and its overlaps with mental disorders.

Background: Anecdotal evidence suggested that some outbreaks of aggression and violence may be related to a fear of being laughed at and ridiculed. The present study examined the potential association of the fear of other persons' laughter (gelotophobia) with emotion-related deficits predisposing for aggression, anger and aggression proneness, and its overlaps with relevant mental disorders.

Methodology/principal Findings: Gelotophobic individuals were compared to a non-phobic control group with respect to emotion regulation skills and strategies, alexithymia, anger proneness, and aggressive behavior.

Frontal brain asymmetry and affective flexibility in an emotional contagion paradigm.

This study was aimed at examining the relation of an individual's EEG asymmetry in the lateral frontal cortex, assessed in resting conditions, to affective flexibility. An auditory paradigm was used to induce negative (sad) and positive (cheerful) affective states, and state-dependent shifts of dorsolateral EEG asymmetry in response to and after the emotional provocations were observed. A Left>Right activation pattern at rest was associated with a shift to the right during negative and a shift to the left during positive stimulation, and efficient recovery after negative stimulation.

Psychometric evaluation and experimental validation of the statistics anxiety rating scale.

The Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS) was adapted into German to examine its psychometric properties (n = 400). Two validation studies (n = 66, n = 96) were conducted to examine its criterion-related validity. The psychometric properties of the questionnaire were very similar to those previously reported for the original English version in various countries and other language versions.

Dedifferentiation of human articular chondrocytes is associated with alterations in expression patterns of GDF-5 and its receptors.

Human articular chondrocytes are expanded in monolayer culture in order to obtain sufficient cells for matrix-associated cartilage transplantation. During this proliferation process, the cells change their shape as well as their expression profile. These changes resemble those that occur during embryogenesis, when the limb anlagen form the interzone that later develops the joint cleft.

Neutralizing type I IFN antibodies trigger an IFN-like response in endothelial cells.

Neutralizing Abs to type I IFNs are of therapeutic significance, i.e., are currently evaluated for the treatment of autoimmune diseases with pathogenic IFN-alpha production such as for systemic lupus erythematosus.

Neoadjuvant treatment of colorectal cancer with bevacizumab: the perioperative angiogenic balance is sensitive to systemic thrombospondin-1 levels.

Purpose: Colorectal cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant treatment with bevacizumab, a monoclonal antibody neutralizing vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), may suffer from wound healing complications after surgery as the antibody persists in patient blood. We characterized the systemic angiogenic balance in the perioperative period to evaluate its effect on physiologic angiogenesis.

Experimental Design: Nineteen patients receiving combination chemotherapy and bevacizumab for six neoadjuvant cycles were compared with 14 patients receiving chemotherapy without bevacizumab.

Intelligence and individual differences in becoming neurally efficient.

Physiological approaches to human psychometric intelligence have shown a higher neural efficiency (i.e. less cortical activation) during cognitive performance in brighter subjects.

Ultradian rhythms in cognitive performance: no evidence for a 1.5-h rhythm.

In the past, Kleitman's notion of a basic rest-activity cycle (BRAC), which states an approximate 1.5-h rhythm of arousal, has received some empirical support in studies investigating physiological or psychological parameters. Our study investigated this ultradian rhythm in human cognitive performance.