The first author takes it all? Solutions for crediting authors more visibly, transparently, and free of bias

With the seventh edition of the publication manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), the APA style now prescribes bias-free language and encourages accessibility even to non-academic audiences. However, even with the newest guidelines, the way we credit authors in psychology remains anachronistic, intransparent, and prone to conflict. It still relies on a sequence-determines-credit approach in the byline, which concurrently is contradicted by the option to consider the last author as the position of the principal investigator depending on the field or journal. Scholars from various disciplines have argued that relying on such norms introduces a considerable amount of error when stakeholders rely on articles for career-relevant decisions. Given the existing recommendations towards a credit-based system, ignoring those issues will further promote bias that could be avoided with rather minor changes to the way we perceive authorship. In this article, we introduce a set of easy-to-implement changes to the manuscript layout that value contribution rather than position. Aimed at fostering transparency, accountability, and equality between authors, establishing those changes would likely benefit all stakeholders in contemporary psychological science

Digitalisierte Beratung zur effizienteren Selbstoptimierung: Kritische Anmerkungen zu digitalen Formaten arbeitsbezogener Beratung aus einer Gouvernementalitätsperspektive

"Digital(isiert)e" Beratung verspricht neben Innovation auch Flexibilität, Ubiquität, Globalität, Geschwindigkeit und Legitimität durch evidenzbasierte Wirksamkeit. Für eine sozialwissenschaftlich fundierte arbeitsweltliche Beratung wie Coaching und Supervision ist danach zu fragen, welches Menschen- und Weltbild sich hinter der Digitalisierung verbirgt und welche Anliegen sie transportiert. Dazu wird mit den Theorien Michel Foucaults der gegenwärtige Diskurs auf Steuerungslogiken und Machtverhältnisse hin kritisch analysiert. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die Digitalisierung das "Zeitalter der Gouvernementalität" (Foucault) festigt: Humanistisch geprägte Werte und Ziele wie Reflexion, Anerkennung und Selbsterkenntnis treten in den Hintergrund, während die Nutzbarmachung und Optimierung des Selbst sowie des Beratungsprozesses wichtiger werden: Beratung will und muss effizienzgetrieben ihre Wirksamkeit evidenzbasiert legitimieren, und Digitalisierung erleichtert dies

A functional perspective on schema-based learning and recognition of novel word associations

This project contains the stimulus materials used in the doctoral thesis "A functional perspective on schema-based learning and recognition of novel word associations." The doctoral thesis consists of 3 experiments. Next to the dissertation publication, the encoding ERP data from Experiment 1 is published in: Meßmer, J. A., Bader, R., & Mecklinger, A. (2021). The more you know: Schema-congruency supports associative encoding of novel compound words. Evidence from event-related potentials. Brain and Cognition, 155, 105813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2021.105813 A (journal article) manuscript on the recognition ERP data is currently under review. In this manuscript, those data are reported in Experiment 1. This manuscript also contains Experiment 3 of the doctoral thesis, which refers to Experiment 2 in the article manuscript

Schema-Congruency Supports the Formation of Unitized Representations: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials.

The goal of the current project was to investigate whether schema-congruency enables unitization of novel noun-noun compound words, resulting in absolute familiarity-based recognition. This project consists of two experiments: Experiment 1 is an EEG study. Here, participants incidentally learned 240 novel noun-noun compound words, together with a preceding (schema-)congruent or neutral definition. In a subsequent recognition memory test, participants were shown original (intact), recombined and yet unpresented new compound words and had to classify them as (intact) old, recombined or new. For this experiment, EEG and behavioral raw data are provided together with exported mean amplitudes for the time windows reported in the paper (citation appended below). To comply with data protection regulations, raw data were modified in that any personal data (including demographics and recording date) were removed. Please refer to the respective readme-File for more information on this. Experiment 2 is a behavioral study. Learning was as in Experiment 1 with slight modifications in trial procedures. However, the recognition memory test comprised intact, recombined and semantically related lure compound words and participants had to classify each word as old (intact) or new (recombined and semantically related lures). The folder for Experiment 2 contains behavioral data. To comply with data protection regulations, raw data were modified in that any personal data (including demographics and recording date) were removed. Please refer to the respective readme-File for more information on this

Schema-congruency supports the formation of unitized representations: Evidence from event-related potentials

The main goal of the present study was to investigate whether schema-based encoding of novel word pairs (i.e., novel compound words) supports the formation of unitized representations and thus, associative familiarity based recognition. We report two experiments that both comprise an incidental learning task, in which novel noun-noun compound words were presented in semantically congruent contexts, enabling schema-supported processing of both constituents, contrasted with a schema-neutral condition. In Experiment 1, the effects of schema congruency on memory performance were larger for associative memory performance than for item memory performance in a memory test in which intact, recombined, and new compound words had to be discriminated. This supports the view that schema congruency boosts associative memory by promoting uniti zation. When contrasting event-related potentials (ERPs) for hits with correct rejections or associative misses, an N400 attenuation effect (520–676 ms) indicating absolute familiarity was present in the congruent condition, but not in the neutral condition. In line with this, a direct comparison of ERPs on hits across conditions revealed more positive waveforms in the congruent than in the neutral condition. This suggests that absolute familiarity contributes to associative recognition memory when schema-supported processing is established. In Experiment 2, we tested whether schema congruency enables the formation of semantically overlapping representations. Therefore, we included semantically similar lure compound words in the test phase and compared false alarm rates to these lures across conditions. In line with our hypothesis, we found higher false alarm rates in the congruent as compared to the neutral condition. In conclusion, we provide converging evidence for the view that schema congruency enables the formation of unitized representations and supports familiarity-based memory retrieval

Suppression of apoptosis by glucocorticoids in glomerular endothelial cells: effects on proapoptotic pathways

1. Tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α)- and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced apoptosis of bovine glomerular endothelial cells is now recognized as an important part in the pathogenesis of glomerulonephritis characterized by early mitochondrial cytochrome c release, mitochondrial permeability transition, Bak protein upregulation, Bcl-X(L) protein downregulation and caspase-3 activation. 2. Co-treatment of cells with 10 nM dexamethasone and TNF-α or LPS blocked roughly 90% of apoptotic cell death in glomerular endothelial cells. The action of glucocorticoids could be documented in that they prevented all apoptotic markers such as DNA laddering, DNA fragmentation measured by the diphenylamine assay as well as morphological alterations. 3. To mechanistically elucidate the action of glucocorticoids we evaluated whether glucocorticoids elicit a time-dependent effect. For dexamethasone, to maximally inhibit DNA fragmentation a preincubation period was not required. Even if dexamethasone was supplemented 6 h following TNF-α or LPS we observed a maximal inhibitory effect. 4. Concerning its influence on TNF-α and LPS signal transduction, we found that dexamethasone only partially prevented cytochrome-c-release as a first sign of apoptotic cell death but efficiently blocked mitochondrial permeability transition. Moreover, TNF-α- and LPS-induced Bak upregulation, Bcl-X(L)-downregulation, and the activation of caspase-3-like proteases, measured fluorometrically using DEVD-AMC and PARP cleavage, were efficiently blocked by dexamethasone. 5. We postulate that glucocorticoids exert their inhibitory action upstream of the terminal death pathways but downstream of primary receptor mediated signals by blocking pro-apoptotic signals pre- and/or post cytochrome c release and mitochondrial signalling