General self-efficacy is a central personality trait often evaluated in surveys as context variable. It can be interpreted as a personal coping resource reflecting individual belief in one's overall competence to perform across a variety of situations. The German-language Altgemeine-Setbstvvirksamkeit-Kurzskala (ASKU) is a reliable and valid instrument to assess this disposition in the German-speaking countries based on a three-item equation. This study develops a French version of the ASKU and tests this French version for measurement invariance compared to the original ASKU. A reliable and valid French instrument would make it easy to collect data in the French-speaking countries and allow comparisons between the French and German results. Data were collected on a sample of 1,716 adolescents. Confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a good fit for a single-factor model of the data (in total, French, and German version). Additionally, construct validity was assessed by elucidating intercorrelations between the ASKU and different factors that should theoretically be related to ASKU. Furthermore, we confirmed configural and metric as well as scalar invariance between the different language versions, meaning that all forms of statistical comparison between the developed French version and the original German version are allowed.
Abstract. Although personal goals give meaning to life and contribute to well-being, achieving goals can become difficult in older adults faced with age-related challenges. A group of 49 older adul...
Based on reported motivational deficits in depression - and on persistence deficits in particular - the present study examined whether dysphoric individuals benefit from task contexts that favor longer task persistence. Undergraduates worked on an item-generation task with different stop rules: "Is this a good time to stop?" (enough rule), "Do I feel like continuing?" (enjoy rule), or no specific rule. Results revealed that, independent of the stop rule, participants with high depression scores stopped earlier and generated fewer items than participants with low depression scores - an effect that was mediated by current mood state. Thus, contrary to experimentally induced negative mood, the enough-rule intervention was ineffective in eliminating the persistence deficits of dysphoric individuals. Implications for task disengagement and performance outcomes are discussed.
The two hemispheres of the human brain are asymmetrically involved in representing a person’s motivational orientation: Approach motivation is reflected in greater activation of the left hemisphere, whereas avoidance motivation more strongly activates the right hemisphere. Visuospatial bias, as assessed in the line-bisection task, is often used as a simple behavioral measure of relative hemispheric activation. In three experiments, we investigated whether affect-induced approach and avoidance motivation are associated with spatial biases in line-bisection performance. Happy or terrifying pictures (Experiment 1, N = 70), happy or sad music (Experiment 2, N = 50), and joyful or frightening videos (Experiment 3, N = 90) were used to induce negative and positive affect. Mood-induction procedures successfully changed emotional states in the intended direction. However, our analyses revealed no effect of mood on visuospatial biases in the line-bisection task. Additional Bayesian analyses also provided more evidence against the hypothesized effect than in favor of it. Thus, visuospatial bias in line bisection does not seem to be a sensitive measure of approach and avoidance motivation induced by positive and negative affect.
The color red has been shown to affect psychological functioning. In performance settings, it is associated with negative emotions, avoidance motivation, and cognitive restriction. Because red is frequently used in written performance feedback, we examined whether it represents an external form aspect that can adversely influence the perception of critical feedback by the receiver, independent of the verbal content of the feedback. To this end, we conducted a web-based experiment in which 171 participants performed an alleged attention test and were then given moderately critical feedback, including hints for improvement. Per random assignment, either some of the words within the feedback were presented in red letters or all words were presented in standard black. The participants' subsequent evaluation of the feedback revealed that using red in the feedback caused the feedback to be perceived as relatively less emotionally positive. There was no direct effect of using a red font in how the feedback was cognitively perceived (i.e., how helpful, fair, or comprehensible it was). However, preliminary evidence suggests that using a red font indirectly had an adverse effect on the cognitive feedback perception, mediated via the emotional feedback perception. As a practical implication, red should be used cautiously in critical feedback in order to avoid compromising the functions of feedback.
Abstract. Communication and coordination represent central processes in healthcare action teams. However, we have a limited understanding of how expertise affects these processes and to what extent these effects are shaped by interprofessional differences. The current study addresses these questions by jointly investigating the influence of different aspects of expertise – individual expertise, team familiarity, and expertise asymmetry – on coordination quality and communication openness. We tested our propositions in two hospitals: one in Switzerland (CH, Sample 1) and one in the United Kingdom (UK, Sample 2). Both samples included two-person anesthesia action teams consisting of a physician and a nurse ( NCH = 47 teams, NUK = 48 teams). We used a correlational design with two measurement points (i.e., pre- and postoperation). To consider potential interprofessional differences, we analyzed our data with actor-partner interdependence models. Moreover, we explored differences in the effects of expertise between both hospitals. Our findings suggest that nurses’ expertise is the most important predictor of coordination quality and communication openness. Overall, differences between the two hospitals were more prevalent than interprofessional differences between physicians and nurses. The current study provides a nuanced picture of the effects of expertise, and thereby extends our understanding of interprofessional teamwork.
Whereas a growing corpus of research has investigated the impact of music practice on several domains of cognition, studies on the relationships between musicality and other abilities and skills in musically untrained children are scarce. The present study examined the associations between musicality, cognition, and sensorimotor skills in 69 musically untrained primary school children of around 10 years of age, using a test battery of musical, cognitive, and sensorimotor abilities. We analyzed the results using nonparametric correlations and an exploratory factor analysis. It was our anticipation that basic cognitive resources (short-term and working memory, attention, processing speed) would relate to both higher-order cognition and musicality. Results indicated that, in musically untrained children, the interconnections between musical and cognitive abilities restrain to auditory short-term and working memory. Direct associations between musicality and higher-order cognitive processes did not occur. An interesting secondary finding comprised associations between sensorimotor function, as measured by the Purdue Pegboard test, and higher-order cognition. Specifically, we found an association between bimanual coordination of fine finger dexterity and matrix reasoning. This outcome suggests that higher-order cognitive function benefits from an efficient mastering of procedural aspects of sensorimotor skills.
The Other Race Effect (ORE), i.e., recognition facilitation for own-race faces, is a well-established phenomenon with broad evidence in adults and infants. Nevertheless, the ORE in older children is poorly understood, and even less so for emotional face processing. This research samples 87 9-year-old children from Vietnamese and Swiss schools. In two separate studies, we evaluated the children's abilities to perceive the disappearance of emotions in Asian and Caucasian faces in an offset task. The first study evaluated an "emotional ORE" in Vietnamese-Asian, Swiss-Caucasian, and Swiss-Multicultural children. Offset times showed an emotional ORE in Vietnamese-Asian children living in an ethnically homogeneous environment, whereas mixed ethnicities in Swiss children seem to have balanced performance between face types. The second study compared socioemotionally trained versus untrained Vietnamese-Asian children. Vietnamese children showed a strong emotional ORE and tend to increase their sensitivity to emotion offset after training. Moreover, an effect of emotion consistent with previous observation in adults could suggest a cultural sensitivity to disapproval signs. Taken together, the results suggest that 9-year-old children can present an emotional ORE, but that a heterogeneous environment or an emotional training could strengthen face-processing abilities without reducing skills on their own-group.
The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Math Homework Purpose Scale (MHPS). After randomly splitting the sample (N = 854) into two subsamples (n = 427 and n = 427), we carried out exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on subsample 1 and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on subsample 2. The Kaiser-Meyer Olkin value of .88 indicated that EFA was appropriate for subsample 1. EFA results showed that a three-factor solution explained 72.2% of the variance. All ten of the MHPS items loaded quite substantially on three factors labeled Academic, Setf-Regulatory, and Approval-Seeking. CFA results further showed that the MHPS was composed of three factors: Academic, Self-Regulatory, and Approval-Seeking. From this adequate level of measurement invariance, we further examined the latent mean difference across gender for the entire sample. Our findings showed no statistically significant mean differences in Academic, Self-Regulatory, and Approval-Seeking across gender. In addition, the HMPS was found to have adequate alpha reliability coefficients and omega coefficients. Concerning the validity evidence of the MHPS, Academic, Self-Regulatory, and Approval-Seeking purposes were positively correlated with homework effort, homework completion, and math achievement. The present study provides solid evidence that the MHPS is a reliable and valid measurement of math homework purposes.
Defaults are an effective tool in shaping consumers' decisions. However, only a few studies have investigated the role of defaults regarding consumers' choices of electricity products. Moreover, each of these studies used binary choice sets (gray vs. green electricity). Notably, decision-making research has shown that consumer choice patterns are considerably influenced by the size of the choice set (e.g., adding a third option). The question is, does this also hold for defaults, that is, do they function differently depending on the choice set size? In our experimental study, participants could choose between three electricity products (gray, green, and eco), which varied in their environmental friendliness and price, the default randomly being one of the three products. In addition, we had a no-default condition. Contrary to the other studies, we found not only a default effect for the least environmentally friendly gray product, but also for the environmentally friendlier products green and eco electricity. Moreover, the popularity of the middle option - the green electricity product was not reduced by adding a third product. The results indicate that increasing the set size by adding an eco-product and by intelligently setting the default could increase the number of consumers buying environmentally friendly electricity products.
An important way to develop models in psychology and cognitive science is to express them as computer programs. However, computational modeling is not an easy task. To address this issue, some have proposed using artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques, such as genetic programming (GP) to semiautomatically generate models. In this paper, we establish whether models used to generate data can be recovered when GP evolves models accounting for such data. As an example, we use an experiment from decision-making which addresses a central question in decision-making research, namely, to understand what strategy, or “policy,” agents adopt in order to make a choice. In decision-making, this often means understanding the policy that best explains the distribution of choices and/or reaction times of two-alternative forced-choice decisions. We generated data from three models using different psychologically plausible policies and then evaluated the ability and extent of GP to correctly identify the true generating model among the class of virtually infinite candidate models. Our results show that, regardless of the complexity of the policy, GP can correctly identify the true generating process. Given these results, we discuss implications for cognitive science research and computational scientific discovery as well as possible future applications.
BackgroundThe Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a common tool for the assessment of global cognition in older adults. Despite its popularity among clinicians and researchers, the test’s psychometric properties are still uncertain.ObjectiveTo examine fundamental psychometrics properties of the MoCA that have not been established so far (i.e., factorial structure, general factor saturation, and measurement invariance).DesignCohort study.SettingPopulation-based invitation-type survey in city and rural areas in Hyogo prefectures and Tokyo Metropolitan, Japan.SubjectsIndividuals (N = 2,408) aged 69 to 91 clustered in three cohorts (69-71-year-olds, 79-81-year-olds, and 89-91-year-olds).MethodsExploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis.ResultsThe MoCA shows an overall stable hierarchical factorial structure and a satisfactory general factor saturation. Also, measurement invariance occurs across participants with different age, educational level, economic status, and gender. ConclusionThis comprehensive investigation upholds the idea that the MoCA is a psychometrically valid tool for the assessment of global cognition in older adults.
Abstract. The cognitive reserve hypothesis postulates that lifelong cognitive stimulation establishes a buffer that is instrumental in maintaining cognitive health. To examine this conceptual propo...
Free AccessThe End of an EraMatthias Kliegel and Nicolas RothenMatthias Kliegel University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Search for more papers by this author and Nicolas Rothen Swiss Distance University Institute, Brig, Switzerland Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:December 23, 2020https://doi.org/10.1024/1421-0185/a000244PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditE-Mail SectionsMoreThe Swiss Journal of Psychology, the official publication of the Swiss Psychological Society, in its current format, is coming to an end. We are grateful for almost 80 years of excellent scholarly service of our editors, editorial board members, reviewers and contributors. We are especially grateful to the publisher Hogrefe, who always acted as a supportive and professional publishing partner of the Swiss Journal of Psychology. What’s coming next? The Swiss Psychological Society will publish a new open access journal starting in early 2021. With this, the Swiss Psychological Society is also leaving the traditional way of publication but will continue to maintain its own tradition with regards to the contents of the published articles.The new journal will continue serving the purpose as when it was founded by Jean Piaget and first published under the name Swiss Journal of Psychology and its Applications [original German title: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie und ihre Anwendungen] by the publisher Hans Huber in 1942. Namely, “to collect the individual psychological trends and associations in Switzerland and to be a centre for them. To cultivate relations with foreign countries and thus contribute to the fulfilment of supranational tasks and to cultural development. On this basis, it will cultivate psychology as a science as well as the practical psychological disciplines and will meet the search for the spiritual and the human” (translated from German text in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie und ihre Anwendungen, Vol. 1, 1942, p. 3) or in today’s terms, as expressed on the website of the current publishing house Hogrefe, “Swiss Journal of Psychology serves as a forum for the scientific discussion of all areas of psychology and their applications. Its central concern is the mediating function between different fields of psychology between research and applications between psychology in culturally different areas both within Switzerland as well as in other nations.” (https://www.hgf.io/sjp, November 2020). As it was a major decision that the content of the Swiss Journal of Psychology will be published in English language only from 2012, the Swiss Psychological Society decided that the journal will appear as open access journal from 2021 as another major step following its mission to serve as a forum for the scientific discussion of all areas of psychology, not only in Switzerland but across different nations.The current and last issue of the Swiss Journal of Psychology again has managed to present several national and international contributions that provide new insights to a broad range of topics in different fields psychology. In detail, Ihle et al. (2020) present novel evidence for the notion of the cognitive reserve hypothesis – the idea that lifelong learning has beneficial effects on cognitive health in older age. Specifically, they demonstrated that the unfavorable after effects of hepatobiliary diseases on later decline in executive functioning seem to be mitigated in individuals who have built up greater cognitive reserve via leisure activity participation during their life. James and colleagues (2020) investigated associations between musicality, cognition and sensorimotor skills in musically untrained primary school children. The primary outcome of their study suggested that in musically untrained children, the connections between musical and cognitive abilities restrain to auditory short-term and working memory. In a contribution from the UK, Pirrone and Gobet (2020) provide evidence that genetic programming to semi-automatically generate computational models is a promising approach to recover data from various levels of complexity. By contrast, Burtscher and colleagues (2020) set out to further our understanding of how expertise affects communication and coordination processes in healthcare action teams. Testing samples in Switzerland and the UK, their study revealed that nurses’ expertise was the most important predictor of coordination quality and communication openness in interprofessional teams. Malsert and colleagues (2020) investigated the other race effect (i.e., recognition facilitation of own-race faces) in young children in Swiss and Vietnamese schools. Their study provided evidence for emotional other race effects in ethnically homogeneous environments, but a reduced effect in more mixed ethnicities. In a contribution from Japan, Sala et al. (2020) established in a comprehensive investigation some so far undocumented psychometric properties of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment which used to assess global cognition in older adults. Finally, Joly-Burra and colleagues (2020) performed a qualitative investigation in goal achievement and well-being in older adults. They were able to show that, although older people say that they do not have big goals in their lives anymore, they end up mentioning many activities that are goals. Interestingly, many of these activities are geared towards maintaining or increasing their general well-being.We hope that our short summary of the contents of the current issue has triggered your interest. With that, we are left again to thank all authors, individuals, institutions, and associations who contributed to the Swiss Journal of Psychology in one way or another over the 80 years of its existence.References Burtscher, M. J., Nussbeck, F. W., Sevdalis, N., Gisin, S., & Manser, T. (2020). Coordination and Communication in Healthcare Action Teams – The Role of Expertise. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 79, 123–135. First citation in articleAbstract, Google Scholar Ihle, A., Gouveia, E. R., Gouveia, B. R., Haas, M., Zuber, S., Orsholits, D., Cheval, B., Sieber, S., Cullati, S., & Kliegel, M. (2020). Cognitive Reserve Mitigates Decline in Executive Functioning Following Hepatobiliary Diseases. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 79, 149–154. First citation in articleAbstract, Google Scholar James, C. E., Zuber, S., Dupuis-Lozeron, E., Abdili, L., Gervaise, D., & Kliegel, M. (2020). How Musicality, Cognition and Sensorimotor Skills Relate in Musically Untrained Children. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 79, 101–112. First citation in articleAbstract, Google Scholar Joly-Burra, E., Gallerne, E., Van der Linden, M., & Ghisletta, P. (2020). Goals Do Not Buy Well-Being, but They Help – Qualitative Illustrations of Goals Prioritization and Stabilization When Facing Age-Related Challenges. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 79, 137–148. First citation in articleAbstract, Google Scholar Malsert, J., Tran, K., Tran, T., Ha-Vinh, T., Gentaz, E., & Ha-Vinh Leuchter, R. (2020). Cross-Cultural and Environmental Influences on Facial Emotional Discrimination Sensitivity in 9-Year-Old Children from Swiss and Vietnamese Schools. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 79, 89–99. First citation in articleAbstract, Google Scholar Pirrone, A., & Gobet, F. (2020). Modeling Value-Based Decision-Making Policies Using Genetic Programming – A Proof-of-Concept Study. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 79, 113–121. First citation in articleAbstract, Google Scholar Sala, G., Inagaki, H., Ishioka, Y., Masui, Y., Nakagawa, T., Ishizaki, T., Arai, Y., Ikebe, K., Kamide, K., & Gondo, Y. (2020). The Psychometric Properties of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) – A Comprehensive Investigation. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 79, 155–161. First citation in articleAbstract, Google ScholarMatthias Kliegel, President of the Swiss Psychological SocietyNicolas Rothen, Editor-in-Chief, Swiss Journal of Psychology, E-mail nicolas.rothen@fernuni.chFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 79Issue 3-4December 2020ISSN: 1421-0185eISSN: 1662-0879 InformationSwiss Journal of Psychology (2020), 79, pp. 87-88 https://doi.org/10.1024/1421-0185/a000244.© 2020Hogrefe AG
This study tests two competing hypotheses, one based on the general aggression model (GAM), the other on the self-determination theory (SDT). GAM suggests that the crucial factor in video games leading to increased aggressiveness is their violent content: SDT contends that gaming is associated with aggression because of the frustration of basic psychological needs. We used a 2x2 between-subject experimental design with a sample of 128 undergraduates. We assigned each participant randomly to one experimental condition defined by a particular video game, using four mobile video games differing in the degree of violence and in the level of their frustration-invoking gameplay. Aggressiveness was measured using the implicit association test (IAT), administered before and after the playing of a video game. We found no evidence of an association between implicit aggressiveness and violent content or frustrating gameplay.
This study investigated the relationship between type of childcare and toddlers' skills in four important developmental domains: motor, cognitive, social, and language. A total of 637 children aged 18 and 24 months were either cared for exclusively at home by their parents or relatives (home-care group) or attended a daycare center for a minimum of 2 days per week (center-care group). We tested the children's skills using standard assessment tools and compared the skills of the two care groups. The results suggest that, for the sample tested, childcare type is not related to toddler's cognitive, motor, social, and language skills.
Against the background of the growing importance of symptom validity assessment both in forensic and clinical or rehabilitation contexts, a new instrument for identifying overreporting was developed. In order to study the equivalence of the German and the French versions, we divided the item pool of the Self-Report Symptom Inventory (SRSI) into two presumably equivalent half-forms. A sample of 40 adult bilingual Swiss nationals with a mean age of 39.9 years responded honestly to one of the half-forms in German and to the other in French. In a subsequent experimental malingering condition, they were asked to simulate sequelae of a whiplash injury and to respond to the SRSI again. In both conditions, they also filled out the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS). The results showed no differences between the two language versions in both conditions. Classification accuracy was very high (100% specificity, 90% sensitivity for the standard cutoff score). Reliability estimates were 0.93 for endorsement of genuine symptoms and 0.97 for pseudosymptom endorsement. In the malingering condition, the correlation between the number of reported pseudosymptoms and the SIMS scores was 0.69. The current results add to the database available for the SRSI and support the appropriateness of the French version.
Attitudes toward affirmative action programs (AAPs) depend on the criteria on which these programs are based and on the ideological views in the relationships between groups. The present study examined the impact of the selection procedure (with or without AA) on the perception of justice and on attitudes toward the beneficiaries of these procedures in France, where the system makes it possible to compare beneficiaries of different origins. A group of 101 French students read scenarios describing the admission of a candidate, with either a French or a North African first name, to a prestigious school, based on either a standard selection procedure or AA. The standard procedure and its beneficiary were more positively judged, and the beneficiary was considered more competent, than one selected with AAP. These results were particularly significant for participants with a high level of social dominance orientation (SDO). Furthermore, participants perceived both selection procedures more positively and judged the candidate as being more competent when that person had a Frenchsounding name. High-SDO participants underestimated socioeconomic and ethnic discrimination. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
