Familiar Conditions Research Articles

An Evaluation of LENA Start™ Using Measures Derived from Parent–Child Interactions

Abstract It is important to assess learning in both familiar and unfamiliar conditions to determine the extent of learning generalisation. In this study, we evaluated parent language outcomes of LENA Start™, a parent-implemented intervention, using distal measures derived from a parent–child free play interaction. Forty-four parents and their child (mean: 20.8 months) participated in LENA Start™ or early childhood education curriculum intervention, in either English (n = 34) or Spanish (n = 10). We completed between- and within-group analyses using language and communication behaviour measures derived from parent–child interactions elicited outside the home with researcher-supplied materials (i.e., distal measures). Group comparisons revealed significant differences on a subset of behavioural measures. Spanish-speaking parents in the LENA Start™ group demonstrated significant gains on three measures. While LENA Start™ has been associated with parent gains on proximal language measures, the results of this study reveal limited generalisation of skills based on distal measures.

Family affairs or Government's duty? The tax morality of a mobile society

PurposeThis paper aims to shed light on the relationship between intergenerational labor mobility and tax morale among European citizens, given the relatively limited evidence on the potential influence of tax compliance behavior on future inequalities.Design/methodology/approachExploiting data from the European Values Study (2008), we show that the larger the intergenerational mobility, i.e. better economic conditions of children respect to their parents, the larger the willingness to pay taxes. In this vein, the subjective tax payment may be meant as an investment which could be rewarded with a more mobile society result by considering different estimation strategies. This evidence remarks the importance to foster intergenerational mobility to build a more tax-compliant society.FindingsThe linkage between mobility and tax morale is stronger and significant across citizens living in high income classes, and in countries where there is a commitment of the Government in guaranteeing more opportunities to citizens regardless of their familiar starting conditions (more defamiliarized countries). We further show that the intergenerational mobility significantly shapes the attitude towards tax payment only among individuals who claim for independence from their family context (i.e. those showing less family ties). This evidence remarks the importance to foster intergenerational mobility to build a more tax-compliant society.Originality/valueWe revisit the linkage between attitude toward tax compliance and inequality, on the light of the intergenerational labor mobility, that may be seen as the dependence between children's and parents' earnings. Given the insights from the existing studies, this paper represents the first empirical work that aims to analyze the potential relationship between intergenerational mobility and personal attitude toward tax payment across European citizens.

Analytic Cognition in Kant

Abstract Kant refers to analytic cognition in several prominent places. The prevailing wisdom, however, denies the possibility of analytic cognition within his theory of cognition. I shall argue that this is mistaken. I show that we can account for analytic cognition’s possibility by appealing to variants of the more familiar conditions on the cognition of objects. I also highlight analytic cognition’s connection to insight and analytic knowledge. In the process, I provide a fuller account of Kant’s view of our mental lives than has been typically acknowledged.

Taylor Swift does not boost face recognition in reaction time-based Concealed Information Test: investigating target-familiarity effects

Eyewitness identifications from lineups are prone to error. More indirect identification procedures, such as the reaction-time based Concealed Information Test (RT-CIT) could be a viable alternative to lineups. The RT-CIT uses response times to assess facial familiarity. Theory and initial evidence with autobiographical stimuli suggests that the accuracy of RT-CIT can be augmented when participants’ reliance on familiarity-based responding increases. We tested this assumption in two pre-registered experiments with 173 participants. Participants witnessed a mock crime. In the subsequent RT-CIT protocol, participants reacted to probe faces from the mock crime video, to irrelevant faces, and to target faces that required a unique response. Targets were either unknown people or were well-known celebrities (e.g., Taylor Swift). As expected, reaction times were longer to probes than to irrelevants in all conditions, indicating a CIT effect. Contrasting our pre-registered predictions, the CIT effect was not larger in the familiar condition (Experiment 1: unfamiliar targets: d = 0.77 vs. celebrity targets: d = 0.24; Experiment 2: unfamiliar targets: d = 1.09 vs. celebrity targets: d = 0.79). This suggests that familiar targets did not increase the validity of the RT-CIT in diagnosing concealed face recognition. A potential lack of saliency of the familiar targets might explain these unexpected findings. Of note, we did find medium to large effect sizes overall, speaking to the potential of diagnosing face recognition with the RT-CIT.

Impaired Dynamics of Positional and Contextual Neural Coding in an Alzheimer's Disease Rat Model.

The hippocampal representation of space, formed by the collective activity of populations of place cells, is considered as a substrate of spatial memory. Alzheimer's disease (AD), a widespread severe neurodegenerative condition of multifactorial origin, typically exhibits spatial memory deficits among its early clinical signs before more severe cognitive impacts develop. To investigate mechanisms of spatial memory impairment in a double transgenic rat model of AD. In this study, we utilized 9-12-month-old double-transgenic TgF344-AD rats and age-matched controls to analyze the spatial coding properties of CA1 place cells. We characterized the spatial memory representation, assessed cells' spatial information content and direction-specific activity, and compared their population coding in familiar and novel conditions. Our findings revealed that TgF344-AD animals exhibited lower precision in coding, as evidenced by reduced spatial information and larger receptive zones. This impairment was evident in maps representing novel environments. While controls instantly encoded directional context during their initial exposure to a novel environment, transgenics struggled to incorporate this information into the newly developed hippocampal spatial representation. This resulted in impairment in orthogonalization of stored activity patterns, an important feature directly related to episodic memory encoding capacity. Overall, the results shed light on the nature of impairment at both the single-cell and population levels in the transgenic AD model. In addition to the observed spatial coding inaccuracy, the findings reveal a significantly impaired ability to adaptively modify and refine newly stored hippocampal memory patterns.

Reduced contextual uncertainty facilitates learning what to attend to and what to ignore

Variability in the search environment has been shown to affect the capture of attention by salient distractors, as attentional capture is reduced when context variability is low. However, it remains unclear whether this reduction in capture is caused by contextual learning or other mechanisms, grounded in generic context-structure learning. We set out to test this by training participants (n = 200) over two sessions in a visual search task, conducted online, where they gained experience with a small subset of search displays, which significantly reduced capture of attention by colour singletons. In a third session, we then tested participants on a mix of familiar and novel search displays and examined whether this reduction in capture was specific to familiar displays, indicative of contextual cueing effects, or would generalise to novel displays. We found no capture by the singleton in either the familiar or novel condition. Instead, our findings suggested that reduced statistical volatility reduced capture by allowing the development of generic predictions about task-relevant locations and features of the display. These findings add to the current debate about the determinants of capture by salient distractors by showing that capture is also affected by generic task regularities and by the volatility of the learning environment.

Flexible males, reactive females: faecal glucocorticoid metabolites indicate increased stress in the colonist population, damping with time in males but not in females.

Individuals colonizing new areas at expanding ranges encounter numerous and unpredictable stressors. Exposure to unfamiliar environments suggests that colonists would differ in stress levels from residents living in familiar conditions. Few empirical studies tested this hypothesis and produced mixed results, and the role of stress regulation in colonization remains unclear. Studies relating stress levels to colonization mainly use a geographical analysis comparing established colonist populations with source populations. We used faecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGMs) to assess both spatial and temporal dynamics of stress levels in an expanding population of midday gerbils (Meriones meridianus). We demonstrated that adult males and females had higher FGM levels in newly emerged colonies, compared with the source population, but differed in the pattern of FGM dynamics post-foundation. In males, FGM levels sharply decreased in the second year after colony establishment. In females, FGM levels did not change with time and remained high despite the decreasing environmental unpredictability, exhibiting among-individual variation. Increased stress levels of colonist males damping with time post-colonization suggest they are flexible in responding to immediate changes in environmental uncertainty. On the contrary, high and stable over generations stress levels uncoupled from the changes in the environmental uncertainty in female colonists imply that they carry a relatively constant phenotype associated with the reactive coping strategy favouring colonization. We link sex differences in consistency and plasticity in stress regulation during colonization to the sex-specific life-history strategies.

Same News Frames, Different Issues: Issue Familiarity and Dynamic Framing Effects

This study addresses how issue familiarity conditions longitudinal news framing effect dynamics. Comparing how the economic consequences frame impacts interpretation of two global problems—antimicrobial resistance and climate change—we study longitudinal effects across two similar issues varying significantly in salience and politicization, focusing on how various effect dynamics (single, repetitive, and counter-framing exposure) influence citizens’ beliefs over time. A longitudinal experiment conducted with a probability-recruited sample in Sweden ( N = 1,956) reveals (1) clear framing effects for both issues, (2) dynamics driven primarily by recency mechanisms, and (3) that individual differences in baseline belief certainty condition news framing effects. In sum, while the same news frame can have very similar effects on different issues, the findings suggest a “dual role” of issue familiarity, potentially conditioning the specific longitudinal effect dynamics, on the one hand, and effect susceptibility, on the other hand.

Asymptotic symmetries of gravity in the gauge PDE approach

We propose a framework to study local gauge theories on manifolds with boundaries and their asymptotic symmetries, which is based on representing them as so-called gauge PDEs. These objects extend the conventional BV-AKSZ sigma-models to the case of not necessarily topological and diffeomorphism invariant systems and are known to behave well when restricted to submanifolds and boundaries. We introduce the notion of gauge PDE with boundaries, which takes into account generic boundary conditions, and apply the framework to asymptotically flat gravity. In so doing, we start with a suitable representation of gravity as a gauge PDE with boundaries, which implements the Penrose description of asymptotically simple spacetimes. We then derive the minimal model of the gauge PDE induced on the boundary and observe that it provides the Cartan (frame-like) description of a (curved) conformal Carollian structure on the boundary. Furthermore, imposing a version of the familiar boundary conditions in the induced boundary gauge PDE, leads immediately to the conventional Bondi–Metzner–Sachs algebra of asymptotic symmetries. Finally, we briefly sketch the construction for asymptotically (A)dS gravity.

Exploring the willingness to pay for high-occupancy toll lanes under conditions of low familiarity

This study evaluates details of a progressive transportation development model, wherein high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are transformed into high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. Although the management strategy of HOT lanes has been implemented for many years, the implementation of HOT lanes is limited in many regions, and thus, many people remain unfamiliar with the concept. This study aims to evaluate travelers' willingness to pay for HOT lanes based on a “low application” scenario in Shenzhen, China, wherein some HOV lanes are present and may potentially be transformed into HOT lanes, but not all area residents are aware of their intended purpose. According to the Diffusion of Innovation Theory, we leverage this situation to conduct a survey of perceptions and attitudes toward the HOT lanes and evaluate how these perspectives may translate to HOT lane utilization. We further proposed a hybrid utility and regret model considering the impacts of loss aversion caused by tolls or coordinated carpooling for single occupancy vehicles to explore relationships between travel behavior and surveyed demographic and socio-economic characteristics in the context of HOT lanes in places where they are unfamiliar. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to characterize any apparent changing influences. The results show that the model considering decision regret performs well, especially in the scenario with low tolls. Nearly 80% of travelers are willing to pay tolls for HOT lanes, even with limited prior exposure to the concept. The increased acceptance of HOT lanes can be expected to hurt total toll revenue, which may be triggered by easier access to carpool partners associated with the free pass. The study informs a deeper understanding of travelers’ willingness to pay for HOT lanes and helps policy-makers develop differentiated tolling strategies.

Retrospective Study Regarding the Correlation between Dental Anxiety and Color Preferences in Children with Severe Early Childhood Caries.

Severe early childhood caries (S-ECC) is recognized as a significant chronic disease which affects the quality of life starting at very young ages and has a very rapid evolution towards pulp complication and loss of dental tissue. Children with a high caries index DMFT are more likely to develop high levels of dental anxiety, which will influence the degree of cooperation during dental procedures. Emotions play an important role in the psychosomatic development of children, and all the factors that contribute to the modeling of these emotional states must be known and taken into consideration. The aim of this study was to assess the association between dental anxiety in children with S-ECC and the color preferences for the components of the dental environment to reduce the levels of dental anxiety during medical visits. For this study, 91 children between 3 and 6 years of age diagnosed with S-ECC were selected from the Pediatric Dentistry Department of UMFST from Targu Mures and from a private dental office. The level of dental anxiety was determined by measuring the pulse rate, and a questionnaire was completed to establish the color preferences for the dental office environment and the dentist's attire. For this purpose, six different colors and their variants with three shades less intensity were chosen by using RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) identification codes for each color. The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the age of the subjects and dental anxiety levels, but there was no significant correlation between the DMFT score and dental anxiety. Also, the results showed that there was no significant difference between girls and boys when choosing the colors preferred by them for the dental office, but when comparing the colors that represented happiness, significant statistical difference was found between the girls' and boys' groups (p = 0.0039). For all the subjects, the colors associated with happiness were light yellow and pink, while the colors associated with anxiety were red and dark blue. The data obtained showed that dental anxiety is strongly influenced by age, and an important role in inducing positive emotions is played by the dental environment if dressed in specific colors in order to reduce dental anxiety and create familiar conditions, especially for young children with S-ECC.

Decoding predicted musical notes from omitted stimulus potentials

Electrophysiological studies have investigated predictive processing in music by examining event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the violation of musical expectations. While several studies have reported that the predictability of stimuli can modulate the amplitude of ERPs, it is unclear how specific the representation of the expected note is. The present study addressed this issue by recording the omitted stimulus potentials (OSPs) to avoid contamination of bottom-up sensory processing with top-down predictive processing. Decoding of the omitted content was attempted using a support vector machine, which is a type of machine learning. ERP responses to the omission of four target notes (E, F, A, and C) at the same position in familiar and unfamiliar melodies were recorded from 25 participants. The results showed that the omission N1 were larger in the familiar melody condition than in the unfamiliar melody condition. The decoding accuracy of the four omitted notes was significantly higher in the familiar melody condition than in the unfamiliar melody condition. These results suggest that the OSPs contain discriminable predictive information, and the higher the predictability, the more the specific representation of the expected note is generated.

Mental fatigue impairs padel‐specific psychomotor performance in youth‐elite male players

AbstractWhile the interest and professionalization of padel around the world, and the importance of mental fatigue in sport science literature are both on the rise, not much is known about how mental fatigue impacts padel‐specific performance. Forty‐eight male elite youth players (18 ± 2 y) participated in this randomized counterbalanced crossover study. The players visited the laboratory on three separate occasions: familiarization, control (i.e., 30‐min documentary), and mental fatigue (i.e., 30‐min incongruent Stroop) condition. The participants' perceived mental fatigue, vigilance (i.e., Psychomotor Vigilance Test) and response inhibition (i.e., Stroop task) were assessed as markers of mental fatigue. The Padel accuracy was evaluated using a validated padel‐specific performance task that includes the usage of different strokes (i.e., drive, drive volley, bandeja, and drive attack after the use of the glass). All these variables were assessed pre‐ and post‐ both the control and mentally fatiguing task. A condition × time interaction was found for perceived mental fatigue, the Stroop performance and PVT reaction time (p < 0.001) and for padel‐specific accuracy on all strokes (p < 0.001). The perceived level of mental fatigue increased, while PVT reaction time and Stroop performance (i.e., amount of words) were impaired in time only in the mental fatigue condition. The accuracy of all padel strokes was significantly impaired from pre to post only in the mental fatigue condition (p < 0.050). In conclusion, mental fatigue impairs padel‐specific accuracy in young elite male padel players. Consequently, we recommend coaches to consider the level of mental fatigue during padel trainings and competitions.

Modeling of Triphenyl Phosphate Surfactant Enhanced Drying of Polystyrene/p-Xylene Coatings Using Artificial Neural Network

The drying process of polymeric coatings, particularly in the presence of surfactants, poses a complex challenge due to its intricate dynamics involving simultaneous heat and mass transfer. This study addresses the inherent complexity by employing Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to model the surfactant-enhanced drying of poly(styrene)-p-xylene coatings. A substantial dataset of 16,258 experimentally obtained samples forms the basis for training the ANN model, showcasing the suitability of this approach when ample training data is available. The chosen single-layer feed-forward network with backpropagation adeptly captures the non-linear relationships within the drying data, providing a predictive tool with exceptional accuracy. Our results demonstrate that the developed ANN model achieves a precision level exceeding 99% in predicting coating weight loss for specified input values of time, surfactant amount, and initial coating thickness. The model’s robust generalization capability eliminates the need for additional experiments, offering reliable predictions for both familiar and novel conditions. Comparative analysis reveals the superiority of the ANN over the regression tree, emphasizing its efficacy in handling the intricate dynamics of polymeric coating drying processes. In conclusion, this study contributes a valuable tool for optimizing polymeric coating processes, reducing production defects, and enhancing overall manufacturing quality and cost-effectiveness.

Checkpoint inhibitors.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are a class of antineoplastic therapies that unleash immune cells to kill malignant cells. These medications commonly cause immune-related adverse effects due to activated adaptive and innate immune cells, autoantibody production, and/or cytokine dysregulation. Hematologic toxicities are rare and of uncertain mechanism, and therefore management is often based on experiences with familiar conditions involving these perturbed immune responses. Management is challenging because one must attend to the hematologic toxicity while simultaneously attending to the malignancy, with the imperative that therapeutic effects be maintained or minimally interrupted when possible.

Lateralised Behavioural Responses in Livestock to Environmental Stressors: Implications for Using Infrared Thermography to Assess Welfare Conditions

Lateralised behavioural responses to environmental stressors have become more frequently used as indicators of social welfare in animals. These lateralised behavioural responses are under the control of asymmetrical brain functions as part of the primary functions of most vertebrates and assist in primary social and survival functions. Lateralised behavioural responses originating from the left hemisphere are responsible for processing familiar conditions, while the right hemisphere is responsible for responding to novel stimuli in the environment. The forced lateralisation and side preference tests have been used to determine the visual lateralised behavioural responses in livestock to environmental stressors. Limb preference during movement has also been used to determine motor lateralisation. Although behavioural investigations in livestock have recorded lateralised behavioural responses to environmental stressors, there are still limitations in the implication of lateralisation to other conditions, such as restraint and invasive procedures. Thus, it is important to have a non-invasive measure for these lateralised behavioural responses. Recently, lateralised behavioural responses have been correlated with the use of infrared temperature of external body surfaces, such as the eyes and coronary bands of limbs. This review summarised the different forms of the lateralised behavioural responses in livestock, especially cattle and horses, to environmental stressors, and the association between these responses and the relevant external body surfaces’ infrared temperature, with the purpose of improving the use of non-invasive measures in assessing welfare conditions in animals. The combination of the lateralised behavioural responses and infrared temperature of external body surfaces to environmental stressors could improve the assessment strategies of welfare conditions and the related additional husbandry interventions that could be applied to improve the welfare of farm animals.

Endoscopic Endonasal Approach for Clival Chordomas in Elderly Patients: Clinical Characteristics, Patient Outcome, and Recurrence Rate.

Introduction The endoscopic endonasal route has demonstrated to be the approach of choice for a large majority of clival chordomas (CCs). However, its results in elderly patients are under-evaluated in the literature. The aim of this study is to assess the surgical outcome for these patients, determining the factors associated with a larger tumor resection in this population. Materials and Methods Our institutional database of CC has been retrospectively reviewed, to identify all cases over 65 years old, operated through an endoscopic endonasal approach (EEA). Preoperative clinical and radiological features were considered, as well as surgical results, morbidity, and patients' outcome at follow-up. Results Out of our series of 143 endoscopic surgical procedures for CC, 34 (23.8%) were in patients older than 65 and 10 in older than 75 (7.0%). Gross tumor removal was achieved in 22 cases (64.7%). Complications consisted of 2 (5.9%) postoperative cerebrospinal leaks, 1 (2.9%) meningitis, 1 (2.9%) permanent cranial nerve VI palsy, 1 (2.9%) pneumonia, and 2 (5.9%) urinary infections. In 39.1% of cases, the preoperative ophthalmoplegia improved or resolved. Twenty-seven patients (79.4%) underwent radiation therapy. At follow-up (37.7 ± 44.9 months), 13 patients (38.2%) showed a recurrence/progression and 13 (38.3%) deceased. Conclusion EEA can be a useful approach in elderlies, balancing the large tumor removal with an acceptable morbidity rate, even if higher than that for general CC population. However, patient selection remains crucial. A multidisciplinary evaluation is important to assess not only their medical conditions, but also their social and familiar conditions.

Ex-post implementation with interdependent values

We characterize ex-post implementable allocation rules for single object auctions under quasi-linear preferences with interdependent value functions. We show that requiring ex-post implementability is equivalent to requiring a weakening of monotonicity, which is a familiar condition used to characterize dominant strategy implementation. We illustrate that non-monotone rules may be necessary to achieve objectives such as efficiency and revenue maximizations, even in standard models such as the maximum signal model studied in Bulow and Klemperer (2002), and Bergemann et al. (2020).

ORGANIZATION MANAGEABILITY ENHANCED THROUGH TOPOLOGICAL MODULAR FORMS

Organizational manageability is a crucial aspect of business management, requiring a combination of forecasting, planning, organizing, implementing, controlling and decision-making. Topological modular forms study the properties of objects that are invariant under certain types of transformations and the authors search for and identify a set of key factors that are essential to the organizational manageability (both stable and unstable) and create a framework that captures these factors. Organizational manageability is highly complex and multifaceted field that requires the integration of mentioned elements. In order to simplify incommensurable complexity, authors offer the hypothesis that differentiating the approach to manageability in the two distinct situations "steady and familiar condition" and "unsteady and with considerable uncertainty condition" is effective. Discrimination between those two situations is essential for business success and requires a deep understanding of market trends, customer needs, design of organization and usage of resources. By mastering the principles of organizational manageability based on mentioned classification of situations, businesses can improve their performance, increase their competitiveness and achieve their goals more effectively.

Evaluation of Brain Source Localization Methods Based on Test-Retest Reliability With Multiple Session EEG Data.

Various EEG source localization methods have been proposed for functional brain research. The evaluation and comparison of these methods are usually based on simulated data but not real EEG data, as the ground truth of source localization is unknown. In this study, we aim to evaluate source localization methods quantitatively under the real situation. We examined the test-retest reliability of the source signals reconstructed from a public six-session EEG data of 16 subjects performing face recognition tasks by five mainstream methods, including weighted minimum norm estimation (WMN), dynamical Statistical Parametric Mapping (dSPM), Standardized LOw Resolution brain Electromagnetic TomogrAphy (sLORETA), dipole modeling and linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformers. All methods were evaluated in terms of peak localization reliability and amplitude reliability of source signals. In the two brain regions responsible for static face recognition, all methods have promising peak localization reliability, with WMN showing the smallest peak dipole distance between session pairs. The spatial stability of source localization in the familiar face condition is better than those in the unfamiliar face and the scrambled face conditions in the face recognition areas in the right hemisphere. In addition, the test-retest reliability of source amplitude by all methods is good to excellent under the familiar face condition. Stable and reliable results for source localization can be obtained in the presence of evident EEG effects. Due to different levels of a priori knowledge, different source localization methods have different applicable scenarios. These findings provide new evidence for the validity of source localization analysis and a new perspective for the evaluation of source localization methods on real EEG data.