PPF -  Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie

For an optimal adaptation of the behavior, error monitoring is an essential cognitive function. There are two error-related EEG components: The Ne/ERN is an early component, which probably represents the comparison between correct and incorrect responses. The Pe, in turn, a later component, is considered as an indicator of conscious error awareness. The results of a prior study suggest that two different neural mechanisms underlie the Ne/ERN and Pe, but it is still an open question if error detection is also possible when the Ne/ERN in a task is suppressed. Therefore, we use a special Flanker-paradigm as the primary task, whereby the Ne/ERN could be successfully suppressed in one condition, in combination with overt reports whether an error has occurred. Previous findings suggest that also in this case errors are detectable. In further studies, I will examine the early error sensation, a subjective feeling of error awareness that occurs just before the error was made.

PPF - Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie

Working Memory (WM) is conceived as a system for short-term maintenance, updating and manipulation of representations required for goal-directed action. WM has a strict capacity limitation which in turn requires that information held in WM can be flexibly adapted to changing demands. This dissertation project investigates how this is achieved via adaptive control mechanisms. So far, adaptive control has been widely described for flexible adjustments of selective attention in face of conflict provoking visual stimuli. Whenever the brain detects a high level of cognitive conflict, attentional control is strengthened. This leads to fluctuations in selective attention depending on current demands. Conflict in WM retrieval arises when several items stored in WM compete for retrieval. To solve such an interference, the strength of control needs to be adapted and the precision of WM content needs to be increased. The goal of this project is to validate whether WM representations can be dynamically adapted based on the level of experienced conflict. In three different studies, we will consider behavioral and electrophysiological data to investigate whether the same conflict adaptation processes are elicited when several items compete for WM retrieval as described for selective attention.

PPF - Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie

The “chemobrain” phenomenon is an acquired cognitive dysfunction, which can often be observed in the context of oncological diseases along with their typical treatment measures. For example, there is also an impairment of executive control, with cancer patients showing impaired error processing in an earlier study (Simó, Gurtubay-Antolin, Vaquero, Bruna & Rodríguez-Fornells, 2018) with regard to a typical neurophysiological correlate – the error related negativity (ERN/Ne). In general, long-term courses of the “chemobrain” are known from the literature, for example with regard to testpsychological findings (Koppelmans et al., 2012) or – neurophysiological – based on the P300 (Kreukels et al., 2006; Kreukels et al. 2008). However, to the best of our knowledge it has not been investigated yet, to what extent the same also applies to the ERN and thus error processing. So, the planned study therefore aims to clarify the question, to what extent the attenuated ERN-effect postchemo can still be demonstrated among EEG-data years after cancer treatment. As part of an experiment, remitted breast cancer patients are to be examined – a group of patients often suffering from chemobrain. The clarification of this question would be an important contribution to the understanding of cognitive long-term consequences of oncological diseases as well as their treatments.

PPF - Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie

Noise is one of the most frequently reported stress factors in the teaching profession. There are many different sources of noise in schools and noise seems to be omnipresent. Students, technical systems and devices, or ambient sounds are likely to generate disturbing noises during class. Poor room acoustics promote the development and spread of disturbing noises. Persistent noise exposure impairs the physical and psychological well-being and thus the cognitive performance of school staff. A basic aim of the dissertation is the comparison between physical stimulus and subjective judgment. The question of how sound events in classroom situations are related to teachers' perceptions of loudness and annoyance is decisive. The underlying study does not solely focus on noise effects that may cause potential hearing impairment. Rather, the effects of noise on psychological well-being in general and on teachers' cognitive performance in particular are of interest. In this context the study intends to examine to what extent school noise is affecting the stress experience of teachers and how disposition (e.g., noise sensitivity) and situation (e.g., workload) influences their noise perception and noise-related coping. To examine the extra-aural noise effects on teachers, acoustic parameters (sound pressure level, reverberation time) in schools are evaluated and the effectiveness of noise prevention measures is examined. Furthermore, teachers are interviewed to record their subjective noise experience. Previous psychophysical noise research in schools focuses primarily on the noise experience and learning success of pupils. Based on the findings, school-specific noise prevention measures and recommendations can be derived. These are intended to have a positive effect on the noise situation at schools and to sustainably reduce the stress experienced by teachers due to noise.

PPF - Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie

In daily life, we perform multiple actions simultaneously all the time. In such scenarios, the capability not only to distinguish single subtasks as correct or erroneous, but also to trace back the source of an error within multiple, potentially simultaneous subtasks, is essential. If this process fails, a credit assignment error occurs, meaning that an error is attributed to the wrong subtask. Research on dual-tasking suggests that error monitoring processes within such scenarios can be divided into a subtask level and a superordinate level that considers the whole dual-task. I hypothesize that error monitoring needs to take into account both theses monitoring levels to achieve the goal of correctly attributing the erroneous task within a dual-task setting. In a series of studies, including behavioural experiments as well as experiments focusing on error-related EEG activity, I aim to investigate possible similarities and differences between these levels of error monitoring. Therefore, I focus on credit assignment errors, establishing them as an empirical phenomenon as well as finding potential variables influencing their occurrence. Taking the step from mostly single-task oriented error monitoring research to these dual-task settings provides the opportunity to develop novel theories, such as that of hierarchical levels of error monitoring.

LST für Allgemeine Psychologie

Human actions usually serve the purpose of achieving certain goals. In order to facilitate this, every human being has a cognitive action monitoring system that continuously checks behaviors with regard to their appropriateness and also corrects them if necessary. At the neural level, the so-called Error Related Negativity (ERN; Gehring et al., 1993) can be measured, which reflects the processing of errors and can be used to investigate their cognitive processing in more detail. Several theories regarding the ERN posit a motor component of actions for the emergence of the ERN. In fact, studies on task errors have so far focused purely on response conflicts in motor responses (e.g., key press, speech response, eye movements). In contrast, there have been no findings so far on response conflicts in non-motor responses, i.e., between response options that are only formed as a thought. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether errors and response conflicts in non-motor actions are subject to the same cognitive processes as in motor actions. By considering errors and the ERN as their neural correlate, we will first investigate whether errors in non-motor actions are monitored and processed in the same way as in motor actions. To this end, three studies will be conducted, each dealing with a different classical paradigm that induce errors in a different way.

PPF - Lehrstuhl für klinische und biologische Psychologie

Fear and grief are fundamental and natural human reactions to material or immaterial loss. Mostly the loss of a loved person or the loss of home is meant here. The term Ecological Grief describes the grief over an ecological loss. This includes the loss of species, ecosystems and valued places and landscapes, which are caused by acute (e. g. extreme weather events such as floods, etc.) or chronic (e. g. retreat of glaciers, loss of biodiversity, etc.) environmental changes, as we are currently perceiving more and more frequent and intense in nature and media. According to Cunsolo and Ellis (2018), people who are identified with their environment, who work in nature or are culturally closely connected with it, especially mourn ecological losses. To date, however, little research has considered reaction components and possible effects on mental health. In addition, relations with possible change in attitudes and behavior towards environmentally friendly behavior are largely unknown. The aim of this study is therefore to identify emotional reactions components which can be caused by ecological losses and to determine the correlation with wellbeing and possible behavioral changes. Semi-structured interviews with people, who have a high probability of being affected by at least one ecological loss, are carried out and analyzed. Based on these interviews, items for a questionnaire on ecological grief are to be developed in the near future.

MGF - Lehrstuhl für Physische Geographie

Promotion abgeschlossen

The PhD is carried out within the DFG and FWF funded project SEHAG ("Sensitivity of high alpine geosystems to climate change since 1850"). The study areas result in a north-south axis in the central eastern Alps and are located north (Horlachtal and Kaunertal, Tyrol, Austria) and south (Martelltal, South Tyrol, ltaly) of the main Alpine ridge. One hypothesis of the project is that climate change affects the activity and interrelationships of geomorphological process dynamics on slopes. In this context, hangaquatic and fluvial processes will be quantified and analyzed. To reconstruct these processes over several decades, LiDAR data (ALS/TLS) as weil as historical aerial photographs up to the 1950s will be photogrammetrically processed into 3D models and compared with each other. With the help of monoplotting, single historical photographs will be evaluated in 2D in order to make conclusions and interpretations up to the second half of the 19th century. Furthermore, these processes shall be classified an_d distinguished in space (e.g. different altitudes) and time (different time slices: 1850 to 1920, 1920 to 1980 and 1980 to today). Furthermore,. the results shall be related to the other subprojects (e.g. climate, hydrology, vegetation) and the influence, respectively the feedback processes (process response systems) shall be investigated.

MGF -  Professur für Physische Geographie/Landschaftsökologie u. nachhaltige Ökosystementwicklung

The aim of the project is to detect and delineate the health status of ash trees in the context of, among others, viral and fungal diseases with multisensory and multitemporal data at an early stage. Therefore, continuous and high spatial resolution monitoring of dynamics will be conducted. With investigations on two seed orchards in Emmendingen and Schorndorf (Baden-Württemberg), a clone area in Grabenstätt (Bavaria), and the seed harvest stands in Scheiderhau near Kaisheim (Bavaria) and the Melzower Forst (Brandenburg), additional quality criteria for seed harvesting and recommendations for action for forestry practice will be developed. Using fixed camera systems and UAV flights, multisensory image data can be recorded and a comprehensive vitality assessment of entire stands down to individual leaf areas can be carried out. Color-based indices and thermal characteristics will be correlated with field measurements (including chlorophyll, chlorophyll fluorescence, leaf morphology, phenology and soil analysis) to develop predictive models and detect dependencies between terrestrial and remote sensing methods. Algorithms will be used to identify and delineate influences as well as document their extent or severity of damage. The detection of camera-based features during different stages of fungal or viral infection allows to infer the cause of initially weak or poorly differentiated symptoms in retroperspective and to use the feature expression in early stages for monitoring.

MGF - Professur für Physische Geographie/Landschaftsökologie und nachhaltige Ökosystementwicklung

Promotion abgeschlossen

In Europe, common ash is severely endangered in its existence due to ash dieback caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus originating from Asia. The leaves, shoots and wood of the trees are successively attacked by the spores of this fungus and in most cases finally lead to the death of the tree. Due to the good wood properties and its drought tolerance, the loss of ash is serious for forestry. Only one to five percent of the ashes are believed to be resistant or less susceptible. The ongoing fragmentation of ash populations due to ash dieback requires an effective gene flow between individuals; thus, investigations on the quantity and quality of pollen and seeds of ash trees are essential. The main aim of this study is to generate new knowledge on pollen dispersal and pollen and seed quality of the endangered ash tree in relation to its physical condition. Therefore, the influence of population density and meteorology on aerobiological pollen transport will be investigated, pairing success will be revealed as a function of damage to the parent tree, and the effects of ash dieback on pollen, seed and phenology characteristics will be determined. The investigations in the alluvial forest near Neuburg on the Danube and in two seed plantations in Schorndorf and Emmendingen in Baden-Württemberg will contribute to closing these gaps, deriving recommendations for forest managers and developing conservation strategies.

MGF - Lehrstuhl für Physische Geographie

The PhD project is linked to a position as a research assistant in the DFG project SEHAG (Sensitivity of High Alpine Geosystems to climate change since c. 1850), sub-project 8. The main tasks are as follows:  Analysis of the system structure (structural connectivity) in the study areas of the SEHAG project (Kaunertal, Horlachtal, Martelltal) using geomorphological mapping, digital relief analysis and graph theory. Analysis of functional connectivity (sediment transfer) using measured and modelled surface/reservoir changes and sediment fluxes determined from these. Calibration of the Caesar Lisflood landscape evolution model using measured and modelled data from the past. Based on this, modelling of the influence of climate change on sediment dynamics until 2050. Investigation of the relationship between connectivity and sensitivity of (sub-) catchment areas with regard to climate change-induced changes and their propagation in the study areas.

MGF - Professur für Physische Geographie/Landschaftsökologie und nachhaltige Ökosystementwicklung

Promotion abgeschlossen

The aim of the work is to investigate climate-induced changes in pollen load by determining pollen production of important allergenic plants, as well as pollen concentration in the air. Pollen production is determined by sampling different plants along an urbanization gradient. A space-for-time approach will be used to draw conclusions about pollen production under future conditions (e.g. higher temperatures). To determine the pollen concentration, a sampling network will be established to investigate spatial and temporal differences.

MGF - Professur für Physische Geographie/ Landschaftsökologie und nachhaltige Ökosystementwicklung

It is often documented in literature that apparently vital and healthy trees can show substantial symptoms of ash dieback in the following year. If only optical indicators are applied, an adequate selection of trees with outstanding properties (so called plus-trees) is not guaranteed. Genetic markers were only tested in some European regions and it was shown that regional differences in the applicability of these markers to predict resistance are very important. Since a costly and labor-intensive genetic assessment is not suitable for an extensive and nationwide monitoring, other indicators which can be used to assess the susceptibility of common ash to ash dieback are needed. The aim of this project FraxMon is to investigate which plant characteristics (e.g., phenological traits, chlorophyll, sex, pollen viability) of ash can be used as lead indicator for the physiological evaluation of the vitality and susceptibility in the frame of a nationwide monitoring. In addition, the abundance of the fungus is assessed and spore concentrations are estimated in order to monitor the infection pressure and to investigate the temporal coupling between the occurrence of spores and the phenological phase of the host.

MGF - Lehrstuhl für Physische Geographie

The PhD project will take place within the framework of an employment as a research assistant in the DFG project SEHAG (SEnsitivity of High Alpine Geosystems to climate change since 1850), sub-project SP8. The planned PhD project focuses on the so far unanswered question how sediment transport dynamics and thus sediment input into reservoirs change under climate change conditions. This question will be investigated in the study areas of the SEHAG project (Kaunertal and Horlachtal in Austria, Martelltal in South Tyrol). In the study areas, measurements of suspended sediment transport will be used to determine the subglacial sediment contribution and the contribution from slope erosion. Different runoff situations are considered, which include snow and glacier melt as weil as rain events of high intensity and duration. In a further step, the measured data are used to calibrate the landscape evolution model CAESAR Lisflood.

MGF - Professur für Angewandte Physische Geographie

The mountain regions of Central Asia are part of the global biodiversity hotspots and thus part of the biologically richest and at the same time most threatened terrestrial ecosystems on earth. The ecosystem of the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan is still in an almost natural state on a length of about 600 km and thus represents a peculiarity in this dimension. At the same time, these ecosystems are threatened by planned hydropower plants and no studies have yet been carried out on the riparian forest habitats with their structure and dynamics. Satellite data are of particular interest for a large-scale inventory and permanent monitoring of habitats. Satellite data from the Landsat and Copernicus missions are particularly suitable because, among other things, they are freely and almost globally available, record data at regular intervals and make identical, objective measurements. Due to their temporal and spatial resolution, the Sentinel-2 data of the Copernicus mission hold great potential for the investigation of habitats and their dynamics. The thesis closes existing research gaps at the Naryn river and provides up-to-date and detailed habitat maps for decision support in environmental management. In addition, the thesis also makes a general contribution to the further development of the monitoring of habitats along with their dynamics using satellite data.

MGF - Professur für Physische Geographie/ Landschaftsökologie und nachhaltige Ökosystementwicklung

MGF - Lehrstuhl für Physische Geographie

Promotion abgeschlossen

The dissertation at the Department of Physical Geography at the KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt with the working title “Reconstruction and analysis of debris flows and gravitational mass movements and their relation to climate change in the European Alps since the Little Ice Age” is being prepared within the research project SEHAG (Sensitivity of high alpine geosystem with respect to climate change since 1850) and is supervised by Prof. Dr. Michael Becht and PD Dr. Florian Haas. The aim of the study is to investigate the process dynamics of gravitational mass movements with low frequency and high magnitude, primarily debris flows, in the three study areas Horalchtal, Kaunertal and Martelltal. The activity of the processes since the end of the Little Ice Age (approx. 1850) is to be compared with the changes in climate parameters, thus establishing a possible link to climate change. With the help of historical data such as aerial images since the 1940s and 1950s, the process dynamics of debris flows can be reconstructed precisely for the last 70 years. Dating methods such as lichenometry and precipitation simulations are used to better understand the dynamics even further back in time. By comparing the process activity in the three study areas, it is also possible to investigate further factors possibly influencing the process dynamics, for example altitude or the location north / south of the Alpine main divide.

SLF - Lehrstuhl für Englische Sprachwissenschaft

This PhD project looks at one specific structural alternation in English, namely preposition placement in filler‐gap constructions (cf. e.g. Hoffmann 2011; Pullum & Huddleston 2002; Ross 1986; van den Eynden 1996). Combining Usage-based Construction Grammar and New Englishes approaches, the project investigates the competition between preposition stranding (1) and preposition pied-piping (2) in syntactic environments that allow for both options:

1. English is a language which I want to know more about.
2. English is a language about which I want to know more.

Drawing on both corpus data from the International Corpus of English project (cf. Nelson et al. 2002) and Magnitude Estimation acceptability experiments, the study will take the results of multifactorial statistical analyses as an indicator for the mental entrenchment of meso- and macro-constructions for the two structural alternatives in different varieties of English. This approach will reveal to what degree the constructional competition of preposition stranding and pied-piping correlates with the evolutionary stage of a New English variety and how much the available preposition placement constructions in postcolonial Englishes are shaped by L1 transfer features. The project will thus generate important insights into the storage of competing structures in the linguistic knowledge of speakers and into the processing effects as well as the qualitative and quantitative constructional changes that characterize the evolution of New Englishes.