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While the acquisition of three or more languages becomes steadily more important in modern societies, the underlying cognitive and linguistic processes of multi-linguistic language acquisition are not well understood. This study investigates how a formerly acquired second language (L2) can facilitate the acquisition of a third language (L3). Thirty-two native German speakers with proficient knowledge in either a tonal L2 (Chinese) or a non-tonal L2 (English) learned vocabulary of a tonal L3 (Thai), while the information of the target L3 was either presented visually or both visually and auditorily. Additional auditory information improved later recognition of L3 vocabulary for participants with a tonal L2 (Chinese) but not for those with a non-tonal L2 (English). These results suggest that the L2 to L3 learning transfer can be improved when the similarities between both languages, such as tonal information, are accentuated in the learning process.

The roles of YouTube videos and YouTubers for getting information about political and societal topics are becoming gradually more important to young people. Quantitative research about young people's use and perception of YouTube-videos and their potential effects on opinion formation is sparse though. This cross-sectional quantitative study addresses this empirical gap. We examined young people's analytic-critical evaluations of YouTubers and their videos about political and societal topics (YTPS-videos), and how these are affected by the young people's age and gender. We analysed questionnaire data of 562 participants and divided them into three different age groups. Overall, the participants reported a moderate watching frequency of YTPS-videos. They also rated YTPS-videos as moderately credible and considered specific characteristics of YTPS-videos and their producers as being moderately indicative for fake news. When comparing to traditional TV news, YTPS-videos were perceived as more entertaining, emotional, funny, exciting, modern, and motivating but also as more subjective and manipulating. Regarding YouTubers, the participants ascribed them an important role model function, but criticised them for handling it rather irresponsibly. Concerning opinion formation processes, the participants reported of a rather unimportant role of YTPS-videos for their learning about political and societal topics. They also perceived themselves as less influenceable than other peers and younger people. Still, they prefer talking with friends instead of teachers about YTPS-videos. Age and gender also had effects on various scales. These results deliver essential data for future research and educational measures and opened up unexplored areas in this research field.

Global investments in online advertising rise quickly but Internet users often avoid looking at ads due to established banner blindness. Demographic targeting is expected to overcome this tendency by attracting users' attention to more self-relevant ad content. However, little is known about the effect of demographically targeted versus non-targeted ads on users' actual attention allocation during exposure to webpages. The present study aimed to further fill this empirical gap by clarifying whether demographic targeting attracts visual attention and to exploratively examine whether it also affects brand attitude and website evaluation, as suggested by previous studies. Eye tracking data revealed that demographic targeting can have medium- to large-sized effects on several eye movement parameters when inter net users are in a free-viewing mode. In contrast, demographic targeting did not influence brand attitude and website evaluation. We conclude that attention for personally relevant advertisement can be strong. However, attention, although being a necessary condition for subsequent judgment formation according to the model of human information processing, is not sufficient to elicit positive effects at the level of subjective judgments.

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent's intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent's freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We will present an experiment to support this claim.

General pedagogical knowledge (GPK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) are central cognitive elements in the professional competence of teachers. Thus initial teacher education aims at the acquisition of this relevant knowledge. However, the question how GPK and PCK are related to each other or can be separated from each other has not yet been answered, neither conceptually nor empirically. Against this background, this article focuses on two research questions on the basis of standardized knowledge tests administered to 889 pre-service teachers of German, English and Mathematics from two large universities: (1) Can GPK empirically be separated from PCK of German, English, and Mathematics? (2) Are there differences in pre-service teachers' PCK test scores depending on their stage of training (Bachelor versus Master) and can PCK test scores additionally be explained by specific learning opportunities in the area of PCK (when compared with GPK test scores)? On the one hand, findings show that GPK and PCK can empirically be separated. This is true for all three domains (construct validity), whereby the correlation between GPK and Mathematics PCK is lower than the correlations between GPK and German PCK and English PCK (when controlled for background and entry characteristics of students and their learning opportunities). On the other hand, a comparison between cohorts of Bachelor and Master student teachers provides evidence that the more advanced Master students outperform the Bachelor students in all knowledge tests (curricular validity). In addition, German PCK and English PCK (better than Mathematics PCK) can be explained by subject-specific learning opportunities (convergent validity) and be demarcated from GPK (discriminant validity). Implications for current initiatives of quality assurance in initial teacher education are discussed.

We present a dataset of free-viewing eye-movement recordings that contains more than 2.7 million fixation locations from 949 observers on more than 1000 images from different categories. This dataset aggregates and harmonizes data from 23 different studies conducted at the Institute of eognitive Science at Osnabruck University and the University Medical Center in Hamburg- Eppendorf. Trained personnel recorded all studies under standard conditions with homogeneous equipment and parameter settings. All studies allowed for free eye-movements, and differed in the age range of participants (similar to 7-80 years), stimulus sizes, stimulus modifications (phase scrambled, spatial filtering, mirrored), and stimuli categories (natural and urban scenes, web sites, fractal, pink-noise, and ambiguous artistic figures). The size and variability of viewing behavior within this dataset presents a strong opportunity for evaluating and comparing computational models of overt attention, and furthermore, for thoroughly quantifying strategies of viewing behavior. This also makes the dataset a good starting point for investigating whether viewing strategies change in patient groups.

E-learning projects and related research generate an increasing amount of evidence within and across various disciplines and contexts. The field is very heterogeneous as e-learning approaches are often characterized by rather unique combinations of situational factors that guide the design and realization of e-learning in a bottom-up fashion. Comprehensive theories of e-learning that allow deductive reasoning and hence a more top-down strategy are missing so far, but they are highly desirable. In view of the current situation, inductive reasoning is the prevalent way of scientific progress in e-learning research and the first step toward theory development: individual projects provide the insights necessary to gradually build up comprehensive theories and models. In this context, comparability and generalizability of project results are the keys to success. Here we propose a new model - the E-Learning Setting Circle - that will promote comparability and generalizability of project results by structuring, standardizing, and guiding e-learning approaches at the level of a general research methodology. The model comprises three clusters - context setting, structure setting, and content setting - each of which comprises three individual issues that are not necessarily sequential but frequently encountered in e-learning projects. Two further elements are incorporated: on the one hand, we delineate the central role of objective setting and the assessment of the goal attainment level (guiding element); on the other hand, we highlight the importance of multi-criteria decision-making (universal element). Overall, the proposed circular model is a strategic framework intended to foster theory development in the area of e-learning projects and research.

Many eye-tracking studies investigate visual behavior with a focus on image features and the semantic content of a scene. A wealth of results on these aspects is available, and our understanding of the decision process where to look has reached a mature stage. However, the temporal aspect, whether to stay and further scrutinize a region (exploitation) or to move on and explore image regions that were yet not in the focus of attention (exploration) is less well understood. Here, we investigate the trade-off between these two processes across stimuli with varying properties and sizes. In a free viewing task, we examined gaze parameters in humans, involving the central tendency, entropy, saccadic amplitudes, number of fixations and duration of fixations. The results revealed that the central tendency and entropy scaled with stimulus size. The mean saccadic amplitudes showed a linear increase that originated from an interaction between the distribution of saccades and the spatial bias. Further, larger images led to spatially more extensive sampling as indicated by a higher number of fixations at the expense of reduced fixation durations. These results demonstrate a profound shift from exploitation to exploration as an adaptation of main gaze parameters with increasing image size.

Unproctored, web-based assessments supposedly reduce social desirability distortions in self-report questionnaires because of an increased sense of privacy among participants. Three random-effects meta-analyses focusing either on social desirability (k = 30, total N = 3,746), the Big Five of personality (k = 66, total N = 2,951), or psychopathology (k = 96, total N = 16,034) compared social desirability distortions of self-reports across computerized and paper-and-pencil administration modes. Overall, a near-zero effect, = 0.01, was obtained that did not indicate less socially desirable responding in computerized assessments. Moreover, moderator analyses did not identify differential effects for proctored and unproctored procedures. Thus, paper-and-pencil and computerized administrations of self-report scales yield comparable mean scores. Unproctored web-based surveys do not offer an advantage with regard to socially desirable responding in self-report questionnaires.