Geänderte Inhalte

Abteilung 2: Experimentelle Psychologie

In their natural environments, children usually see several novel objects while they hear the labels for these objects, making it difficult for them to know exactly which objects these words refer to. This referential ambiguity problem can be alleviated through selective attention and inhibitory control because a child who focuses on plausible referents while inhibiting irrelevant ones during object labelling has a higher chance of identifying the intended referent. The present study examined this hypothesis by testing 3.5- to 4.5-year-old children. In particular, we examined the links between children’s word learning (a cross-situational learning task), selective attention (flanker task), inhibitory control (day-night Stroop task) while controlling for working memory (Corsi block task). We found that children learned the novel word-object associations and completed the cognitive control tasks successfully. However, we did not find any association between word learning and cognitive control or memory span. We argue that the lack of a significant association between cognitive control and word learning may be indicative of a more exploratory style of learning in young children.

Background: Anxiety, approach, and avoidance motivation crucially influence mental and physical health, especially when environments are stressful. The interplay between anxiety and behavioral motivation is modulated by multiple individual factors. This proof‐of‐concept study applies graph‐theoretical network analysis to explore complex associations between self‐reported trait anxiety, approach and avoidance motivation, situational anxiety, stress symptoms, perceived threat, perceived positive consequences of approach, and self‐reported avoidance behavior in real‐life threat situations. Methods: A total of 436 participants who were matched on age and gender (218 psychotherapy patients, 218 online‐recruited nonpatients) completed an online survey assessing these factors in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Results and Discussion: The resulting cross‐sectional psychological network revealed a complex pattern with multiple positive (e.g., between trait anxiety, avoidance motivation, and avoidance behavior) and negative associations (e.g., between approach and avoidance motivation). The patient and online subsample networks did not differ significantly, however, descriptive differences may inform future research.