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Die Untersuchung beschäftigt sich mit den Prozessen und Mechanismen, die dem NATO-Beitritt Polens zugrunde liegen, insbesondere mit den Gründen für die Transformation der zivil-militärischen Beziehungen in Polen. Die Demokratisierung der zivil-militärischen Beziehungen war eines der Hauptkriterien für den Beitritt Polens in die NATO. rnVor diesem Hintergrund geht die Arbeit der Frage nach, ob nachzuweisen ist, dass der Einfluss der NATO primär für die Demokratisierung der zivil-militärischen Beziehungen Polens verantwortlich ist. Dabei stützt sich die Arbeit auf den aktuellen Forschungsstand der Theorien internationaler Sozialisation, deren Ziel es ist, die Prozesse und Mechanismen der Normübernahme von Staaten zu erklären. Der theoretische Rahmen wurde in ein Forschungsdesign eingebettet, das vielfältige Methoden für die detaillierte empirische Analyse einbezieht. Ergänzend wurden alternative und ergänzende Erklärungen überprüft, die nicht durch die Theorie abgedeckt werden. Entgegen der vorherrschenden Meinung in der Fachliteratur kommt die Untersuchung zu dem Ergebnis, dass die NATO nicht primär für die Sozialisation und damit Demokratisierung der zivil-militärischen Beziehungen in Polen verantwortlich ist. Polen ist erfolgreich in der Demokratisierung seiner zivil-militärischen Beziehungen, jedoch ist die NATO nicht erfolgreich in der Sozialisation Polens in diesem Bereich, sondern eher darin, den Demokratisierungsprozess in Polen mit Erfahrung und Expertise zu flankieren. Dieser Prozess wurde maßgeblich innenpolitisch und durch Akteure in Polen angestoßen, angetrieben, getragen und schlussendlich entschieden. Obgleich die NATO das Beitrittskriterium vorgab und die polnischen Akteure durchaus begleitete, kann darüber hinaus der Einfluss der NATO als nicht maßgeblich bewertet werden. Im Gegenteil, die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es nicht das Ziel der NATO war, die Prozesse direkt zu beeinflussen oder zu steuern, sondern vielmehr, den Transformationsprozess der zivil-militärischen Beziehungen in Polen, insbesondere die praktische Umsetzung, durch Expertise und Erfahrungen zu begleiten und eigene Lernprozesse anzustoßen.
Die Fragestellung der Dissertation lautet: Welche Rolle spielten die politische Repräsentation, ihr Wandel und die Auseinandersetzung um die Teilhabe an ihr für das Entstehen einer gemeinsamen Vorstellung der Nation? Diese Frage kombiniert ein historisches und ein politikwissenschaftliches Interesse. Auf Seiten der Geschichtswissenschaft ist die Dissertation Teil des Forschungsprojekts "Nationenbildung und Demokratie" an der Universität Luxemburg. Auf Seiten der Politikwissenschaft ist sie im Bereich der Politischen Theorie angesiedelt. Im Anschluss an das abgeschlossene Forschungsprojekt "Formen und Funktionsweisen politischer Repräsentation von Fremden und Armen" im Sonderforschungsbereich 600 an der Universität Trier sind dabei primär repräsentationstheoretische Fragen von Interesse. Das Fallbeispiel Luxemburg erlaubt in diesem Zusammenhang einen neuen Blick auf Probleme, die in der Literatur bislang eher im französischen oder angelsächsischen Kontext diskutiert werden. In Auseinandersetzung mit gängigen Theorien der Nation wird in der Arbeit zunächst argumentiert, dass die Nation weder als ethnische Identität noch als Willenseinheit angemessen verstanden werden kann. Diese Überlegungen münden in die These, dass die erfolgreiche Verhandlung von Konflikten auf einer gemeinsamen politischen Bühne die Vorstellung eines gemeinsamen Schicksals mit erzeugen kann. Diese Vermutung wird in einem zweiten Schritt demokratieheoretisch begründet. Das Volk der modernen Demokratie ist kein einheitliches Subjekt, das einfach an die Stelle des alten Souveräns treten könnte. Zum einen verunmöglicht die Tatsache, dass die Demokratie durch multiple Zeitlichkeiten konstituiert ist, ihre Reduktion auf einen ursprünglichen Moment der Präsenz. Zum anderen ist der Demos selbst von Differenzen durchzogen. Doch indem gesellschaftliche Konflikte auf der Bühne der Macht symbolisch dargestellt werden, verlagert Repräsentation den Konflikt in ein politisches Kontinuum, auf das alle Bürger in gleicher Weise bezogen sind. Die Bürger erfahren, beurteilen und unterstellen sich wechselseitig als Teilnehmer an demselben Gemeinwesen, auch wenn sie unterschiedlicher Meinung sind. Diese These wird in einem dritten Schritt anhand einer Genealogie der verschiedenen Versuche " von Hobbes und Rousseau über Sieyès, Hegel und Proudhon bis zu Carl Schmitt und Hans Kelsen ", den Demos und den korrekten Modus seiner Vergegenwärtigung zu identifizieren, historisch fundiert. Das empirische Fallbeispiel steht im Zentrum des zweiten Teils der Arbeit. Zunächst wird das Entstehen einer landesweiten politischen Öffentlichkeit herausgearbeitet. In der Folge der Protest- und Petitionsbewegung von 1848 wurde das Parlament zur politischen Bühne, auf der vor aller Augen öffentliche Angelegenheiten diskutiert wurden. Die anschließende Entwicklung hin zum allgemeinen Wahlrecht führte zu einem qualitativen Wandel des Politischen. Das Wahlrecht nahm den Charakter eines Rechts an, das jedem Staatsbürger als solchem zustand, die einzig legitime Grenze des neuen Raums der Gleichheit wurde durch die Nation gestiftet. Die vorgestellte Gemeinschaft der Staatsbürger verselbstständigte sich dabei auch gegenüber dem Fürsten und trat zuletzt an dessen Stelle. Statt als über der Gesellschaft und den Bürgern thronende Hüterin der staatlichen Einheit wurde die Monarchie seit 1918 im Namen des Volkswillens begründet. Doch in demselben Augenblick, in dem das Volk als Gemeinschaft der Gleichen zum neuen Souverän erklärt wurde, wurden auch gesellschaftliche Konfliktlinien politisiert und durch ein landesweites Parteiensystem dauerhaft abgebildet. Durch die repräsentative Politisierung des Konflikts wurde die Frage, was denn das Gemeinsame sei, das sich durch die verschiedenen Teilungen hindurch zeige, dramatisiert. Anhand von zwei Fallbeispielen wird in der Arbeit gezeigt, wie auch diejenigen, die sich als Repräsentanten der Arbeiterklasse verstanden, im Kampf um Hegemonie auf eine nationale Rhetorik zurückgriffen und ein Narrativ der Nation als Solidaritätsgemeinschaft entwarfen. Zusammenfassend kommt die Dissertation zum Ergebnis, dass die Erfahrung der Politisierung und der öffentlichen Auseinandersetzung um politische Teilhabe innerhalb bestehender, ursprünglich aber keineswegs national oder demokratisch legitimierter Institutionen maßgeblich dazu beitrug, dass ein großer Teil der Bevölkerung Luxemburgs sich nach und nach als Teil einer vorgestellten Gemeinschaft verstand.
The presented research aims at providing a first empirical investigation on lexical structure in Chinese with appropriate quantitative methods. The research objects contain individual properties of words (part of speech, polyfunctionality, polysemy, word length), the relationships between properties (part of speech and polyfunctionality, polyfunctionality and polysemy, polysemy and word length) and the lexical structure composed by those properties. Some extant hypotheses in QL, such as distributions of polysemy and the relationship between word length and polysemy, are tested on the data of Chinese, which enrich the applicability of the laws with a language not tested yet. Several original hypotheses such as the distribution of polyfunctionality and the relationship between polyfunctionality and polysemy are set up and inspected.
Every day we are exposed to a large set of appetitive food cues, mostly of high caloric, high carbohydrate content. Environmental factors like food cue exposition can impact eating behavior, by triggering anticipatory endocrinal responses and reinforcing the reward value of food. Additionally, it has been shown that eating behavior is largely influence by neuroendocrine factors. Energy homeostasis is of great importance for survival in all animal species. It is challenged under the state of food deprivation which is considered to be a metabolic stressor. Interestingly, the systems regulating stress and food intake share neural circuits. Adrenal glucocorticoids, as cortisol, and the pancreatic hormone insulin have been shown to be crucial to maintain catabolic and anabolic balance. Cortisol and insulin can cross the blood-brain barrier and interact with receptors distributed throughout the brain, influencing appetite and eating behavior. At the same time, these hormones have an important impact on the stress response. The aim of the current work is to broaden the knowledge on reward related food cue processing. With that purpose, we studied how food cue processing is influenced by food deprivation in women (in different phases of the menstrual cycle) and men. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of the stress/metabolic hormones, insulin and cortisol, at neural sites important for energy metabolism and in the processing of visual food cues. The Chapter I of this thesis details the underlying mechanisms of the startle response and its application in the investigation of food cue processing. Moreover, it describes the effects of food deprivation and of the stress-metabolic hormones insulin and cortisol in reward related processing of food cues. It explains the rationale for the studies presented in Chapter II-IV and describes their main findings. A general discussion of the results and recommendations for future research is given. In the study described in Chapter II, startle methodology was used to study the impact of food deprivation in the processing of reward related food cues. Women in different phases of the menstrual cycle and men were studied, in order to address potential effects of sex and menstrual cycle. All participants were studied either satiated or food deprived. Food deprivation provoked enhanced acoustic startle (ASR) response during foreground presentation of visual food cues. Sex and menstrual cycle did not influence this effect. The startle pattern towards food cues during fasting can be explained by a frustrative nonreward effect (FNR), driven by the impossibility to consume the exposed food. In Chapter III, a study is described, which was carried out to explore the central effects of insulin and cortisol, using continuous arterial spin labeling to map cerebral blood flow patterns. Following standardized periods of fasting, male participants received either intranasal insulin, oral cortisol, both, or placebo. Intranasal insulin increased resting regional cerebral blood flow in the putamen and insular cortex, structures that are involved in the regulation of eating behavior. Neither cortisol nor interaction effects were found. These results demonstrate that insulin exerts an action in metabolic centers during resting state, which is not affected by glucocorticoids. The study described in Chapter IV uses a similar pharmacological manipulation as the one presented in Chapter III, while assessing processing of reward related food cues through the startle paradigm validated in Chapter II. A sample of men was studied during short-term food deprivation. Considering the importance of both cortisol and insulin in glucose metabolism, food pictures were divided by glycemic index. Cortisol administration enhanced ASR during foreground presentation of "high glycemic" food pictures. This result suggests that cortisol provokes an increase in reward value of high glycemic food cues, which is congruent with previous research on stress and food consumption. This thesis gives support to the FNR hypothesis towards food cues during states of deprivation. Furthermore, it highlights the potential effects of stress related hormones in metabolism-connected neuronal structures, and in the reward related mechanisms of food cue processing. In a society marked by increased food exposure and availability, alongside with increased stress, it is important to better understand the impact of food exposition and its interaction with relevant hormones. This thesis contributes to the knowledge in this field. More research in this direction is needed.
Veterinary antibiotics are released to arable agricultural soil together with manure, including nutrients, organic matter, and microorganisms. Previously, the effects of antibiotic-contaminated manure on soil microbial community activity, function, structure, and resistance have been reported under controlled experimental conditions. This thesis further evaluated the antimicrobial effects as influenced by different manure compositions, soil microhabitats and moisture regimes, plants, and different distances to roots. Microbial community responses were determined by phenotypic phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) and genotypic 16S rRNA gene fragment analyses. (Chapter 3) demonstrates that medication of pigs with difloxacin (DIF) and sulfadiazine (SDZ) alters the molecular-chemical pattern of slurries, confounding the detection of a consistent antibiotic effect in bulk and respective rhizosphere soil. This was evaluated in a 63-day mesocosm experiment considering typical agricultural manure applications to maize planted soil. Fecal bacteria were detected even 14 days after manure amendment. Manure of DIF- and SDZ-medicated pigs clearly affected the microbial community in mesocosm bulk and rhizosphere soil, temporarily matching antibiotic effects reported in previous studies. (Chapter 4) discusses the influences of different soil microhabitats on antibiotic fate and the effects on soil microflora. Total extractable SDZ was more than two-fold larger in earthworm burrows and soil macroaggregate surfaces compared to bulk soil or the interior fraction of aggregates. Furthermore, soil microbial communities were affected by a combination of soil microhabitat and treatment, which was reflected by different structural and functional community responses to SDZ in laboratory and under field conditions. (Chapter 5) evaluates if SDZ effects on microbial communities are more pronounced in soils which undergo periodic changes in soil moisture by drying-rewetting dynamics compared to soils without such moisture fluctuations. This was tested in a 49-day climate chamber soil pot experiment grown with grass. Manure-amended pots without or with SDZ contamination were incubated under a dynamic moisture regime with repeated drying and rewetting changes of more than twenty percent maximum water holding capacity compared to the control moisture regime. The microbial biomass, but less pronouncedly the community structure, showed an increased responsiveness to the combined stress of SDZ and dynamic moisture changes in the laboratory. Similar responses were documented under field conditions. (Chapter 6) indicated adverse effects of SDZ on root geotropism, number of lateral roots, and water uptake by plants in a 40-day greenhouse experiment with willow and maize grown in soil with environmentally relevant and worst-case antibiotic contamination. (Chapter 7) showed that the associated microbial community responded to a combination of plant species, distance to the root, and antibiotic spiking concentration. In highly antibiotic-contaminated soils, the structural and functional responses of the microbial community were dominated by indirect antibiotic effects on plants and roots.
In splitting theory of locally convex spaces we investigate evaluable characterizations of the pairs (E, X) of locally convex spaces such that each exact sequence 0 -> X -> G -> E -> 0 of locally convex spaces splits, i.e. either X -> G has a continuous linear left inverse or G -> E has a continuous linear right inverse. In the thesis at hand we deal with splitting of short exact sequences of so-called PLH spaces, which are defined as projective limits of strongly reduced spectra of strong duals of Fréchet-Hilbert spaces. This class of locally convex spaces contains most of the spaces of interest for application in the theory of partial differential operators as the space of Schwartz distributions , the space of real analytic functions and various spaces of ultradifferentiable functions and ultradistributions. It also contains non-Schwartz spaces as B(2,k,loc)(Ω) and spaces of smooth and square integrable functions that are not covered by the current theory for PLS spaces. We prove a complete characterizations of the above problem in the case of X being a PLH space and E either being a Fréchet-Hilbert space or a strong dual of one by conditions of type (T ). To this end, we establish the full homological toolbox of Yoneda Ext functors in exact categories for the category of PLH spaces including the long exact sequence, which in particular involves a thorough discussion of the proper concept of exactness. Furthermore, we exhibit the connection to the parameter dependence problem via the Hilbert tensor product for hilbertizable locally convex spaces. We show that the Hilbert tensor product of two PLH spaces is again a PLH space which in particular proves the positive answer to Grothendieck- problème des topologies. In addition to that we give a complete characterization of the vanishing of the first derivative of the functor proj for tensorized PLH spectra if one of the PLH spaces E and X meets some nuclearity assumptions. To apply our results to concrete cases we establish sufficient conditions of (DN)-(Ω) type and apply them to the parameter dependence problem for partial differential operators with constant coefficients on B(2,k,loc)(Ω) spaces as well as to the smooth and square integrable parameter dependence problem. Concluding we give a complete solution of all the problems under consideration for PLH spaces of Köthe type.
Hartmann von Aue hat das Präteritum des Verbs "komen" in seinem Frühwerk 'Erec' und noch am Anfang seines letzten Werks 'Iwein' häufig, nach dessen ersten tausend Versen aber kaum mehr gereimt. Vom Standpunkt der einschlägigen Forschung aus soll Hartmann Reime mit seinen alemannischen Formen "kam", "kâmen" und "kæme(n)" nun aus Rücksicht auf denjenigen Dialektraum gemieden haben, in dem die schwer zu reimenden Formen "kom", "kâmen" und "kæme(n)" heimisch waren und den man somit am ehesten als den bairischen identifiziert hat. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit diesem für den Etablierungsprozess der Literatursprache um 1200 relevanten Befund der traditionellen mittelhochdeutschen Reimuntersuchungen. Nach einem Referat über die bisherigen Forschungsergebnisse wird zunächst beobachtet, dass der späte Hartmann im Unterschied zu seinen beiden ebenfalls das Präteritum von "komen" vereinzelt reimenden Vergleichsgrößen Wolfram von Eschenbach und Wirnt von Grafenberg die entsprechenden Reimtypen "-am", "-âmen" und "-æme(n)" überhaupt nur selten oder nie benutzt hat. Der folgende Hauptteil behandelt das Vorkommen der präteritalen Formen von "komen" und ihrer gängigen Reimpartner (vor allem der entsprechenden Formen weiterer drei Verben derselben Ablautreihe "nëmen", "vernëmen" und "zëmen" und von Adjektiven auf "-sam") in den Werken der drei Dichter sowie in vier Werken von Hartmanns noch bedenkenlos "quam" / "kam" usw. reimenden Vorgängern und Zeitgenossen ('Straßburger Alexander', Heinrichs von Veldeke 'Eneit', Ulrichs von Zatzikhoven 'Lanzelet' und Gottfrieds von Straßburg 'Tristan') ausführlich, indem u. a. die Verhältnisse im Versinnern mit berücksichtigt werden. Die Untersuchungen haben ergeben, dass das Seltenerwerden oder Verschwinden der besagten Reimtypen beim späten Hartmann mit der Umsetzung seines Stilideals wie der prosaischen Wortstellung nur bis zu einem gewissen Grade begründet werden kann: Nach den festgestellten Verhältnissen hat er offenbar tatsächlich das Reimen mit seinen "kam"-Formen gemieden, und zwar wahrscheinlich erst allmählich. Das zentrale Ergebnis der vorliegenden Arbeit besteht in der durch eine Reihe von Häufigkeitstabellen und durch eine umfassende Belegpräsentation in den Anhängen abgesicherten Beobachtung, dass der späte Hartmann dem neuen Trend zum Nichtreimen der präteritalen Formen von "komen" vorausgegangen ist, sein eigentlich damit gut vereinbares neues Stilideal aber, vermutlich wegen des überwältigenden Einflusses Wolframs, ohne unmittelbare Nachfolge geblieben ist.
Stress has been considered one of the most relevant factors promoting aggressive behavior. Animal and human pharmacological studies revealed the stress hormones corticosterone in rodents and cortisol in humans to constitute a particularly important neuroendocrine determinate in facilitating aggression and beyond that, assumedly in its continuation and escalation. Moreover, cortisol-induced alterations of social information processing, as well as of cognitive control processes, have been hypothesized as possible influencing factors in the stress-aggression link. So far, the immediate impact of a preceding stressor and thereby stress-induced rise of cortisol on aggressive behavior as well as higher-order cognitive control processes and social information processing in this context have gone mostly unheeded. The present thesis aimed to extend the hitherto findings of stress and aggression in this regard. For this purpose two psychophysiological studies with healthy adults were carried out, both using the socially evaluated-cold pressor test as an acute stress induction. Additionally to behavioral data and subjective reports, event related potentials were measured and acute levels of salivary cortisol were collected on the basis of which stressed participants were divided into cortisol-responders and "nonresponders. Study 1 examined the impact of acute stress-induced cortisol increase on inhibitory control and its neural correlates. 41 male participants were randomly assigned to the stress procedure or to a non-stressful control condition. Beforehand and afterwards, participants performed a Go Nogo task with visual letters to measure response inhibition. The effect of acute stress-induced cortisol increase on covert and overt aggressive behavior and on the processing of provoking stimuli within the aggressive encounter was investigated in study 2. Moreover, this experiment examined the combined impact of stress and aggression on ensuing affective information processing. 71 male and female participants were either exposed to the stress or to the control condition. Following this, half of each group received high or low levels of provocation during the Taylor Aggression Paradigm. At the end of the experiment, a passive viewing paradigm with affective pictures depicting positive, negative, or aggressive scenes with either humans or objects was realized. The results revealed that men were not affected by a stress-induced rise in cortisol on a behavioral level, showing neither impaired response inhibition nor enhanced aggressive behavior. In contrast, women showed enhanced overt and covert aggressive behavior under a surge of endogenous cortisol, confirming previous results, albeit only in case of high provocation and only up to the level of the control group. Unlike this rather moderate impact on behavior, cortisol showed a distinct impact on neural correlates of information processing throughout inhibitory control, aggression-eliciting stimuli, and emotional pictures for both men and women. At this, stress-induced increase of cortisol resulted in enhanced N2 amplitudes to Go stimuli, whereas P2 amplitudes to both and N2 to Nogo amplitudes retained unchanged, indicating an overcorrection and caution of the response activation in favor of successful inhibitory control. The processing of aggression-eliciting stimuli during the aggressive encounter was complexly altered by stress differently for women and men. Under increased cortisol levels, the frontal or parietal P3 amplitude patterns were either diminished or reversed in the case of high provocation compared to the control group and to cortisol-nonresponders, indicating a desensitization towards aggression-eliciting stimuli in males, but a more elaborate processing of those in women. Moreover, stress-induced cortisol and provocation jointly altered subsequent affective information processing at early as well as later stages of the information processing stream. Again, increased levels of cortisol led opposite directed amplitudes in the case of high provocation relative to the control group and cortisol-nonresponders, with enhanced N2 amplitudes in men and reduced P3 and LPP amplitudes in men and women for all affective pictures, suggesting initially enhanced emotional reactivity in men, but ensuing reduced motivational attention and enhanced emotion regulation in both, men and women. As a result, these present findings confirm the relevance of HPA activity in the elicitation and persistence of human aggressive behavior. Moreover, they reveal the significance of compensatory and emotion regulatory strategies and mechanisms in response to stress and provocation, indorsing the relevance of social information and cognitive control processes. Still, more research is needed to clarify the conditions which lead to the facilitation of aggression and by which compensatory mechanisms this is prevented.
Attitudes are "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology" (Allport, 1935, p. 798). This outstanding position of the attitude concept in social cognitive research is not only reflected in the innumerous studies focusing on this concept but also in the huge number of theoretical approaches that have been put forth since then. Yet, it is still an open question, what attitudes actually are. That is, the question of how attitude objects are represented in memory cannot be unequivocally answered until now (e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Gawronski, 2007; Pratkanis, 1989, Chapter 4). In particular, researchers strongly differ with respect to their assumptions on the content, format and structural nature of attitude representations (Ferguson & Fukukura, 2012). This prevailing uncertainty on what actually constitutes our likes and dislikes is strongly dovetailed with the question of which processes result in the formation of these representations. In recent years, this issue has mainly been addressed in evaluative conditioning research (EC). In a standard EC-paradigm a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) is repeatedly paired with an affective stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US). The pairing of stimuli then typically results in changes in the evaluation of the CS corresponding to the evaluative response of the US (De Houwer, Baeyens, & Field, 2005). This experimental approach on the formation of attitudes has primarily been concerned with the question of how the representations underlying our attitudes are formed. However, which processes operate on the formation of such an attitude representation is not yet understood (Jones, Olson, & Fazio, 2010; Walther, Nagengast, & Trasselli, 2005). Indeed, there are several ideas on how CS-US pairs might be encoded in memory. Notwithstanding the importance of these theoretical ideas, looking at the existing empirical work within the research area of EC (for reviews see Hofmann, De Houwer, Perugini, Baeyens, & Crombez, 2010; De Houwer, Thomas, & Baeyens, 2001) leaves one with the impression that scientists have skipped the basic processes. Basic processes hereby especially refer to the attentional processes being involved in the encoding of CSs and USs as well as the relation between them. Against the background of this huge gap in current research on attitude formation, the focus of this thesis will be to highlight the contribution of selective attention processes to a better understanding of the representation underlying our likes and dislikes. In particular, the present thesis considers the role of selective attention processes for the solution of the representation issue from three different perspectives. Before illustrating these different perspectives, Chapter 1 is meant to envision the omnipresence of the representation problem in current theoretical as well as empirical work on evaluative conditioning. Likewise, it emphasizes the critical role of selective attention processes for the representation question in classical conditioning and how this knowledge might be used to put forth the uniqueness of evaluative conditioning as compared to classical conditioning. Chapter 2 then considers the differential influence of attentional resources and goal-directed attention on attitude learning. The primary objective of the presented experiment was thereby to investigate whether attentional resources and goal-directed attention exert their influence on EC via changes in the encoding of CS-US relations in memory (i.e., contingency memory). Taking the findings from this experiment into account, Chapter 3 focuses on the selective processing of the US relative to the CS. In particular, the two experiments presented in this chapter were meant to explore the moderating influence of the selective processing of the US in its relation to the CS on EC. In Chapter 4 the important role of the encoding of the US in relation to the CS, as outlined in Chapter 3, is illuminated in the context of different retrieval processes. Against the background of the findings from the two presented experiments, the interplay between the encoding of CS-US contingencies and the moderation of EC via different retrieval processes will be discussed. Finally, a general discussion of the findings, their theoretical implications and future research lines will be outlined in Chapter 5.
The influence of affect on vocal parameters has been well investigated in speech portrayed by actors, but little is known about affect expression in more natural or authentic speech behavior. This is partly due to the difficulty of generating speech samples that represent authentic expression of speaker affect. The present work investigates the influence of speaker affect on the vocal fundamental frequency (F0) in comparatively authentic speech samples. Three well-documented psychophysiological research methods were applied for the induction of affective states in German native speakers in order to obtain speech samples with authentic affect expression: the Cold Pressor Test (CPT), the Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT) and the presentation of slides from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS). The here reported results show that the influence of affect on F0 is differentially modulated by psychophysiological processes as well as socio-cultural influences. They also indicate that this approach may be useful for future research and further to gain a deeper understanding of authentic vocal affect expression. Moreover, F0 may constitute an additional non-invasive, easy to obtain measure for the established psychophysiological research methodology.