On the Role of Mentalizing Processes in Aesthetic Appreciation: An ERP Study.

We used event-related brain potentials to explore the impact of mental perspective taking on processes of aesthetic appreciation of visual art. Participants (non-experts) were first presented with information about the life and attitudes of a fictitious artist. Subsequently, they were cued trial-wise to make an aesthetic judgment regarding an image depicting a piece of abstract art either from their own perspective or from the imagined perspective of the fictitious artist [i.

Binding neutral information to emotional contexts: Brain dynamics of long-term recognition memory.

There is abundant evidence in memory research that emotional stimuli are better remembered than neutral stimuli. However, effects of an emotionally charged context on memory for associated neutral elements is also important, particularly in trauma and stress-related disorders, where strong memories are often activated by neutral cues due to their emotional associations. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate long-term recognition memory (1-week delay) for neutral objects that had been paired with emotionally arousing or neutral scenes during encoding.

Gaze Duration Biases for Colours in Combination with Dissonant and Consonant Sounds: A Comparative Eye-Tracking Study with Orangutans.

Research on colour preferences in humans and non-human primates suggests similar patterns of biases for and avoidance of specific colours, indicating that these colours are connected to a psychological reaction. Similarly, in the acoustic domain, approach reactions to consonant sounds (considered as positive) and avoidance reactions to dissonant sounds (considered as negative) have been found in human adults and children, and it has been demonstrated that non-human primates are able to discriminate between consonant and dissonant sounds. Yet it remains unclear whether the visual and acoustic approach-avoidance patterns remain consistent when both types of stimuli are combined, how they relate to and influence each other, and whether these are similar for humans and other primates.

Towards a psychological construct of being moved.

The emotional state of being moved, though frequently referred to in both classical rhetoric and current language use, is far from established as a well-defined psychological construct. In a series of three studies, we investigated eliciting scenarios, emotional ingredients, appraisal patterns, feeling qualities, and the affective signature of being moved and related emotional states. The great majority of the eliciting scenarios can be assigned to significant relationship and critical life events (especially death, birth, marriage, separation, and reunion).

Evidence for the role of German final devoicing in pre-attentive speech processing: a mismatch negativity study.

Results of a mismatch negativity experiment are reported in which the pre-attentive relevance of the German phonological alternation of final devoicing (FD) is shown in two ways. The experiment employs pseudowords. (1) A deviant [vus] paired with standard /vuzə/ did not show a mismatch effect for the voicing change in /z/ versus [s] because the two can be related by FD.

Utility-based early modulation of processing distracting stimulus information.

Humans are selective information processors who efficiently prevent goal-inappropriate stimulus information to gain control over their actions. Nonetheless, stimuli, which are both unnecessary for solving a current task and liable to cue an incorrect response (i.e.

Sequential modulation of distractor-interference produced by semantic generalization of stimulus features.

Sequential modulations of distractor-related interference (i.e., reduced congruency effect after incongruent as compared to congruent predecessor trials, a.

Domain specificity and mental chronometry in empirical aesthetics.

This article is a commentary on 'Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode - developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics' (Leder & Nadal, 2014, this issue). It focuses on domain specificity and mental chronometry in empirical aesthetics.

Attentional adjustment to conflict strength: evidence from the effects of manipulating flanker-target SOA on response times and prestimulus pupil size.

Current models of cognitive control assume gradual adjustment of processing selectivity to the strength of conflict evoked by distractor stimuli. Using a flanker task, we varied conflict strength by manipulating target and distractor onset. Replicating previous findings, flanker interference effects were larger on trials associated with advance presentation of the flankers compared to simultaneous presentation.

Exploring conflict- and target-related movement of visual attention.

Intermixing trials of a visual search task with trials of a modified flanker task, the authors investigated whether the presentation of conflicting distractors at only one side (left or right) of a target stimulus triggers shifts of visual attention towards the contralateral side. Search time patterns provided evidence for lateral attention shifts only when participants performed the flanker task under an instruction assumed to widen the focus of attention, demonstrating that instruction-based control settings of an otherwise identical task can impact performance in an unrelated task. Contrasting conditions with response-related and response-unrelated distractors showed that shifting attention does not depend on response conflict and may be explained as stimulus-conflict-related withdrawal or target-related deployment of attention.

On the electrophysiology of aesthetic processing.

One important method that can be applied for gaining an understanding of the underpinning of aesthetics in the brain is that of electrophysiology. Cognitive electrophysiology, in particular, allows the identification of components in a mental processing architecture. The present chapter reviews findings in the neurocognitive psychology of aesthetics, or neuroaesthetics, that have been obtained with the method of event-related brain potentials, as derived from the human electroencephalogram.

Conflict adjustment devoid of perceptual selection.

Task performance suffers when an aspect of a stimulus is associated with an incorrect response, thereby evoking cognitive conflict. Such impairment is reduced after recent or frequent conflict occurrence, suggesting attentional adjustment. We examined adjustment to conflict evoked by a temporarily irrelevant S-R rule when participants frequently switched between two semantic classification tasks by manipulating the proportion of conflict trials in one of them.

Sequential modulation of cue use in the task switching paradigm.

In task switching studies, pre-cuing of the upcoming task improves performance, indicating preparatory activation of the upcoming task-set, and/or inhibition of the previous task-set. To further investigate cue-based task preparation, the authors presented both valid and invalid task cues in a task switching experiment involving three tasks. Consistent with previous findings, a validity effect in terms of higher reaction times on invalidly compared to validly cued tasks was obtained.

Determining quantitative road safety targets by applying statistical prediction techniques and a multi-stage adjustment procedure.

Due to substantial progress made in road safety in the last ten years, the European Union (EU) renewed the ambitious agreement of halving the number of persons killed on the roads within the next decade. In this paper we develop a method that aims at finding an optimal target for each nation, in terms of being as achievable as possible, and with the cumulative EU target being reached. Targets as an important component in road safety policy are given as reduction rate or as absolute number of road traffic deaths.

Personality influences quality-of-life assessments in adult patients after allogeneic hematopoietic SCT: results from a joint evaluation of the prospective German Multicenter Validation Trial and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The influence of personality on health related quality of life (QoL) and physical functioning in the setting of allogeneic hematopoietic SCT (alloHSCT) is unknown. We conducted a joint evaluation within two independent cohorts of alloHSCT recipients to investigate the impact of personality on reported QoL and physical functioning. Two-hundred-eight patients (median age 44 years, range 18-72) of cohort 1 and 93 patients (median age 55 years, range 19-79) of cohort 2 after alloHSCT were evaluated.

Conflict adaptation in time: foreperiods as contextual cues for attentional adjustment.

Interference evoked by distractor stimulus information, such as flankers in the Eriksen task, is reduced when the proportion of conflicting stimuli is increased. This modulation is sensitive to contextual cues such as stimulus location or color, suggesting attentional adjustment to conflict contingencies on the basis of context information. In the present study, we explored whether conflict adjustment is modulated by temporal variation of conflict likelihood.

Beauty and the brain: culture, history and individual differences in aesthetic appreciation.

Human aesthetic processing entails the sensation-based evaluation of an entity with respect to concepts like beauty, harmony or well-formedness. Aesthetic appreciation has many determinants ranging from evolutionary, anatomical or physiological constraints to influences of culture, history and individual differences. There are a vast number of dynamically configured neural networks underlying these multifaceted processes of aesthetic appreciation.

Conflict-frequency affects flanker interference: role of stimulus-ensemble-specific practiceand flanker-response contingencies.

Performance in choice reaction time tasks deteriorates when an irrelevant stimulus feature is associated with an incorrect response (conflict condition). Such interference effects are reduced under conditions of increased conflict-frequency. Although models of cognitive control account for this modulation in terms of conflict-related attentional focusing on the target stimulus dimension, it is possible that the effect reflects practice with specific stimulus ensembles or stimulus feature-response contingencies.

Context specificity of conflict frequency-dependent control.

Interference in the Eriksen flanker task has been shown to be reduced when the (relative) frequency of conflicting stimuli is increased, a modulation thought to reflect a higher degree of processing selectivity under conditions of frequent conflict (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001). Previous studies suggest that stimulus location acts as a contextual cue, resulting in location-specific adjustment of processing selectivity when different locations are associated with differential conflict frequencies (Corballis & Gratton, 2003; Wendt, Kluwe, & Vietze, 2008). In the current study we extend these findings by showing that not only stimulus location but also stimulus colour can be used for context-specific adjustments.

The impact of stimulus-specific practice and task instructions on response congruency effects between tasks.

In task switching experiments participants have to respond to the same set of stimuli while task instructions vary (e.g., digit stimuli are assigned to left- or right-sided key presses by means of magnitude vs.

Molecular dynamics simulations of pea (Pisum sativum) lectin structure with octyl glucoside detergents: the ligand interactions and dynamics.

The mitogenic pea (Pisum sativum) lectin is a legume protein of non-immunoglobulin nature capable of specific recognition of glucose derivatives without altering its structure. Molecular dynamics simulations were performed in a realistic environment to investigate the structure and interaction properties of pea lectin with various concentrations of n-octyl-beta-d-glucopyranoside (OG) detergent monomers distributed inside explicit solvent cell. In addition, the diffusion coefficients of the ligands (OG, Ca2+, Mn2+, and Cl-) and the water molecules were also reported.

Chemical indices and methods of multivariate statistics as a tool for odor classification.

Industrial and agricultural off-gas streams are comprised of numerous volatile compounds, many of which have substantially different odorous properties. State-of-the-art waste-gas treatment includes the characterization of these molecules and is directed at, if possible, either the avoidance of such odorants during processing or the use of existing standardized air purification techniques like bioscrubbing or afterburning, which however, often show low efficiency under ecological and economical regards. Selective odor separation from the off-gas streams could ease many of these disadvantages but is not yet widely applicable.

Visual field x response hand interactions and level priming in the processing of laterally presented hierarchical stimuli.

Hemisphere-specific processing of laterally presented global and local stimulus levels was investigated by (a) examining interactions between the visual field of stimulus presentation and the response hand and (b) comparing intra- with inter-hemispheric effects of level priming (i.e. faster and more accurate performance when the target level repeats).

Sequential modulations of interference evoked by processing task-irrelevant stimulus features.

Compatibility level repetition benefits in interference paradigms have been taken to reflect enhanced processing selectivity in response to cognitive conflict elicited by a task-irrelevant stimulus feature. The authors demonstrate such sequential effects in the Simon task which (a) occur independent of previous behavioral conflict effects and (b) cannot be accounted for by selectivity enhancement. Furthermore, when presenting more than one type of irrelevant stimulus features, compatibility level repetition effects occurred in a type-specific manner.

Glycolipids from a colloid chemical point of view.

Glycolipids are a group of compounds with a broad range of applications. Two types of glycolipids (alkylpolyglycosides and gangliosides) were examined with regard to their physicochemical properties. Despite their structural differences, they have in common that they are amphiphilic molecules and able to aggregate to form monolayers, bilayers, micelles, lyothropic mesophases or vesicles.