Die Einbindung privater Fachunternehmen in die kommunale Abwasserentsorgung (Erfahrungen bei der Ausschreibung von Betreibermodellen in Süd-Brandenburg)

Pri hospodárení s komunálnymi odpadovými vodami môu by uplatòované rôzne organizaèné modely. Pretoe táto oblas moných modelov patrí pod¾a zákona do kompetencie miest a obcí, ako nosite¾ov úloh, tieto musia nájs pre takúto èinnos vhodný model. Jedným z nich je prevádzkový model, ktorý môe ma rôzne modifikácie. V poslednom období sa uplatòujú modely, v ktorých sa na rieení tak projektových, ako aj prevádzkových problémov zúèastòujú súkromné odborné spoloènosti. V èlánku sú prezentované praktické skúsenosti spoloènosti SHW Wassertechnik GmbH pri hospodárení s komunálnymi odpadovými vodami v junom Brandenburgsku

Category learning in the color-word contingency learning paradigm

International audienceIn the typical color-word contingency learning paradigm, participants respond to the print color of words where each word is presented most often in one color. Learning is indicated by faster and more accurate responses when a word is presented in its usual color, relative to another color. To eliminate the possibility that this effect is driven exclusively by the familiarity of item-specific word-color pairings, we examine whether contingency learning effects can be observed also when colors are related to categories of words rather than to individual words. To this end, the reported experiments used three categories of words (animals, verbs, and professions) that were each predictive of one color. Importantly, each individual word was presented only once, thus eliminating individual color-word contingencies. Nevertheless, for the first time, a category-based contingency effect was observed, with faster and more accurate responses when a category item was presented in the color in which most of the other items of that category were presented. This finding helps to constrain episodic learning models and sets the stage for new research on category-based contingency learning

Editorial: The locus of the Stroop effect

International audienceEditorial on the Research Topic The Locus of the Stroop Effect One of the famous Monty Python's Holy Grail scenes pictures the Knights of the Round attempting to cross the Bridge of Death. After seeing one of his fellow knights failing to answer a challenging question posed by the Bridge keeper and being cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril, Sir Galahad nervously approaches the Bridge keeper who asks his name, his quest and.. . .his favorite color. Relieved, he answers with ease before being struck by a sense of dread after saying the color "blue." The problem, he realizes as he plummets into the gorge, is that his favorite color is in fact yellow.. . Even though individuals failing the requirements of the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935) are spared the dread Sir Galahad experienced, they are often heard self-correcting with some sense of consternation: "blue.. . .no yellow! Arghh!". The Stroop task requires participants to respond quickly to the color a word is printed in whilst at the same time ignoring the meaning of the word itself. The cost of failing to ignore the word is not a plunge into the Gorge of Eternal Peril, but is instead an incorrect response, or more commonly, longer response times compared to when naming the print color of a word that is not color-related (e.g., club in yellow). However, almost 30 years after the publication of MacLeod's (1991) seminal review paper, the locus of this so-called Stroop effect remains unclear. The aim of the present Research Topic was to address this still outstanding question

Response Modality and the Stroop Task: Are there phonological Stroop effects with manual responses?

A long-standing debate in the Stroop literature concerns whether the way we respond to the color dimension determines how we process the irrelevant dimension, or whether word processing is purely stimulus driven. Models and findings in the Stroop literature differ in their predictions about how response modes (e.g., responding manually vs. vocally) affect how the irrelevant word is processed (i.e., phonologically, semantically) and the interference and facilitation that results, with some predicting qualitatively different Stroop effects. Here, we investigated whether response mode modifies phonological facilitation produced by the irrelevant word. In a fully within-subject design, we sought evidence for the use of a serial print-to-speech prelexical phonological processing route when using manual and vocal responses by testing for facilitating effects of phonological overlap between the irrelevant word and the color name at the initial and final phoneme positions. The results showed phoneme overlap leads to facilitation with both response modes, a result that is inconsistent with qualitative differences between the two response modes

The loci of stroop interference and facilitation effects with manual and vocal responses

© 2019 Augustinova, Parris and Ferrand. Several accounts of the Stroop task assume that the Stroop interference effect has several distinct loci (as opposed to a single response locus). The present study was designed to explore whether this is the case with both manual and vocal responses. To this end, we used an extended form of the so-called semantic Stroop paradigm (Augustinova, Silvert, Spatola, & Ferrand, 2018a) that successfully distinguishes between the contribution of the task vs. semantic vs. response conflict to overall Stroop interference. In line with past findings, the results of Experiment 1 yielded an important response modality effect: the magnitude of Stroop interference was substantially larger when vocal responses were used (as opposed to keypresses). Moreover, the present findings show that the response modality effect is specifically due to the fact that Stroop interference observed with vocal responses results from the significant contribution of task, semantic and response conflicts, whereas only semantic and response conflict clearly significantly contribute to Stroop interference observed with manual responses (no significant task conflict was observed). This exact pattern was replicated in Experiment 2. Also, and importantly, Experiment 2 also investigated whether and how the response modality effect affects Stroop facilitation. The results showed that the magnitude of Stroop facilitation was also larger when vocal as opposed to manual responses were used. This was due to the fact that semantic and response facilitation contributed to the overall Stroop facilitation observed with vocal responses, but surprisingly only semantic facilitation contributed with manual responses (no response facilitation was observed). We discuss these results in terms of quantitative rather than qualitative differences in processing between vocal and manual Stroop tasks, within the framework of an integrative multi-stage account of Stroop interference (Augustinova et al., 2018a)

Task conflict in the Stroop task: When Stroop interference decreases as Stroop facilitation increases in a low task conflict context.

In the present study participants completed two blocks of the Stroop task, one in which the response-stimulus interval (RSI) was 3500 ms and one in which RSI was 200 ms. It was expected that, in line with previous research, the shorter RSI would induce a low Task Conflict context by increasing focus on the color identification goal in the Stroop task and lead to a novel finding of an increase in facilitation and simultaneous decrease in interference. Such a finding would be problematic for models of Stroop effects that predict these indices of performance should be affected in tandem. A crossover interaction is reported supporting these predictions. As predicted, the shorter RSI resulted in incongruent and congruent trial reaction times (RTs) decreasing relative to a static neutral baseline condition; hence interference decreased as facilitation increased. An explanatory model (expanding on the work of Goldfarb and Henik, 2007) is presented that: (1) Shows how under certain conditions the predictions from single mechanism models hold true (i.e., when Task conflict is held constant); (2) Shows how it is possible that interference can be affected by an experimental manipulation that leaves facilitation apparently untouched; and (3) Predicts that facilitation cannot be independently affected by an experimental manipulation

Comparing Word Processing Times in Naming, Lexical Decision, and Progressive Demasking: Evidence from Chronolex

We report performance measures for lexical decision (LD), word naming (NMG), and progressive demasking (PDM) for a large sample of monosyllabic monomorphemic French words (N = 1,482). We compare the tasks and also examine the impact of word length, word frequency, initial phoneme, orthographic and phonological distance to neighbors, age-of-acquisition, and subjective frequency. Our results show that objective word frequency is by far the most important variable to predict reaction times in LD. For word naming, it is the first phoneme. PDM was more influenced by a semantic variable (word imageability) than LD, but was also affected to a much greater extent by perceptual variables (word length, first phoneme/letters). This may reduce its usefulness as a psycholinguistic word recognition task

Do Task Sets Compete in the Stroop Task and Other Selective Attention Paradigms?

Task sets have been argued to play an important role in cognition, giving rise to the notions of needing to switch between active task sets and to control competing task sets in selective attention tasks. For example, it has been argued that Stroop interference results from two categories of conflict: informational and task (set) conflict. Informational conflict arises from processing the word and is resolved by a late selection mechanism; task conflict arises when two task sets (i.e., word reading and colour identification) compete for activation and can be construed as involving an early selection mechanism. However, recent work has argued that task set control might not be needed to explain all of the switching cost in task switching studies. Here we consider whether task conflict plays a role in selective attention tasks. In particular, we consider whether S-R associations, which lead to informational conflict, are enough on their own to explain findings attributed to task set conflict. We review and critically evaluate both the findings that provided the original impetus for proposing task conflict in selective attention tasks and more recent findings reporting negative facilitation (longer RTs to congruent than to neutral stimuli) – a unique marker of task conflict. We then provide a tentative alternative account of negative facilitation based on poor control over informational conflict and apply it to a number of paradigms including the Colour-Object interference and Affordances tasks. It is argued that invoking competition between task sets in selective attention tasks might not be necessary

Onset complexity and task conflict in the Stroop task.

The present study examined the extent to which a key marker of task conflict, negative facilitation, is modified by onset complexity. Negative facilitation, slower RTs to congruent stimuli than to non-lexical neutral stimuli in the Stroop task, is thought to reflect competition between the task sets of colour naming and word reading in the Stroop task (also known as task conflict). That is, it reflects competition between whole task sets, over and above any competition between specific responses associated with a stimulus. An alternative account of negative facilitation argues that it reflects the specific phonological processing differences between pronounceable (e.g., congruent) and non-pronounceable (e.g., xxxx) stimuli that are magnified by the specific task contexts that produce negative facilitation (a mostly non-lexical trial context). Here we used onset complexity to manipulate pronounceability of the irrelevant words in the Stroop task to test this alternative account. However, before applying manipulations that produce negative facilitation, we initially tested whether there was an effect of onset complexity on Stroop task performance. The results from Experiment 1 (and 3) showed that complex onsets led to larger positive facilitation and congruency effects relative to simple onsets, but did not modify incongruent or neutral word RTs. Experiment 2 directly tested whether onset complexity modifies negative facilitation and provided strong evidence for no effect of onset complexity, contrary to the alternative account predictions. The implications of the results for task conflict theory, selective attention and phonological processing in the manual response Stroop task are discussed

The effect of high-frequency rTMS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on the resolution of response, semantic and task conflict in the colour-word Stroop task.

Previous work investigating the effect of rTMS of left Dorso-Lateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) on Stroop task performance reports no changes to the Stroop effect but reduced reaction times on both congruent and incongruent trials relative to sham stimulation; an effect attributed to an enhanced attentional (or task) set for colour classification. The present study tested this account by investigating whether, relative to vertex stimulation, rTMS of the left DLPFC modifies task conflict, a form of conflict that arises when task sets for colour classification and word reading compete, given that this particular type of conflict would be reduced by an enhanced task set for colour classification. Furthermore, the present study included measures of other forms of conflict present in the Stroop task (response and semantic conflict), the potential effects on which would have been hidden in previous studies employing only incongruent and congruent stimuli. Our data showed that left DLPFC stimulation had no effect on the magnitude of task conflict, nor did it affect response, semantic or overall conflict (where the null is supported by sensitive Bayes Factors in most cases). However, consistent with previous research left DLPFC stimulation had the general effect of reducing reaction times. We therefore show for the first time that relative to real vertex stimulation left DLPFC stimulation does not modify Stroop interference. Alternative accounts of the role of the left DLPFC in Stroop task performance in which it either modifies response thresholds or facilitates responding by keeping the correct response keys active in working memory are discusse