University of Konstanz
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Auf dem Abstellgleis? : Zum Zusammenhang zwischen Ungleichheitswahrnehmungen und politischer Beteiligung
No full textDas vorliegende Policy Paper befasst sich mit dem Zusammenhang zwischen Wahrnehmungen politischer Selbstwirksamkeit und ökonomischer Ungleichheit. Die aktuellen Daten des Konstanzer Ungleichheitsbarometers zeigen, dass viele Menschen ihre Einflussmöglichkeiten auf die Politik und auch die Responsivität der Politik gegenüber ihren Bedürfnissen als gering einschätzen: sie sehen sich damit quasi auf dem politischen Abstellgleis. In der Untersuchung werden des Weiteren klare statistische Zusammenhänge zwischen den Wahrnehmungen der politischen Selbstwirksamkeit und der Wahrnehmung von ökonomischer Ungleichheit deutlich. Wir schließen mit konkreten Handlungsempfehlungen, wie politische Partizipation (wieder) gestärkt werden könnte.publishe
The changing nature of future Arctic marine heatwaves and its potential impacts on the ecosystem
No full textMarine heatwaves (MHWs), defined as extreme ocean warming episodes, have strengthened over the past decades. High-resolution climate models improve understanding of MHWs under global warming, but such events in the future Arctic are currently overlooked. In a high-resolution climate model, we find Arctic MHWs intensify on orders of magnitude during the warming twenty-first century, following sea ice retreat. However, with little sea ice coverage, strong interannual variability emerges, which could surpass the amplitude of former intensification. Furthermore, the enhancement of MHWs correlates with an order of magnitude increase in the rate of change in the temperature anomaly. Additionally, MHWs are found to be accompanied by stratification enhancement, which could surpass interannual variability of future stratification. Such extreme temperature fluctuations combined with stratification enhancement suggest major challenges for Arctic ecosystems, and may negatively impact food webs through direct physiological temperature effects, as well as indirectly through nutrient supply and taxonomic shifts.publishe
The Effect of one-week spinach and NBS superfood supplementation on interleukin-6, superoxide dismutase, and malondialdehyde levels after repeated bouts of wingate test in trained men
No full textpublishe
A Wizard of Oz Study of Guidance Strategies and Dynamics
No full textCo-adaptive guidance in visual analytics is a mixed-initiative process in which both the user and the system work together to support each other in solving a given analysis task. While previous studies show the effectiveness of guidance, the impact of guidance design decisions (e.g., the suggestions' timing, contextualization, or adaptation) and misguidance often remain under-investigated. To investigate these aspects and examine a variety of guidance interaction patterns in a realistic analysis scenario, we present a Wizard of Oz (WOz) study setup in which pairs of participants take the user's and the system's roles, respectively. As users perform their analysis tasks, they are observed by wizards who provide just-in-time guidance as they see fit. Moreover, we designed the study so that wizards would occasionally and unknowingly provide misguidance during the analysis to investigate the users' confidence in guidance systems. We recruited two groups of participants (12 wizards and 12 users) and paired each participant with two from the other group, obtaining 48 observations. We report insights on interactions between users and wizards. By analyzing these interaction dynamics and the guidance strategies the wizards apply, we derive recommendations for implementing and evaluating future co-adaptive guidance systems.publishe
Learners’ Acceptance of ChatGPT in School
No full textThe rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT (GPT-4) could transform teaching and learning. Yet, integrating these tools requires insight into what drives students to adopt them. Research on ChatGPT acceptance has so far focused on university settings, leaving school contexts underexplored. This study addresses the gap by surveying 506 upper secondary students in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2). Performance expectancy, habit and hedonic motivation emerged as strong predictors of behavioral intention to use ChatGPT for school purposes. Adding personality traits and personal values such as conscientiousness or preference for challenge raised the model’s explanatory power only marginally. The findings suggest that students’ readiness to employ ChatGPT reflects the anticipated learning benefits and enjoyment rather than the avoidance of effort. The original UTAUT2 is therefore sufficient to explain students’ acceptance of ChatGPT in school contexts. The results could inform educators and policy makers aiming to foster the reflective and effective use of generative AI in instruction.publishe
Evidence That Wild Salmonids Seek Cool Water Refuges to Reduce Parasite Virulence : The Proliferative Kidney Disease Case
No full text1. Conservation of cold-stenothermic freshwater fish populations relies on local management to mitigate effects of climate change. With limited opportunity to migrate, freshwater fish are increasingly exposed to excessive warmth during summer heat waves and are susceptible to temperature-associated diseases. As a case example, a significant proportion of salmonids are infected with a salmonid parasite that causes proliferative kidney disease (PKD), which is associated with high mortality when water temperatures remain above 15°C for several weeks. We hypothesised that wild trout would actively migrate to cooler water when temperatures exceeded such temperature levels. Such ‘chill behaviour’ would allow infected fish to survive periods of intense heat by providing a means of controlling the virulence of PKD in diseased fish.
2. Three locations were selected at the confluence of a stream with summer water temperatures of 15°C–24°C and a 1°C–7°C cooler tributary. The selected streams are known to harbour PKD. In these streams, wild brown trout were individually tagged with passive integrated transponders (PIT). Fish movements at the confluence were monitored from summer to autumn. Fish were recaptured in late autumn and checked for PKD and its causative parasite using inspection of the kidney and qPCR.
3. Movement tracking revealed that the greater the temperature difference between the main stream and the cooler tributary, the more likely fish were to migrate to the cooler water downstream of the tributary and/or into the cooler tributary. Independent of this temperature effect, the level of PKD infection was found to be positively associated with trout migration from warm into cooler water.
4. The study represents the first report of a ‘behavioural chill’ response in diseased wild fish. Such a response is in contrast and opposite to the more widely known ‘behavioural fever’ response. We suggest that this chill behavioural response is important for surviving PKD during periods of warm weather.
5. Our results strongly underscore the importance of protecting accessible cool-water refuges in river systems for the conservation of healthy cold-stenothermic fish populations in the face of progressing climate change.publishe
Is It Me or the Train Moving? : Humans Resolve Sensory Conflicts with a Nonlinear Feedback Mechanism in Balance Control
No full textHumans use multiple sensory systems to estimate body orientation in space. Sensory contributions change depending on context. A predominant concept for the underlying multisensory integration (MSI) is the linear summation of weighted inputs from individual sensory systems. Changes of sensory contributions are typically attributed to some mechanism explicitly adjusting weighting factors. We provide evidence for a conceptually different mechanism that performs a multisensory correction if the reference of a sensory input moves in space without the need to explicitly change sensory weights. The correction is based on a reconstruction of the sensory reference frame motion (RFM) and automatically corrects erroneous inputs, e.g., when looking at a moving train. The proposed RFM estimator contains a nonlinear dead zone that blocks corrections at slow velocities. We first demonstrate that this mechanism accounts for the apparent changes in sensory contributions. Second, using a balance control model, we show predictions of specific distortions in body sway responses to perturbations caused by this nonlinearity. Experiments measuring sway responses of 24 subjects (13 female, 11 male) to visual scene movements confirmed these predictions. The findings indicate that the central nervous system resolves sensory conflicts by an internal reconstruction of the cause of the conflict. Thus, the mechanism links the concept of causal inference to shifts in sensory contributions, providing a cohesive picture of the MSI for the estimation of body orientation in space.publishe
Heating reduction as collective action : Impact on attitudes, behavior and energy consumption in a Polish field experiment
No full textHeating and hot water usage account for nearly 80% of household energy consumption in the European Union. To reach the EU Green Deal goals, new strategies to reduce heat energy consumption are indispensable. However, research on reducing energy consumption concentrates either on technical building interventions without considerations of people’s behavior, or psychological interventions with no technical interference. Such interventions can be promising, but their true potential for scaling up can only be realized by testing approaches that integrate behavioral and technical solutions in tandem rather than in isolation. In this research, we study a mix of psychological and technical interventions targeting heating and hot water demand among students in Polish university dormitories. We evaluate effects on building energy consumption, behavioral spillovers and on social beliefs and attitudes in a pre-post quasi-experimental field study in three student dormitories. Our findings reveal that the most effective approaches to yield energy savings were a direct, collectively framed request to students to reduce thermostat settings for the environment, and an automated technical adjustment of the heating curve temperature. Conversely, interventions targeting domestic hot water had unintended negative consequences, including increased energy use and negative spillovers, such as higher water consumption. Further, we find that informing students about their active, collective participation had a positive impact on perceived social norms. Our findings highlight the importance of trialing interventions in controlled real-world settings to understand the interplay between technical systems, behaviors, and social impacts to enable scalable, evidence-based policies driving an effective and sustainable energy transition.publishe
Investigating the role of lexical stress and its relationship to phonological abilities in developmental dyslexia : Experimental evidence from Italian
No full textBackground: Phonological deficits are among the most consistently reported impairments in Developmental Dyslexia (DD). However, their nature and underlying factors remain debated. One proposed explanation isreduced acoustic sensitivity to lexical stress, which could hinder phonological encoding and phoneme access. Yet, empirical findings remain inconsistent, likely due to methodological variability across studies. Given the frequent cognitive deficits in DD, an alternative explanation suggests that cognitive mediation may play a central role, with phonological impairments arising from deficient cognitive mechanisms that restrict access to otherwise spared phonological representations. Understanding the interplay between phonological processing and lexical stress sensitivity is crucial for clinical advancements, particularly in both diagnosis and intervention, and provides key insights into the relationship between spoken and written language.
Objective: This thesis investigated whether lexical stress processing is impaired in DD, leading to disruptions in segmental processing and phoneme access, or whether phonological deficits stem from cognitive mediation deficits that restrict access to intact phonological representations. The thesis focused on the Italian language, which is more transparent and exhibits distinct acoustic cues underlying lexical stress compared to English—a language that has been more extensively examined in the dyslexia literature. This contrast offered an opportunity to evaluate the cross-linguistic generalizability of findings related to dyslexia-associated deficits in lexical stress processing and phonological processing.
Method: To account for potential developmental compensation mechanisms and age-related changes associated with adulthood in dyslexia, we recruited two groups differing in their proximity to adulthood. A total of 40 adolescents with DD and 30 typically developing (TD) adolescents, along with 28 children with DD and 29 TD children, completed a phoneme monitoring task to assess implicit acoustic sensitivity to prominence in phoneme identification. Adolescents completed the task first in Study 1, while children were administered a simplified version in Study 3. Lexical stress sensitivity was further assessed in adolescents in Study 2 using a sensorimotor synchronization task, in which participants were instructed to tap in alignment with the perceived beat of spoken sentences. In contrast, children’s lexical stress sensitivity was evaluated in Study 4 through a perceptual identification task that required them to distinguish between two Italian minimal pairs differing in lexical stress along a continuum, such as papa [ˈpapa] “pope” vs. papà [paˈpa] “dad”. Both tasks were selected for their reduced metalinguistic component. Pupillometry was recorded during phoneme identification in children, as—unlike behavioural measures—it provides an implicit, objective index of online phonological access by being sensitive to both phonological and cognitive processing, thereby minimizing false negatives. Despite its potential, this cutting-edge method has rarely been applied to the study of DD. All participants underwent a cognitive assessment. Comorbid dyscalculia was retained as an inclusion criterion due to its non-linguistic nature, though it was controlled for throughout the analysis.
Results: Findings from Studies 1 and 3, which employed phoneme monitoring tasks, indicated significant group-level differences in the phoneme identification performance across both cohorts, which could not be explained by inherently fragile lexical stress representations. Conversely, phonological identification differences between individuals with DD and their TD peers, regardless of age, appeared to be modulated by cognitive resources. Among TD adolescents, phonological identification rates were higher when attention-shifting ability was strong and lower when attention- shifting scores were weak. In contrast, this relationship was not observed in individuals with DD, whose performance remained consistently low, irrespective of attention-shifting ability. Additionally, cognitive resources contributed to group-level variations in children's pupillometric responses during distractor processing in the phoneme monitoring task. Studies 2 and 4 further confirmed the comparability of lexical stress representations across cohorts. Specifically, both adolescent groups demonstrated similar alignment to weak and strong syllables in the sensorimotor synchronization task of Study 2. In parallel, the categorical perception curves for lexical stress observed in Study 4 were consistent across children.
Conclusion: Overall, this research thesis confirmed that phonological and possibly lexical stress representations remain intact in individuals with DD throughout late childhood and adolescence. However, access to these representations appears to be compromised, likely due to an imbalance between stronger and weaker cognitive resources—an interaction that requires further empirical validation. Rather than reflecting comprehensive phonological and lexical stress deficits, difficulties in DD seem to involve specific subdomains of phonological and prosodic competence, further corroborating the multicomponential nature of these domains, with awareness being highly interconnected with the cognitive domain. Although interconnected, segmental and prosodic domains seem to develop independently and exhibit notable cross-language differences, reaching an adult-like form only in late adulthood. Therefore, the potential contributing factors of language transparency variability, along with SES and reading exposure, should be considered and incorporated into future research to better understand their role in phonological processing in DD.publishe
Participatory Approaches for Digital Public Health : Giving Voice to Values
No full textThis chapter discusses the need for community involvement and stakeholder engagement in the development and implementation of digital public health tools. The advent of digitalization in public health has necessitated an exploration of how to design tools that meet the needs of the community they serve. This can be achieved through a participatory approach that incorporates the voices and perspectives of all stakeholders in a democratic manner. Specifically, this chapter discusses two participatory approaches: participatory design and participatory research. These approaches originate from different intellectual traditions but share a vision of incorporating everyone from the community affected by the intervention or technology. Additionally, this chapter presents application examples from the literature on how the development of health-related applications benefited from participatory research and participatory design to illustrate the added value of integrating these approaches.publishe