Kaiserslautern - Fachbereich Sozialwissenschaften
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Light is an essential aspect of daily life, exerting a profound influence on various physiological and behavioral processes, including circadian rhythms, alertness, cognition, mood, and behavior. Technological advances, particularly the widespread adoption of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), have significantly accelerated the impact of lighting on the human experience. With the increasing global accessibility to electric and modern lighting systems, there is a pressing need to scientifically investigate the human-centered effects of lighting for the billions of people worldwide who encounter natural and electric lighting in their daily lives. Extensive interdisciplinary research across fields such as physics, engineering, psychology, medicine, business administration, and architecture has explored the biological and psychological effects of lighting, underscoring the immense potential for further advancements in this domain. Notably, innovative lighting technologies and strategies hold tremendous promise in enhancing human health, performance, and overall well-being.
Beyond physical spaces, three-dimensional virtual environments, including metaverse platforms, are becoming increasingly important. Simulated lighting in virtual spaces can have visual and non-visual effects on users. As technological progress and digitalization extend globally, more individuals will be exposed to virtual lighting scenarios. Consequently, exploring the human-centered lighting effects in virtual environments offers a compelling opportunity to improve the quality of user experiences. This thesis demonstrates the adaptability of established measurement methods from physical illumination and perception research for virtual environments.
This thesis comprises three parts. The first part reviews the current state of research on lighting and its influences on humans, examines research methods in lighting research, and identifies research gaps. The second part investigates the effects of lighting on complex emotional and behavioral constructs, specifically conflict handling. Elaborate laboratory experiments explore lighting as an independent variable, including realistic correlated color temperature (CCT) levels and enhanced CCT changes. Statistical analyses provide in-depth examination and critical discussion of the effects. The third part explores lighting in virtual spaces, considering literature, methodological approaches, and challenges. Two studies investigate visual and non-visual effects, and preferences in virtual environment design. Comparative analysis of the data yields implications for research and practice, including the interdisciplinary perspective of a novel approach called human-centric virtual lighting (HCVL).
In conclusion, this thesis comprehensively explores the impact of lighting on the human experience in both physical spaces and virtual environments. By addressing research gaps and employing contemporary methodologies, the findings contribute to our understanding of the effects of lighting on humans. Furthermore, the implications for research and practice offer valuable insights for the development of innovative lighting technologies and strategies aimed at enhancing the well-being and experiences of individuals worldwide. This work highlights the relevance of interdisciplinary research involving fields such as architecture, business management, event management, computer science, design, engineering, ergonomics, lighting research, medicine, physics, and psychology in advancing our understanding of visual and non-visual lighting effects.
The association between social origin and educational attainment has been repeatedly confirmed and studied in social science research. Much of the international comparative research to date has shown that countries differ in the extent of educational inequality. This research suggests that the institutional design of the education system can affect multiple dimensions of educational inequality, such as school performance and educational decisions. In addition to international comparative research, other research also suggests that institutional characteristics moderate the link between social origin and educational inequality. Thus, the institutional features of the education system provide opportunities for policy interventions to influence the relationship between social origin and educational inequality and to reduce educational inequalities. The literature examines and discusses various institutional characteristics of the education system for their respective effects on or associations to educational inequalities. In this respect, tracking is also an institutional characteristic that has been studied repeatedly and could be an important link between social origin and education. Tracking is the practice of separating students by performance. This separation can occur between schools or within schools. Thus, students are placed in a particular school type (between-school tracking) or class (within-school tracking) based on their performance. National and international research demonstrate the importance of tracking in relation to the emergence of educational inequalities. In this context, previous research has often shown that early and strict tracking leads to greater educational inequality. However, there is also research that finds no effects from tracking or even inequality-reducing effects from early and strict tracking. Against this background, further research on the associations with - and effects of - tracking, including under different settings and contexts, is important for a better understanding of tracking and may be particularly interesting for the German education system. This is because, apart from some deviations, the German education system is characterized by an early and strict separation of students into different school types in secondary education. Over the years, there have been many different educational reforms in Germany with different scopes, goals, and at different phases in the education system. The fact that the federal states in Germany can decide independently on education policy (Kulturhoheit der Länder - Cultural sovereignty of the states) means that they partially developed in different directions. The following contribution is therefore limited to three selected aspects of tracking in the education systems of the federal states in Germany and its influences on features of educational inequality: integrated comprehensive schools, timing of tracking, and strictness of tracking.
The testing effect describes the finding that retrieval practice compared to study practice enhances memory performance. Prior evidence consistently demonstrates that this effect can be further boosted by providing feedback after retrieval attempts (test-potentiated encoding, TPE). The present PhD thesis was aimed at investigating the neural processes during memory retrieval underlying the beneficial effect of additional performance feedback beyond the benefits of only adding correct answer feedback. Three studies were conducted and behavioral as well as neural correlates (collected with electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging) of feedback learning were examined.
Demonstrating perception without visual awareness: Double dissociations between priming and masking
(2022)
A double dissociation impressively demonstrates that visual perception and visual awareness can be independent of each other and do not have to rely on the same source of information (T. Schmidt & Vorberg, 2006). Traditionally, an indirect measure of stimulus processing and a direct measure of visual awareness are compared (dissociation paradigm or classic dissociation paradigm, Erdelyi, 1986; formally described by Reingold & Merikle, 1988; Merikle & Reingold, 1990; Reingold, 2004). If both measures exhibit opposite time courses, a double dissociation is demonstrated. One tool that is well suited to measure stimulus processing as fast visuomotor response activation is the response priming method (Klotz & Neumann, 1999; Klotz & Wolff, 1995; see also F. Schmidt et al., 2011; Vorberg et al., 2003). Typically, observers perform speeded responses to a target stimulus preceded by a prime stimulus, which can trigger the same motor response by sharing consistent features (e.g., shape) or different responses due to inconsistent features. While consistent features cause speeded motor responses, inconsistent trials can induce response conflicts and result in slowed responses. These response time differences describe the response priming effect (Klotz & Neumann, 1999; Klotz & Wolff, 1995; see also F. Schmidt et al., 2011; Vorberg et al., 2003). The theoretical background of this method forms the Rapid-Chase Theory (T. Schmidt et al., 2006, 2011; see also T. Schmidt, 2014), which assumes that priming is based on neuronal feedforward processing within the visuomotor system. Lamme and Roelfsema (2000; see also Lamme, 2010) claim that this feedforward processing does not generate visual awareness because neuronal feedback and recurrent processes are needed. Fascinatingly, while prime visibility can be manipulated by visual masking techniques (Breitmeyer & Öğmen, 2006), priming effects can still increase over time. Masking effects are used as a direct measure of prime awareness. Based on their time course, type-A and type-B masking functions are distinguished (Breitmeyer & Öğmen, 2006; see also Albrecht & Mattler, 2010, 2012, 2016). Type-A masking is most commonly shown with a typically increasing function over time. In contrast, type-B masking functions are rarely observed, which demonstrate a decreasing or u-shaped time course. This masking type is usually only found under metacontrast backward masking (Breitmeyer & Öğmen, 2006; see also Albrecht & Mattler, 2010, 2012, 2016). While priming effects are expected to increase over time by Rapid-Chase Theory (T. Schmidt et al., 2006, 2011; see also T. Schmidt, 2014), the masking effect can show an opposite trend with a decreasing or u-shaped type-B masking curve, forming a double dissociation.
In empirical practice, double dissociations are a rarity, while historically simple dissociations have been the favored data pattern to demonstrate perception without awareness, despite suffering from statistical measurement problems (T. Schmidt & Vorberg, 2006). Motivated by this shortcoming, I aim to demonstrate that a double dissociation is the most powerful and convincing data pattern, which provides evidence that visual perception does not necessarily generate visual awareness, since both processes are based on different neuronal mechanisms. I investigated which experimental conditions allow for a double dissociation between priming and prime awareness. The first set of experiments demonstrated that a double-dissociated pattern between priming and masking can be induced artificially, and that the technique of induced dissociations is of general utility. The second set of experiments used two awareness measures (objective vs. subjective) and a response priming task in various combinations, resulting in different task settings (single-, dual-, triple tasks). The experiments revealed that some task types constitute an unfavorable experimental environment that can prevent a double dissociation from occurring naturally, especially when a pure feedforward processing of the stimuli seems to be disturbed. The present work provides further important findings. First, stimulus perception and stimulus awareness show a general dissociability in most of the participants, supporting the idea that different neuronal processes are responsible for this kind of data pattern. Second, any direct awareness measure (no matter whether objective or subjective) is highly observer-dependent, requiring the individual analysis at the level of single participants. Third, a deep analysis of priming effects at the micro level (e.g., checking for fast errors) can provide further insights regarding information processing of different visual stimuli (e.g., shape vs. color) and under changing experimental conditions (e.g. single- vs. triple tasks).
The ability to categorize is a fundamental cognitive skill for animals, including human beings. Our lives would be utterly confusing without categories. We would feel overwhelmed or miss out on important aspects of our environment if we would perceive every single entity as one-of-a-kind. Therefore, categorization is of great importance for perception, learning, remembering, decision making, performing an action, certain aspects of social interaction, and reasoning. The seemingly effortless and instantaneous ability to transform sensory information into meaningful categories determines the success for interacting with our environment. However, the apparent ease with which we use categorization and categories conceals the complexity of the underlying brain processing that makes categorization and categorical representations possible. Therefore, the question arises: how are categorical information encoded and represented in the brain?
The present work investigates the role of higher education experience in the process of students’ adult identity formation. In the broadest sense, adult identity is “seeing oneself as an adult” (Macmillan, 2007: 20), and it lays in the core of intensive processes of personal identity formation in the years following adolescence, which are for an increasing number of youth over the past decades spent in higher education. Approaches to adulthood in prior studies reveal ongoing discussions and attempts at re-conceptualisation against changing conditions and regimes of transition to adulthood. Traditionally, the so-called “objective markers” of adulthood have dominated the discourses for a long time, emphasising role transitions and demographic features as criteria for adulthood. The new research venues adding biographical approaches and subjective experiences reveal significance of inner, psychological processes of becoming an adult. However, the problem of the role of higher education in the process of students’ adult identity has not been fully illuminated thus far. The reason for this might be sought within the domain of disciplinary orientation of the field of higher education and Educational Sciences.
Higher education research focuses on the overall, “grand” effects of education, while traditional Educational Sciences have not been showing much interest in higher education topics. Substantial work has been produced from developmental sciences, psychology in particular, which has revealed an intricate forest of today’s adulthood and conditions for its attainment, leaving open a whole set of educational, social, economic, cultural antecedents, correlates and experiences affecting transition to adulthood. Besides, as analyses presented in Chapter 2 show, students’ position in dominant discourses marked by political and economic imperatives is marginal. Their experiences and voices are in a sense excluded, making it almost impossible to infer on actual students’ personal benefits of the higher education process.
The theoretical framework for this research consists of Erikson’s (Erikson, 1959; 1963; 1968) positions on human development in post-adolescent years, and McAdams’s model of narrative identity (1988; 2011; 2018), which also arose from Eriksonian tradition. Psychosocial theory (Erikson, 1959; 1963; 1968) assumes that social institutions provide structure and guidance to personal development, whereby they create a niche for psychosocial moratorium enabling youth a period of “identity work” before taking on long-term adult commitments. Research over recent decades reporting that higher education provides opportunities for students’ self-growth, exploration and resolving key identity questions in a variety of fields (e.g., Adams and Fitch, 1983; Arnett, 2004a; Berman, Kennerley, Kennerley, 2008; Mayhew, Rockenbach, Bowman, Seifert, Wolniak, Pascarella, Terenzin, 2016) supports such theoretical stances. The present research intends to extend existing knowledge raising the central question: What role of higher education experience students perceive in their adult identity formation?
The empirical part reports on biographical research into senior year students’ lived experiences of their developmental path and their meaning to the higher education process. Students’ experiences are approached using the qualitative technique of problem-centred interviewing (PCI), which helps focus participants’ narration on the researcher’s interest and subsequent in-depth analysis of collected experiences. In total, 40 senior year students coming from diverse backgrounds were interviewed. Data were analysed in Atlas.ti software, which enabled the coding system’s better organization and browsing through transcripts. The qualitative analysis process consisted of both inductive and deductive approaches, wherein open and thematic coding techniques were performed interchangeably.
Research findings indicate that in certain groups of students – but not in all – higher education experience facilitates and enriches the process of adult identity formation granting orientation and guidelines. Students identify experiences with the highest adult identity formational potential organised in the four broad categories: relationships with teachers and peers, respectively, teaching approach and study material, and extra-curricular activities. Based on the obtained findings, four patterns of thinking about the role of higher education in students’ adult identity formation have been identified: generator of adult identity formation, a safe-zone for exploration processes, interim phase leading to adulthood, and higher education suspending adult identity formation. This formed the basis for constructing the four student types; proactive, explorer, comfort-zone and atypical student. Research findings give the rationale for rethinking the educative potential of higher education in terms of its relevance for diverse students personally – for their self-growth and forming their personal identities, in addition to the professional ones.
Die Anwendung von tragbare Sensorik im Bereich der Bewegungsanalyse ist mittlerweile zu einem zentralen Bestandteil in der Medizin und im Sport geworden. In den letzten Jahren befinden sich vor allem Inertiale Messeinheiten (IMU) auf dem Vormarsch. Durch die Fusion mehrerer Sensoren erlauben es IMU Systeme komplexe Informationen wie etwa Gelenkwinkel und spatio-temporale Parameter (STP) zu gewinnen. Viele der heute verfügbaren IMU Systeme befinden sich in der Entwicklungsphase und wurden noch nicht adäquat für den klinischen oder den sportspezifischen Einsatz auf Validität und Reliabilität getestet. Dieses Prozedere ist nach wissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten unerlässlich bevor ein System zur biomechanischen Analyse herangezogen und basierend auf dessen Ergebnissen etwa klinische Entscheidungen getroffen werden können. Folglich wurde in der vorliegenden Arbeit ein neu entwickeltes IMU System, dass, basierend auf Akzelerometer und Gyroskop Daten, spatio-temporale Gangparameter und Gelenkswinkel der unteren Extremität berechnet, hinsichtlich dieser Kriterien evaluiert. Zu diesem Zweck wurden mit Hilfe dieses IMU Systems Daten von unterschiedlich dynamischen Bewegungen in zwei verschiedenen Probandengruppen, einer gesunden, jungen Gruppe und einer Gruppe mit Patienten nach totaler Hüftarthroplastik (THA), aufgenommen. Daraus wurden die 3D Winkel des Hüft-, Knie- und Sprunggelenks sowie die globale Bewegung des Beckens berechnet. Weiter wurden gangspezifische STP, z.B. Schrittlänge, Schreitlänge, Kadenz, berechnet. Aber auch STP die typischerweise nur mit alternativen Systemen zuverlässig zu messen sind, z.B. Spurbreite und Durchschwungbreite, wurden erhoben. Die Ergebnisse aus dem IMU System wurden gegen ein etabliertes Referenzsystem im Bereich der Bewegungsanalyse, in Form eines markerbasierten stereophotogrammetrischen Systems, verglichen. Die vorliegenden Ergebnisse zeigen in beiden Gruppen eine starke Korrelation zwischen den Systemen in den Gelenkwinkeln der sagittalen und frontalen Ebene, sowie den STP. Es zeigte sich aber auch, dass die Übereinstimmung des IMU Systems mit dem kamerabasierten System vor allem in den Winkeln der Transversalebene, i.e. Rotationsbewegungen, und hier vor allem im Bereich des Kniegelenks leicht abnimmt. Weiter zeigte sich, dass die Genauigkeit des IMU Systems bei dynamischeren Bewegungen ebenfalls abnimmt. Bezüglich der Test-Retest Reliabilität zeigen die aktuellen Daten eine hohe Verlässlichkeit der Messergebnisse.
In einem zweiten Schritt wurde mit Hilfe der Daten des nun validierten IMU Systems versucht pathologische Gangmuster, in dem konkreten Fall das Gangmuster von Patienten nach THA, von physiologischen zu differenzieren. Hierzu wurde ein Algorithmus des maschinellen Lernens angewandt um an Hand von ausgewählten, klinisch relevanten Parametern eine Klassifikation vorzunehmen. Diese Methode wurde ebenfalls sowohl an Hand von IMU Daten und Daten des Referenzsystems evaluiert. Es zeigte sich kein Unterschied in der Klassifikationsgenauigkeit zwischen den Systemen. Die Genauigkeit, mit der pathologische Gangmuster erkannt wurden, lag in beiden Fällen über 96 %.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt im Detail die Vor- und Nachteile eines neu entwickelten, mobilen IMU Systems, das komplexe Parameter der Kinematik mit hoher Genauigkeit und Verlässlichkeit erfasst. Besonders die erfolgreiche Evaluierung dieses Systems in einer klinisch relevanten Applikation zeigt das große Potential von IMU Systemen in der klinischen Anwendung.
In this dissertation, I will present the studies conducted during my doctoral studies. In spite of a lot of research in the last decades, the complex cognitive processes underlying human memory are not fully unraveled. Furthermore, the development of neuroscientific methods like functional mag-netic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERPs) have further build a founda-tion for new insights. Naturally, the utilization of these techniques led to further adaptation of both these techniques and the paradigms in which they have been employed. This can be observed in the research literature on episodic memory retrieval. Familiarity and recollection, have been found to be the chief factors at play during memory retrieval. The two processes have been thoroughly characterized in several studies and reviews (e.g., Mecklinger, 2000; Rugg & Curran, 2007; Yonelinas, 2002; Zimmer & Ecker, 2010), yet there are still open questions that have to be ad-dressed by researchers in this field (c.f., Leynes, Bruett, Krizan, & Veloso, 2017; MacLeod & Donaldson, 2017).
In order to answer these questions, we conducted several studies during my doctoral studies. In Study 1, we developed a paradigm to investigated episodic memory using ERPs. In the study phase, pictorial stimuli were presented which at test were either perceptually identical, perceptually changed, or entirely new. Data collected from a sample of young adults revealed that the paradigm was suitable to elicit ERP correlates of both familiarity and recollection. As the newly developed paradigm yielded similar results as existing literature, we then applied this paradigm in two devel-opmental populations, second-graders and fifth-graders. According to the ERPs, the younger chil-dren seemed to rely on recollection alone, whereas ERPs of older children suggested the use of familiarity for perceptually identical items and only after intentional encoding. In a follow-up study two years later, we used the results from both studies to only slightly refine the paradigm, again administering it to young adults. In this study, Study 3, we found that ERP correlates were much smaller than in the earlier studies, hence we used a data-driven approach to detect time windows of interest. In spite of the large body of research on episodic memory, these studies serve to demon-strate that episodic memory is a complex interplay of several contributing cognitive processes which need to assessed carefully in order to unravel the key factors at play during familiarity and recollection.
The iterative development and evaluation of the gamified stress management app “Stress-Mentor”
(2020)
The gamification of mHealth applications is a critically discussed topic. On one hand, studies show that gamification can have positive impact on an app’s usability and user experience. Furthermore, evidence grows that gamification can positively influence the regular usage of health apps. On the other hand it is questioned whether gamification is useful for health apps in all contexts, especially regarding stress management. However, to this point few studies investigated the gamification of stress management apps.
This thesis describes the iterative development of the gamified stress management app “Stress-Mentor” and examines whether the implemented gamification concept results in changes in the app’s usage behavior, as well as in usability and user experience ratings.
The results outline how the users’ involvement in “Stress-Mentor’s” development through different studies influenced the app’s design and helped to identify necessary improvements. The thesis also shows that users who received a gamified app version used the app more frequently than users of a non-gamified control group.
While gamification of stress management is critically discussed, it was positively received by the users of “Stress-Mentor” throughout the app’s development. The results also showed that gamification can have positive effects on the usage behavior of a stress management app and therefore, results in an increased exposure to the app’s content. Moreover, an expert study outlined the applicability of “Stress-Mentor’s” concept for other health contexts.
Nowadays a large part of communication is taking place on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, where messages often include multimedia contents (e.g., images, GIFs or videos). Since such messages are in digital form, computers can in principle process them in order to make our lives more convenient and help us overcome arising issues. However, these goals require the ability to capture what these messages mean to us, that is, how we interpret them from our own subjective points of view. Thus, the main goal of this dissertation is to advance a machine's ability to interpret social media contents in a more natural, subjective way.
To this end, three research questions are addressed. The first question aims at answering "How to model human interpretation for machine learning?" We describe a way of modeling interpretation which allows for analyzing single or multiple ways of interpretation of both humans and computer models within the same theoretic framework. In a comprehensive survey we collect various possibilities for such a computational analysis. Particularly interesting are machine learning approaches where a single neural network learns multiple ways of interpretation. For example, a neural network can be trained to predict user-specific movie ratings from movie features and user ID, and can then be analyzed to understand how users rate movies. This is a promising direction, as neural networks are capable of learning complex patterns. However, how analysis results depend on network architecture is a largely unexplored topic. For the example of movie ratings, we show that the way of combining information for prediction can affect both prediction performance and what the network learns about the various ways of interpretation (corresponding to users).
Since some application-specific details for dealing with human interpretation only become visible when going deeper into particular use-cases, the other two research questions of this dissertation are concerned with two selected application domains: Subjective visual interpretation and gang violence prevention. The first application study deals with subjectivity that comes from personal attitudes and aims at answering "How can we predict subjective image interpretation one would expect from the general public on photo-sharing platforms such as Flickr?" The predictions in this case take the form of subjective concepts or phrases. Our study on gang violence prevention is more community-centered and considers the question "How can we automatically detect tweets of gang members which could potentially lead to violence?" There, the psychosocial codes aggression, loss and substance use serve as proxy to estimate the subjective implications of online messages.
In these two distinct application domains, we develop novel machine learning models for predicting subjective interpretations of images or tweets with images, respectively. In the process of building these detection tools, we also create three different datasets which we share with the research community. Furthermore, we see that some domains such as Chicago gangs require special care due to high vulnerability of involved users. This motivated us to establish and describe an in-depth collaboration between social work researchers and computer scientists. As machine learning is incorporating more and more subjective components and gaining societal impact, we have good reason to believe that similar collaborations between the humanities and computer science will become increasingly necessary to advance the field in an ethical way.