Younger and older adults' cognitive and physical functioning in a virtual reality age manipulation

Objectives: Age group stereotypes (AGS), especially those targeting old age, affect an individual's behavior and long-term cognitive and physiological functioning. Conventional paradigms investigating the related mechanisms lack validity and stability. Our novel approach for the activation of self-relevant AGS uses a virtual reality (VR) ageing experience, measuring relevant effects on performance parameters. Methods: In a between-subjects experimental design, young participants embodied either a younger or older avatar in a 3D virtual environment to capture the effects on physical (Study 1; N = 68) and cognitive performance (Study 2; N = 45). In Study 3 (N = 117), the paradigm was applied to older participants. Results: For the younger participants, embodying older avatars was associated with declines in memory and physical performance when compared to the younger avatar age group. Furthermore, the manipulations' main effects were moderated by negative explicit AGS that matched the respective performance domains. For the older participants, we found no significant performance differences in the two domains investigated. Discussion: The experimental manipulation demonstrated an impact on relevant performance parameters on a motivational and strategic level, especially for strong performance-related AS, but for young participants only. Possible reasons and mechanisms for the differences in younger and older samples' results are discussed

Development as action in changing contexts: perspectives from six countries

"In diesem Artikel werden fünf aktuelle Beiträge besprochen, die sich empirisch mit der Interaktion zwischen wandelnden sozio-historischen Kontexten und der individuellen Anpassung und Entwicklung auseinander setzen. Die Beiträge von John Bynner, Rand Conger und Mitarbeitern, Cigndem Kagitcibasi, Jungsik Kim und Mitarbeitern sowie von Ingrid Schoon werden auf dem Hintergrund eines Modells zur Entwicklung im sozialen Wandel diskutiert. Es wird argumentiert, dass Forschung zum sozialen Wandel den politischen und sozialen Kontext berücksichtigen muss und dass es dabei notwendig ist, die für die Interaktion zwischen Makro und Mikro stehenden Bedingungen zu identifizieren und zu untersuchen. Solche Forschung ist dann nicht nur geeignet um die Disziplin als solche zu bereichern oder um das Modell der Entwicklung im Kontext voranzutreiben. Sie ist auch von Relevanz um sozialpolitische Interventionen in Zeiten des raschen sozialen Wandels zu begründen." (Autorenreferat)"This paper reviews five recent contributions that empirically investigate the interaction between changing socio-historical contexts and individual adaptation and development. The contributions by John Bynner, Rand Conger and colleagues, Cigdem Kagitcibasi, Jungsik Kim and colleagues and Ingrid Schoon are discussed against the backdrop of a generic model of social change and human development. It is argued that research on social change has to consider the larger political and social context and needs to identify and to study conditions that represent the processes of macro-micro-interaction. Such research will not only enrich the scientific inquiry in this field and promote theorizing about development-in-context, but also is of relevance for social policies in times of rapid social change." (author's abstract

Developmental Barriers and the Benefits of Disengagement

This paper analyzes adaptive behavior of individuals who face developmental barriers, i.e., a situation with seriously limited opportunities for primary control or problem-oriented coping. It focuses on coping with demands of social change in the domains of work and family when opportunity structures are limited. Heckhausen's life-span theory of control suggests that if opportunities for primary control are unfavorable, the most adaptive way of coping is to switch to compensatory secondary control strategies of self-protection and disengagement. These strategies are supposed to prevent individuals from repeated experiences of failure and to protect their motivational and emotional resources. It was thus hypothesized that under the condition of a developmental barrier self-protection and disengagement are positively correlated with general and domain-specific measures of satisfaction with life. Furthermore, it was explored whether optimism and involvement in an alternative life domain can promote self-protective strategies and ease disengagement from unattainable demands. These research questions were tested on a sample of N = 806 subjects who reported being particularly confronted with demands of social change. Participants originated from 82 regional units in Western and Eastern Germany for which objective indicators of opportunity structures related to work and family life were collected. Statistical analyses were performed by testing cross-level interactions in mixed-effects models. Results showed positive associations between self-protection or disengagement and measures of satisfaction with life if developmental barriers were high. A sense of optimism and the involvement in an alternative life domain promoted adaptive control strategies and amplified their positive associations with life satisfaction with. These findings support the the life-span theory of control and imply that under certain circumstances giving up may be more adaptive than persistence

On the Development of a Computer-Based Tool for Formative Student Assessment: Epistemological, Methodological, and Practical Issues

Formative assessments in schools have the potential to improve students’ learning outcomes and self-regulation skills; they make learning visible and provide evidence-based guidelines for setting up and pursuing individual learning goals. With the recent introduction of the computer-based formative assessment systems for the educational contexts, there is much hope that such systems will provide teachers and students with valuable information to guide the learning process without taking much time from teaching and learning to spend on generating, evaluating and interpreting assessments. In this paper, we combine the theoretical and applied perspectives by addressing (a) the epistemological aspects of the formative assessment, with an emphasis on data collection, model building, and interpretation; (b) the methodological challenges of providing feedback in the context of instruction in the classroom; and (c) practical requirements for and related challenges of setting up and delivering the assessment system to a large number of students. In the epistemological section, we develop and explicate the interpretive argument of formative assessment and discuss the challenges of obtaining data with high validity. From the methodological perspective, we argue that computer-based formative assessment systems are generally superior to the traditional methods of providing feedback in the classroom, as they better allow supporting inferences of the interpretive argument. In the section on practical requirements, we first introduce an existing computer-based formative assessment system, as a case in point, for discussing related practical challenges. Topics covered in this section comprise the specifications of assessment content, the calibration and maintenance of the item bank, challenges concerning teachers’ and students’ assessment literacy, as well as ethical and data-protection requirements. We conclude with an outlook on possible future directions for computer-based formative assessment systems and the field in general

Digitalization in psychology: A bit of challenge and a byte of success

Digitalization affects research in almost every scientific discipline. This becomes apparent in new approaches of data analysis and management, such as machine learning, but also in new therapeutic approaches using digital and virtual technologies in patient care. Thus, digitalization can be considered a promising area in the field of evidence-based health care. However, a glance at the history of such applications reveals that the interaction between psychology and digital technologies has a long tradition. This perspective gives a brief overview on how digital technologies have emerged into psychological science in the past and what future challenges and opportunities are

Intra-individual stability and assessment of the affective state in a virtual laboratory environment: a feasibility study

While virtual reality (VR) emerges in a variety of research contexts, the effects on behavior and performance caused by VR-based embodiment still lack sufficient evidence of changes in affective state. With this feasibility study, we compared the affective states in both younger and older adults, measured after conventional computer-based tests in real life (RL) and after tests in VR. These assessment tests are spread over five time points, two in RL and three in VR, and the differences between the VR and the RL environment are investigated against the backdrop of two theoretical models of cognitive psychology. Results showed no change in affective state in either age group, switching from a RL to a VR environment. In addition, the elderly did not assess their affective state significantly different than that of the younger control group. In conclusion, lifelike VR environments for cognitive testing and other assessment or training purposes do not seem to lead to any systematic influ ence of affective state compared to RL computer-based assessments, making VR an alternative to conventional methods, for instance for cognitive treatments or preventions. Although the results can only be partially generalized due to a small sample size, they show technical stability and suitability for future use of similar applications

Detecting differential item functioning in 2PL multistage assessments

The detection of differential item functioning is crucial for the psychometric evaluation of multistage tests. This paper discusses five approaches presented in the literature: logistic regression, SIBTEST, analytical score-based tests, bootstrap score-based tests, and permutation score-based tests. First, using an simulation study inspired by a real-life large-scale educational assessment, we compare the five approaches with respect to their type I error rate and their statistical power. Then, we present an application to an empirical data set. We find that all approaches show type I error rates close to the nominal alpha level. Furthermore, all approaches are shown to be sensitive to uniform and non-uniform DIF effects, with the score-based tests showing the highest power

Supervised learning for analysing movement patterns in a virtual reality experiment

The projection into a virtual character and the concomitant illusionary body ownership can lead to transformations of one’s entity. Both during and after the exposure, behavioural and attitudinal changes may occur, depending on the characteristics or stereotypes associated with the embodied avatar. In the present study, we investigated the effects on physical activity when young students experience being old. After assignment (at random) to a young or an older avatar, the participants’ body movements were tracked while performing upper body exercises. We propose and discuss the use of supervised learning procedures to assign these movement patterns to the underlying avatar class in order to detect behavioural differences. This approach can be seen as an alternative to classical feature-wise testing. We found that the classification accuracy was remarkably good for support vector machines with linear kernel and deep learning by convolutional neural networks, when inserting time sub-sequences extracted at random and repeatedly from the original data. For hand movements, associated decision boundaries revealed a higher level of local, vertical positions for the young avatar group, indicating increased agility in their performances. This occurrence held for both guided movements as well as achievement-orientated exercises

Negotiating the demands of active ageing: longitudinal findings from Germany

The challenges of population ageing and globalisation have been addressed by many welfare states in terms of active ageing policies, which in turn confront individuals with new demands such as keeping up to date with technological developments. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how individuals negotiate the demands of active ageing. The outcome variable was change in primary and secondary control strategies with regard to demands of active ageing over the course of one year. In a German sample of N=602 men and women aged 55-75 years, we found a strong preference for engagement with these demands and a low preference for disengagement. Furthermore, a higher load of demands of active ageing was associated with an increase in engagement with these demands. However, when people perceived their everyday surroundings as unfavourable, their disengagement with demands of active ageing increased. Higher internal control beliefs concerning demands of active ageing were associated with an increase in engagement and a decrease in disengagement. We conclude that individuals strengthen their efforts to master demands of active ageing when they believe that they can control them. When the everyday ecology seems unfavourable, though, strategies are preferred that enable people to avoid a presumably lost cas