Specifying accurate informative prior distributions is a question of carefully selecting studies that comprise the body of comparable background knowledge. Psychological research, however, consists of studies that are being conducted under different circumstances, with different samples and varying instruments. Thus, results of previous studies are heterogeneous, and not all available results can and should contribute equally to an informative prior distribution. This implies a necessary weighting of background information based on the similarity of the previous studies to the focal study (...) at hand. Current approaches to account for heterogeneity by weighting informative prior distributions, such as the power prior and the meta-analytic predictive prior are either not easily accessible or incomplete. To complicate matters further, in the context of Bayesian multiple regression models there are no methods available for quantifying the similarity of a given body of background knowledge to the focal study at hand. Consequently, the purpose of this study is threefold. We first present a novel method to combine the aforementioned sources of heterogeneity in the similarity measure ω. This method is based on a combination of a propensity-score approach to assess the similarity of samples with random- and mixed-effects meta-analytic models to quantify the heterogeneity in outcomes and study characteristics. Second, we show how to use the similarity measure ωas a weight for informative prior distributions for the substantial parameters in Bayesian multiple regression models. Third, we investigate the performance and the behavior of the similarity-weighted informative prior distribution in a comprehensive simulation study, where it is compared to the normalized power prior and the meta-analytic predictive prior. The similarity measure ω and the similarity-weighted informative prior distribution as the primary results of this study provide applied researchers with means to specify accurate informative prior distributions. (shrink)

Berlin has become the German place of remembrance for 1968. In other cities, too, students, artists, and professors rose up against authoritarian ways of life and institutions, pointing to the “fascism” of the Nazi period that their parents wished to repress. But remembrance likes the beauty of appearances, and the revolt in Berlin was initially colored by something unreal and playful, a counterpoint led to its conclusion, something both bounded and experimental. This something was lost between 1967 and 1969, though (...) it was even less present outside of Berlin, perhaps because of the delay with which the revolt spread beyond.. (shrink)

Literary scholars and poets are like intimate strangers. They owe their closeness to literature and their alienation to their different relationship to productivity. This book examines Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Lonnrot, Hofmannstahl, and Szondi, among others. It analyzes the reasons for this alienated closeness and describes a tradition that has shaped the relationship between poetic productivity and philological understanding.".

Uhland’s poem has found fame as a litmus test in philosophical debates about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Like many works of art, the poem is dynamically produced in its effort to resolve a fundamental conflict. The poem’s conflict arises from the difficulty to connect the count’s life and his daydream. In the end, the poem as a whole serves to embody a critique of the capacity of a daydream to recover memories faithfully. Wittgenstein makes two remarks in a 1917 letter to Paul (...) Engelmann that pertain to the poem. They are to be read in keeping with a resolute reading (James Conant, Cora Diamond) of the Tractatus; Wittgenstein’s first remark imitates the very movement of thought we find in the poem – and in doing so Wittgenstein makes good on his claim to talk about the poem: “the unutterable is, – unutterably – contained in what is uttered.” His second remark has, thus far, played no role in literature – Wittgenstein speaks of Engelmann’s dreams, yet he does not explicitly formulate the poem’s bearing on them. Here, too, he reenacts, in the formulation of his remark, the core conflict of the poem. My interpretation of the poem, finally, distinguishes three interpretive approaches (symbolistic, realistic, critical) in order to capture the understanding of the poem embodied in Wittgenstein's remarks. (shrink)

Dreifache Vernunft : "Homer und die klassiche Philologie" -- Gedankenfiguren : "Also sprach Zarathustra" -- Diagnose, Sprache, Tradition : Forschungstopoi -- Idiomatik : "Dionysos-Dithyramben".

Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on education worldwide. There is increased discussion of possible negative effects on students’ learning outcomes and the need for targeted support. We examined fourth graders’ reading achievement based on a school panel study, representative on the student level, with N = 111 elementary schools in Germany. The students were tested with the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study instruments in 2016 and 2021. The analysis focused on total average differences in reading achievement (...) between 2016 and 2021, average differences controlling for student composition, and changes in achievement gaps between student subgroups. The methodological approach met international standards for the analysis of large-scale assessments. The results showed a substantial decline in mean reading achievement. The decline corresponds to one-third of a year of learning, even after controlling for changes in student composition. We found no statistically significant changes of achievement gaps between student subgroups, despite numerical tendencies toward a widening of achievement gaps between students with and without immigration background. It is likely that this sharp achievement decline was related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are discussed in terms of further research needs, practical implications for educating current student cohorts, and educational policy decisions regarding actions in crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)