It's a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers' Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020.

The summer semester had just begun at Austrian and German universities when Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Thus, in March 2020, all universities closed their campuses, switching to distance learning within the span of about a single day. How did lecturers handle the situation? Were they still able to turn the situation into a positive one? What were the main obstacles with this difficult situation, and where there conditions which helped them to overcome the new challenges? These are research questions of the present survey with a sample of 1,152 lecturers at universities in Austria and Germany.

Programming experience associated with neural efficiency during figural reasoning.

In the present study, we investigated neural processes underlying programming experience. Individuals with high programming experience might develop a form of computational thinking, which they can apply on complex problem-solving tasks such as reasoning tests. Therefore, N = 20 healthy young participants with previous programming experience and N = 21 participants without any programming experience performed three reasoning tests: Figural Inductive Reasoning (FIR), Numerical Inductive Reasoning (NIR), Verbal Deductive Reasoning (VDR).

Effects of alpha and gamma transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on verbal creativity and intelligence test performance.

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation method that allows to directly modulate brain oscillations of a given frequency. Using this method, it was recently shown that increasing alpha (10Hz) oscillations improved creative ideation with figural material and that increasing gamma (40Hz) oscillations speeded up performance in a figural matrices intelligence task. The aim of the present study was to examine whether these findings generalize to verbal creativity and intelligence tasks.

Affective Evaluation of One's Own and Others' Body Odor: The Role of Disgust Proneness.

Disgust is part of a behavioral immune system that helps to detect pathogens. One important input to this system is the sense of smell. We conducted an experiment on body odor perception with 72 participants (35 men, 37 women; mean age = 24 years), who had been divided according to high versus low disgust proneness.

Unto the third generation: evidence for strong familial aggregation of physicians, psychologists, and psychotherapists among first-year medical and psychology students in a nationwide Austrian cohort census.

Background: Medical students present higher numbers of physician relatives than expectable from the total population prevalence of physicians. Evidence for such a familial aggregation effect of physicians has emerged in investigations from the Anglo-American, Scandinavian, and German-speaking areas. In particular, past data from Austria suggest a familial aggregation of the medical, as well as of the psychological and psychotherapeutic, professions among medical and psychology undergraduates alike.

The Psychometric Costs of Applicants' Faking: Examining Measurement Invariance and Retest Correlations Across Response Conditions.

This study examines the stability of the response process and the rank-order of respondents responding to 3 personality scales in 4 different response conditions. Applicants to the University College of Teacher Education Styria (N = 243) completed personality scales as part of their college admission process. Half a year later, they retook the same personality scales in 1 of 3 randomly assigned experimental response conditions: honest, faking-good, or reproduce.

Intelligence, creativity, and cognitive control: The common and differential involvement of executive functions in intelligence and creativity.

Intelligence and creativity are known to be correlated constructs suggesting that they share a common cognitive basis. The present study assessed three specific executive abilities - updating, shifting, and inhibition - and examined their common and differential relations to fluid intelligence and creativity (i.e.

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.

Self-disgust in mental disorders -- symptom-related or disorder-specific?

Background: Dysfunctional disgust experiences occur in a variety of mental disorders. Previous research focused on disgust proneness directed towards stimuli in the external environment. However, self-disgust, the devaluation of one' own physical appearance and personality (personal disgust) as well as one' own behavior (behavioral disgust) has hardly been investigated thus far, although it may play a crucial role in specific psychopathologies.

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.

Scores for schizotypy and five-factor model of a sample of distant healers: a preliminary study.

A preliminary study was conducted to evaluate the personality scores of 18 distant healers on the NEO-Five Factor Inventory and the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief. These distant healers differed significantly in their schizotypic tendencies, both in comparison to normed scores and to a control group of 19 masseurs. Further differences were found on scales of Conscientiousness and Openness to experience.

Dimensionality and construct validity of a video-based, objective personality test for the assessment of willingness to take risks in road traffic.

The study at hand reports first results about the dimensionality and construct validity of a newly developed objective, video-based personality test, which assesses the willingness to take risks in traffic situations. On the basis of the theory of risk homeostasis developed by Wilde, different traffic situations with varying amounts of objective danger were filmed. These situations mainly consisted of situations with passing maneuvers and speed choice or traffic situations at intersections.

Paranormal belief, schizotypy, and Body Mass Index.

There are indications that subjects with schizotypal personality have a lower Body Mass Index. Also schizotypal personality is linked to a higher incidence of paranormal belief. In this study we examined whether low Body Mass Index is also linked to paranormal belief.

Long-term effect of a combined exercise and motivational program on the level of disability of patients with chronic low back pain.

Study Design: A prospective clinical randomized controlled trial.

Objectives: To determine the long-term effect of a combined exercise and motivational program on the level of disability of patients with chronic and recurrent low back pain (LBP).

Summary Of Background Data: There is agreement on the importance of exercise during the course of chronic LBP.

Measuring perceptual speed in complex everyday situations.

This paper describes first results of the development of a new test to measure perceptual speed in everyday situations. The new items are best described as images depicting typical situations in everyday life, which have some picture elements in common. The pictures were presented to the subjects for a short time, and their task was to indicate which of 5 goal stimuli were present in the respective pictures seen before.