Ihre Suche

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Seit 70 Jahren beschäftigt sich das international bekannte Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg mit anomalen Phänomenen unserer Alltagswelt wie Gedankenübertragung, Nahtoderfahrungen oder veränderten Bewusstseinszuständen. Es geht nicht allein um die klassischen Felder der Parapsychologie, wie Spukerscheinungen, Telepathie oder Hellsehen, sondern um die Erforschung von bisher nur unzureichend verstandenen Phänomenen an den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Forscher aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beschreiben in leicht verständlicher Form ihre Forschung am Institut.

Several studies investigating psychophysiological correlates of false memories suggest that psychophysiology may provide incremental information to subjectively reported memory. Based on previous findings in a Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, we examined three components of event-related EEG potentials of memory in a misleading information paradigm. 39 participants watched a video that included eight randomized details (e.g., the color of an envelope). After a retention interval of one week, four out of eight details were replaced by misleading details in a narrative text. Afterward, EEG was derived during a recognition test. First, we found that the amplitude at parietal electrodes did not differ between true and false memories. Instead, parietal positivity was more pronounced during yes- compared to no-responses, indicating parietal positivity reflects subjectively reported memory. Second, we found more positive frontal amplitudes associated with false compared to true memories in late time windows. Consequently, our findings indicate that false memories differ from true memories with respect to late frontal activation. In conclusion, we assume that parietal positivity reflects subjectively experienced memory, whereas late frontal activation holds incremental information to the subjectively experienced and reported memory.

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) is a valid method to detect hidden knowledge by means of psychophysiological measures. Concealing information is always a social behavior; yet, the role of social aspects has barely been investigated in recent CIT research favoring standardized, computer-based experiments. Evaluative observation is known to influence social behavior as well as physiological measures; examining the impact of evaluative observation on physiological responding in a CIT is the aim of this study. Sixty-three students completed a mock-crime and then underwent a CIT. In a between-subjects manipulation, half of the participants were observed through a camera and were faced with the real-time video of the experimenter watching them while completing the CIT. The other half completed the CIT without observation and video. Electrodermal activity, respiration line length, phasic heart rate, and finger pulse waveform length were registered. A specific questionnaire captured the individual fear of negative evaluation. Typical differential CIT responses occurred in both groups and with each measure. Contrary to expectations, differential CIT responses did not differ between groups. No modulatory influence of the fear questionnaire score on physiological responding was found. A ceiling effect, involving high attention and high motivation to avoid detection as well as high arousal in both groups due to the CIT procedure per se is discussed as explanation for these results, while the independence of the orienting reflex of social and motivational influence appears less likely in the light of previous literature.

An approach toward detecting hidden knowledge is the Concealed Information Test (CIT). It relies on the memory of crime-relevant information. This study investigated whether its validity is susceptible to memory distortion by misleading information. A misleading information paradigm was employed to distort memory prior to an interrogation with a CIT. Forty-one participants watched a video with specific crime-related information. After a 1-week retention interval, misleading information was introduced. Afterward, a CIT was performed, followed by a threefold memory test. When misleading information was presented, memory performance was reduced, and no physiological response differences between crime-relevant and crime-irrelevant information were found. Without presenting misleading information, physiological responses differed between responses to crime-relevant and crime-irrelevant information. However, responses in all physiological measures also differed between misleading and irrelevant information. The results indicate that the CIT is susceptible to misleading information, which reduces its validity in specific constellations.

The misinformation effect refers to memory impairment that arises after exposure to misleading information (Loftus, 2005, p. 361). The present study focuses on the peripheral psychophysiology of false memories induced in a misleading information paradigm. On the basis of Sokolov's orienting reflex and studies concerning the Concealed Information Test (CIT, Lykken, 1959), the main hypothesis assumes differences between true and false memories in terms of the accompanying autonomic measures. It also is assumed that a cued recall of original information preceding the recollection phase reduces misinformation effects. Seventy-five participants watched a video that included nine randomized details. After a ten-minute retention phase, the subjects read a narrative text. Six out of the nine details were replaced by misleading details. Following this, the participants completed a cued recall task for three of the original items. In a subsequent CIT with truthful answering electrodermal responses, phasic heart rate, respiration, and response behavior were measured. Finally, the level of confidence and source monitoring were assessed. The misinformation effect was replicated with newly developed materials in three recollection tasks. Cued recall had no influence on the misinformation effect. Autonomic measures did not differ between true and false memories in the CIT. Electrodermal responses reflected the subjective importance the participants attributed to details in the source monitoring task. Therefore, electrodermal responses are interpreted as a correlate of subjective remembering in a misinformation paradigm.

INTRODUCTION: Trait sexual motivation defines a psychological construct that reflects the long-lasting degree of motivation for sexual activities, which is assumed to be the result of biological and sociocultural influences. With this definition, it shares commonalities with other sexuality-related constructs like sexual desire, sexual drive, sexual needs, and sexual compulsivity. AIM: The Trait Sexual Motivation Questionnaire (TSMQ) was developed in order to measure trait sexual motivation with its different facets. METHODS: Several steps were conducted: First, items were composed assessing sexual desire, the effort made to gain sex, as well as specific sexual behaviors. Factor analysis of the data of a first sample (n = 256) was conducted. Second, the factor solution was verified by a confirmatory factor analysis in a second sample (n = 498) and construct validity was demonstrated. Third, the temporal stability of the TSMQ was tested in a third study (n = 59). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Questionnaire data. RESULTS: The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that trait sexual motivation is best characterized by four subscales: Solitary Sexuality, Importance of Sex, Seeking Sexual Encounters, and Comparison with Others. It could be shown that the test quality of the questionnaire is high. Most importantly for the trait concept, the retest reliability after 1 year was r = 0.87. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that the TSMQ is indeed a suitable tool for measuring long-lasting sexual motivation with high test quality and high construct validity. A future differentiation between trait and state sexual motivation might be helpful for clinical as well as forensic research.

The study aimed at experimentally investigating whether the human body can anticipate future events under improved methodological conditions. Previous studies have reported contradictory results for the phenomenon typically called presentiment. If the positive findings are accurate, they call into doubt our views about human perception, and if they are inaccurate, a plausible conventional explanation might be based on the experimental design of the previous studies, in which expectation due to item sequences was misinterpreted as presentiment. To address these points, we opted to collect several physiological variables, to test different randomization types and to manipulate subjective significance individually. For the latter, we combined a mock crime scenario, in which participants had to steal specific items, with a concealed information test (CIT), in which the participants had to conceal their knowledge when interrogated about items they had stolen or not stolen. We measured electrodermal activity, respiration, finger pulse, heart rate (HR), and reaction times. The participants (n = 154) were assigned randomly to four different groups. Items presented in the CIT were either drawn with replacement (full) or without replacement (pseudo) and were either presented category-wise (cat) or regardless of categories (nocat). To understand how these item sequences influence expectation and modulate physiological reactions, we compared the groups with respect to effect sizes for stolen vs. not stolen items. Group pseudo_cat yielded the highest effect sizes, and pseudo_nocat yielded the lowest. We could not find any evidence of presentiment but did find evidence of physiological correlates of expectation. Due to the design differing fundamentally from previous studies, these findings do not allow for conclusions on the question whether the expectation bias is being confounded with presentiment.

Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, two major emotion regulation strategies, are differentially related to emotional well-being. The aim of this study was to test the association of individual differences in these two emotion regulation strategies with gray matter volume of brain regions that have been shown to be involved in the regulation of emotions. Based on high-resolution magnetic resonance images of 96 young adults voxel-based morphometry was used to analyze the gray matter volumes of the a priori regions of interest, including amygdala, insula, dorsal anterior cingulate and paracingulate cortex, medial and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and their association with cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression usage as well as neuroticism. A positive association of cognitive reappraisal with right and tendentially left amygdala volume and of neuroticism with left amygdala volume (marginally significant) was found. Expressive suppression was related to dorsal anterior cingulate/paracingulate cortex and medial PFC gray matter volume. The results of this study emphasize the important role of the amygdala in individual differences in cognitive reappraisal usage as well as neuroticism. Additionally, the association of expressive suppression usage with larger volumes of the medial PFC and dorsal anterior/paracingulate cortex underpins the role of these regions in regulating emotion-expressive behavior.