Do You Chill When I Chill? Exploring Strong Emotional Responses to Unfamiliar Musical Traditions

While research suggests that listeners from diverse cultural backgrounds can infer what mood is expressed in a piece from a different culture, no study to date has assessed whether peak emotional responses can also be induced cross-culturally. The chill response in particular has been defined as a sudden increase in emotional arousal elicited by a passage in music. This study addressed the question of whether listeners could experience chills for traditional Chinese music – with which they were either familiar or unfamiliar – as well as for Western classical music – with which all participants were familiar. Chills were measured through self-report and skin conductance while participants listened to pieces selected from each style. In accordance with the hypothesis, there was no significant difference in the number of chills felt in response to both styles of music, regardless of whether participants were familiar or unfamiliar with traditional Chinese music. However, both groups of participants showed significantly fewer chills when listening to scrambled versions of the same pieces, which acted as a control. Scrambled music was also rated as less likable and harder to pay attention to across groups. Overall, pieces that had received higher liking and attention ratings were found to elicit more chills. Thus, even under limited exposure, listeners can experience strong emotional responses to music from an unfamiliar culture as much as listeners familiar with that music. This contrasts with the view that all musical meaning is generated within a culture and suggests instead that there are cross-cultural cues capable of eliciting powerful emotions in people of all backgrounds

Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America

We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 49 individuals forming four parallel time transects in Belize, Brazil, the Central Andes, and the Southern Cone, each dating to at least 9,000 years ago. The common ancestral population radiated rapidly from just one of the two early branches that contributed to Native Americans today. We document two previously unappreciated streams of gene flow between North and South America. One affected the Central Andes by 4,200 years ago, while the other explains an affinity between the oldest North American genome associated with the Clovis culture and the oldest Central and South Americans from Chile, Brazil, and Belize. However, this was not the primary source for later South Americans, as the other ancient individuals derive from lineages without specific affinity to the Clovis-associated genome, suggesting a population replacement that began at least 9,000 years ago and was followed by substantial population continuity in multiple regions

Reading tea leaves worldwide: Decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilization

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy-to-degrade components accumulate during early-stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass-loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early-stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models

Reading tea leaves worldwide: decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass‐loss rate and stabilization

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large‐scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass‐loss rates and stabilization factors of plant‐derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy‐to‐degrade components accumulate during early‐stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass‐loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass‐loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early‐stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models

Syndromspezifische Anpassungen an die Therapie der Wortfindungsstörung bei Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Williams-Beuren-Syndrom

"Bei Menschen mit Williams-Beuren-Syndrom (WBS) werden Wortfindungsstörungen (WFS) ab einem Alter zwischen neun und elf Jahren beobachtet (Rossen et al., 1996). In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Bundesverband Williams-Beuren-Syndrom e.V. wurde die Anwendbarkeit eines sprachtherapeutischen Ansatzes für spezifische Sprachentwicklungsstörungen (sSES) bei Menschen mit WBS und WFS am Logopädischen Institut für Forschung (Lin.For) erprobt. Ziel war es, herauszuarbeiten, ob ein zunächst rein symptomorientiert und nicht syndromspezifisch ausgerichteter Therapieansatz eine Verbesserung der gleichen Symptomatik auch bei Menschen mit WBS leisten kann. An der Therapiestudie nahmen zehn Probanden von 9;8 bis 19;5 Jahren teil. Anschließend an eine Diagnostik wurde die WFS in Anlehnung an das Vorgehen von Beier (2012) nach PLAN (Siegmüller & Kauschke, 2006) behandelt und nach zehn Sitzungen mit einem Post-Test beendet. Zudem wurde die Therapie mit einer Kontrollgruppe (Kinder mit sSES) durchgeführt. In einem Follow- Up wird aktuell die Nachhaltigkeit der Therapie überprüft. Während der Therapiephase erhielten die behandelnden Therapeuten Supervision vom Lin.For. Ergebnisse der Prädiagnostik zeigen, dass die WBS - Probanden weniger Schwierigkeiten im Kurzzeitgedächtnis aufweisen, als im Bereich der phonologischen Bewusstheit (phB). Dieser Bereich zeigte sich auch während der Therapie als Herausforderung. Neben signifikanten Verbesserungen im Benenntempo und der Benenngenauigkeit konnten die phB der Probanden dennoch signifikant verbessert werden; hierzu waren allerdings methodische Anpassungen nötig. Mit, auf das Syndrom angepassten Aufgaben- und Hilfestellungen konnten die Probanden mit WBS die Therapie ebenso schnell abschließen wie die Vergleichskinder mit sSES. Das Vorhandensein des WBS bedeutet demnach nicht grundsätzlich, dass die Therapie der WFS länger dauert als bei Kindern mit sSES, wenn eine syndromspezifische Therapieanpassung erfolgt. Dieses Ergebnis ermöglicht eine Neubetrachtung von Verordnungsmengen und Langzeitbehandlungen von Menschen mit genetischen Syndromen in der sprachtherapeutischen Versorgung.

Information Structure in Language Comprehension: Cognitive Mechanisms Involved in Syntactic, Prosodic and Discourse Focus

Information structure (IS) refers to the organization of new (essential) and given (redundant) information in language. Psycholinguistic theories hold that during comprehension, people infer the timing of the new, important information in order to facilitate processing. Several linguistic cues can be used to track IS and the timing of new information, such as the discourse context, syntactic focus constructions and prosodic focus. Previous studies have explained the effects of IS on language processing through a variety of potential cognitive mechanisms, such as attention, depth of processing, and the interaction of IS with good-enough processing and semantic prediction. However, many of these studies have produced contradictory findings that are hard to reconcile. To date, there is no clear picture of how discourse, syntactic and prosodic focus each contribute to language comprehension. The goal of this dissertation is to begin to disentangle the cognitive mechanisms engaged by IS. Chapter 1 provides an extensive review of literature on IS, from linguistic theories to the psycholinguistic findings supporting different cognitive accounts. Chapter 2 presents an eye-tracking reading study assessing the interaction of syntactic focus with semantic prediction. Chapter 3 describes a self-paced reading replication of the same experiment, with additional analyses revealing the developing effect of syntactic focus over the sentence. Chapter 4 consists of a successful online replication of a foundational study by Cutler and Fodor (1979), which set the stage for this dissertation and much of the literature on IS. Lastly, in Chapter 5 I interpret my findings in the context of the linguistic and cognitive theories reviewed in Chapter 1, and describe two planned follow-up experiments. I conclude with a cognitive view of IS informed by this multidisciplinary literature and by the findings described in this dissertation, and highlight many open questions that will guide my future research and move the study of IS forward

Information Structure in Language Comprehension: Cognitive Mechanisms Involved in Syntactic, Prosodic and Discourse Focus

Information structure (IS) refers to the organization of new (essential) and given (redundant) information in language. Psycholinguistic theories hold that during comprehension, people infer the timing of the new, important information in order to facilitate processing. Several linguistic cues can be used to track IS and the timing of new information, such as the discourse context, syntactic focus constructions and prosodic focus. Previous studies have explained the effects of IS on language processing through a variety of potential cognitive mechanisms, such as attention, depth of processing, and the interaction of IS with good-enough processing and semantic prediction. However, many of these studies have produced contradictory findings that are hard to reconcile. To date, there is no clear picture of how discourse, syntactic and prosodic focus each contribute to language comprehension. The goal of this dissertation is to begin to disentangle the cognitive mechanisms engaged by IS. Chapter 1 provides an extensive review of literature on IS, from linguistic theories to the psycholinguistic findings supporting different cognitive accounts. Chapter 2 presents an eye-tracking reading study assessing the interaction of syntactic focus with semantic prediction. Chapter 3 describes a self-paced reading replication of the same experiment, with additional analyses revealing the developing effect of syntactic focus over the sentence. Chapter 4 consists of a successful online replication of a foundational study by Cutler and Fodor (1979), which set the stage for this dissertation and much of the literature on IS. Lastly, in Chapter 5 I interpret my findings in the context of the linguistic and cognitive theories reviewed in Chapter 1, and describe two planned follow-up experiments. I conclude with a cognitive view of IS informed by this multidisciplinary literature and by the findings described in this dissertation, and highlight many open questions that will guide my future research and move the study of IS forward

Geometrische Ersatzimperfektionen für Tragfähigkeitsnachweise zum Biegedrillknicken von Trägern aus Walzprofilen

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Tragfähigkeit von Stäben mit Biegung und Torsion untersucht und analysiert. Dabei stehen das nichtlineare Tragverhalten und die Stabilitätsgefährdung im Vordergrund. In Anbetracht von Querschnittsgeometrie und Stablänge können verschiedene Versagenskriterien herausgearbeitet und zugeordnet werden. Maßgebliche Einflussfaktoren werden festgelegt und hinsichtlich ihres Einflusses auf das Tragverhalten und die Grenztragfähigkeit beurteilt. Ferner werden für gewalzte I-Profile mit der Stahlgüte S 235 die genauen Grenztragfähigkeiten für biegebeanspruchte und gabelgelagerte Einfeldträger berechnet. Mit deren Kenntnis ist es möglich, die notwendigen Abminderungsfaktoren und geometrischen Ersatzimperfektionen für die Nachweise mit Näherungsverfahren zu ermitteln. In Abhängigkeit der Querschnittsgeometrie und Stablänge werden die Abminderungsfaktoren neu zugeordnet und neue geometrische Ersatzimperfektionen bestimmt