Research has shown that trait affective empathy and empathic accuracy as well as trait affective empathy and eye gaze behaviour are positively correlated. Furthermore, it is known that the eye...Show moreResearch has shown that trait affective empathy and empathic accuracy as well as trait affective empathy and eye gaze behaviour are positively correlated. Furthermore, it is known that the eye region is highly expressive by portraying a wide range of social clues including feelings, expectations and information about interpersonal relationships. It is therefore possible that people who have higher levels of trait affective empathy have higher levels of empathic accuracy because they tend to look more towards the eyes of another person. The current study, therefore, investigates whether eye gaze behaviour mediates the relationship between trait affective empathy and empathic accuracy. A sample of 110 adults filled in the subscale “empathic concern” of the IRI (Davis, 1983) and did a computerized empathic accuracy task inspired by Aan het Rot and Hogenelst (2014) while being eye tracked. Trait affective empathy was found to positively correlate with eye gaze behaviour. Yet, trait affective empathy and empathic accuracy as well as eye gaze behaviour and empathic accuracy were not found to significantly correlate. The primary explanation is therefore that people who have higher levels of trait affective empathy tend to look more towards the eye region, which is in line with the past findings, but are not more empathically accurate. That trait affective empathy and empathic accuracy were not found to correlate is in contrast to past investigations. Alternative explanations, possible threats to validity, suggestions for future investigation and implication for the clinical field are discussed.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
While monitoring eye movements during visual world paradigm studies, earlier research showed that the appropriate second noun phrase (NP2) is anticipated as upcoming referent before this NP is...Show moreWhile monitoring eye movements during visual world paradigm studies, earlier research showed that the appropriate second noun phrase (NP2) is anticipated as upcoming referent before this NP is auditorily encountered, when enough information is available to guide the anticipation process. Anticipatory effects are determined in both SVO-languages (e.g. English) and verb-final languages using case-markers (e.g. Japanese). Dutch lacks case- marking but allows verb-second SVO and verb-final SOV sentences. The aim of this study was to determine whether participants anticipate an upcoming NP2 object in Dutch SVO and SOV sentences. As SOV sentences are embedded clauses that cannot occur on their own, they were preceded by a main clause. Since we wanted to compare sentence constructions that were contentwise as equal as possible we did the same for the main SVO clauses. While linguistically encountering the two preceding main clauses, the different structure and prosody indicated already the word order of the upcoming critical sentence, i.e. SVO or SOV. For the SVO sentences, the preceding main clause, the subject NP1 and the verb provided information for object NP2 anticipation. In the SOV case, the information provided by the subject NP1 becomes extra important, as it was the only linguistic element that could be used as a guider of what element was coming next. To investigate whether the NP1 can lead NP2 anticipation, concrete and abstract NP1s preceded the NP2, such as the abstract NP1 ‘girl’ and the concrete NP1 ‘pilot’. It was hypothesized that if the NP2 was concrete, the lexical semantics of the NP provided enough information to come up with an upcoming NP2 object in SOV sentences, without the need of a verb. Overall, results showed that participants primarily preferred to look at the NP1 image during the spoken sentence. After sentence offset, a wrap-up effect of fixations to the NP2 was determined in all conditions, possibly indicating a late interpretation and integration of the NP2 with the previous constituents. Across all conditions, the NP2 image received proportionally as much fixations as the distractor images until sentence offset. This demonstrates that in both SVO and SOV sentences, upcoming NP2s were not anticipated. A possible explanation is that Dutch listeners are less pro-active anticipators because of the flexibility of Dutch word orders. The anticipatory process becomes too costly as the risk of anticipating upcoming constituents incorrectly is too high.Show less
Begrijpend lezen is een complex proces waarbij een lezer een coherente mentale representatie van de tekst probeert te vormen. Voor het vormen van deze coherente mentale representatie streeft een...Show moreBegrijpend lezen is een complex proces waarbij een lezer een coherente mentale representatie van de tekst probeert te vormen. Voor het vormen van deze coherente mentale representatie streeft een lezer bepaalde normen voor coherentie na: de standards of coherence. In dit onderzoek is onderzocht wat er gebeurt met de standards van een lezer als deze tijdens het lezen cognitief extra wordt belast en hoe dit zich weerspiegelt in het leesproces en het tekstbegrip van de lezer. Daarbij is ook onderzocht welke rol de werkgeheugencapaciteit van een lezer hierbij speelt. De invloed van deze extra cognitieve belasting tijdens het lezen is aan de hand van een oogbewegingsexperiment onderzocht. In totaal deden 24 proefpersonen (17-31 jaar) met een HBO of WO opleidingsniveau mee aan het experiment. In het experiment kregen proefpersonen een duale taak, naast een leestaak moesten zij tegelijkertijd een reactietaak (piepjestaak) uitvoeren. Leesproces is gemeten aan de hand van oogbewegingen (fixaties en saccades) en leestijden. Tekstbegrip is gemeten door een recall en het beantwoorden van open vragen over de tekst. Voor het meten van de werkgeheugencapaciteit is gebruik gemaakt van de Reading Span taak en de Corsi Block-tapping test. Zodra proefpersonen tijdens het lezen cognitief extra werden belast maakten zij meer fixaties, duurden de fixaties langer, maakten zij kortere saccades en was de totale leestijd langer. Op tekstbegrip scoorden zij lager bij extra cognitieve belasting. Proefpersonen met een grotere werkgeheugencapaciteit maakten in vergelijking met proefpersonen met een kleinere werkgeheugencapaciteit meer en langere fixaties bij veel extra cognitieve belasting. Ook hun totale leestijd was in vergelijking langer. Lezers met een grotere werkgeheugencapaciteit hebben niet alleen meer ruimte voor het aanpassen van het leesproces, maar doen dit ook meer. De resultaten uit dit onderzoek lijken aan te geven dat lezers, door bij extra cognitieve belasting hun leesproces binnen hun capaciteiten hierop aan te passen, inderdaad bepaalde standards of coherence na streven.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
open access
2014-08-16T00:00:00Z
The aim of this study was to expand the knowledge about the specific social-emotional difficulties within Klinefelter syndrome (47, XXY) by measuring attention to social cues, emotion recognition...Show moreThe aim of this study was to expand the knowledge about the specific social-emotional difficulties within Klinefelter syndrome (47, XXY) by measuring attention to social cues, emotion recognition skills, empathy and emotional arousal. 14 participants with Klinefelter syndrome (age range 16-56) and 14 control participants (age range 22-60) were included. All participants watched four video clips designed to evoke empathy, and filled out a questionnaire about their own and the main character’s emotions after each video. Furthermore, they completed an emotion recognition task consisting of 80 pictures of faces with a neutral, happy, scared or angry expression. During both tasks eye movements and fixations were measured. Electrocardiogram and skin conductance measurements were done at baseline, during the video clips and during the emotion recognition task. Participants with Klinefelter syndrome had equal emotion recognition scores compared to the control group, but empathy scores were lower for the Klinefelter group. Participants with Klinefelter spent less time fixating on eyes and more time fixating outside the face during the emotion recognition task. No group differences in overall fixation times were found during the videos, but longer fixations on eyes and mouths and shorter on objects predicted better empathy scores. Psychophysiological responses differed between groups during the empathy videos: participants with Klinefelter showed somewhat stronger skin conductance reactions than controls. The current results can contribute to the development of interventions for Klinefelter syndrome. Moreover, the results can give insight into the role of the X-chromosome in the relation between (social) attention processes and social-cognitive functioning.Show less
