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Effects of language experience on domain-general perceptual strategies
Get PDFSpeech and music are highly redundant communication systems, with multiple acoustic
cues signaling the existence of perceptual categories. This redundancy makes these
systems robust to the influence of noise, but necessitates the development of perceptual
strategies: listeners need to decide the importance to place on each source of
information. Prior empirical work and modeling has suggested that cue weights
primarily reflect within-task statistical learning, as listeners assess the reliability with
which different acoustic dimensions signal a category and modify their weights
accordingly. Here we present evidence that perceptual experience can lead to changes
in cue weighting which extend across tasks and across domains, suggesting that
perceptual strategies reflect both global biases and local (i.e. task-specific) learning.
In two experiments, native speakers of Mandarin (N=45)—where pitch is a crucial cue
to word identity—placed more importance on pitch and less importance on other
dimensions compared to native speakers of non-tonal languages English (N=45) and
Spanish (N=27), during the perception of both second language speech and musical
beats. In a third experiment, we further show that Mandarin speakers are better able to
attend to pitch and ignore irrelevant variation in other dimensions compared to English
and Spanish speakers, and even struggle to ignore pitch when asked to attend to other
dimensions. Thus, an individual’s idiosyncratic auditory perceptual strategies reflect a
complex mixture of congenital predispositions, task-specific learning, and biases
instilled by extensive experience in making use of important dimensions in their native
language
Attentional modulation of neural entrainment to sound streams in children with and without ADHD
Get PDFTo extract meaningful information from complex auditory scenes like a noisy playground, rock concert, or classroom, children can direct attention to different sound streams. One means of accomplishing this might be to align neural activity with the temporal structure of a target stream, such as a specific talker or melody. However, this may be more difficult for children with ADHD, who can struggle with accurately perceiving and producing temporal intervals. In this EEG study, we found that school-aged children's attention to one of two temporally-interleaved isochronous tone 'melodies' was linked to an increase in phase-locking at the melody’s rate, and a shift in neural phase that aligned the neural responses with the attended tone stream. Children's attention task performance and neural phase alignment with the attended melody were linked to performance on temporal production tasks, suggesting that children with more robust control over motor timing were better able to direct attention to the time points associated with the target melody. Finally, we found that although children with ADHD performed less accurately on the tonal attention task than typically developing children, they showed the same degree of attentional modulation of phase locking and neural phase shifts, suggesting that children with ADHD may have difficulty with attentional engagement rather than attentional selection
flexiMAP: a regression-based method for discovering differential alternative polyadenylation events in standard RNA-seq data
Get PDFMotivation: We present flexible Modeling of Alternative PolyAdenylation (flexiMAP), a newbeta-regression-based method implemented in R, for discovering differential alternative polyadenylation events in standard RNA-seq data.
Results: We show, using both simulated and real data, that flexiMAP exhibits a good balance between specificity and sensitivity and compares favourably to existing methods, especially at low fold changes. In addition, the tests on simulated data reveal some hitherto unrecognized caveats of existing methods. Importantly, flexiMAP allows modeling of multiple known covariates that often confound the results of RNA-seq data analysis.
Availability and implementation: The flexiMAPR package is available at:https://github.com/kszkop/flexiMAP. Scripts and data to reproduce the analysis in this paper are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3689788
Does affective evaluation matter for the success of university-industry collaborations? A sentiment analysis of university-industry collaborative project reports
Get PDFUniversity-industry collaborations (UICs) play a crucial role in the knowledge-based economy; however, past research has paid surprisingly little attention to the role played by the ‘subjective’ determinants of collaborations and their influence on ‘objective’ collaboration outcomes. By performing a sentiment analysis on a dataset of 415 final reports from completed UICs, we find that there is a negative relationship between the collaborators’ perceived challenges and benefits of UICs, mediated by negative affective evaluation. Instead, a positive affective evaluation of the UIC is positively correlated with its perceived benefits, which, in turn, are a predictor of an important objective outcome of UICs: the likelihood of future collaboration. A positive affective evaluation also negatively moderates the positive relationship between perceived challenges and negative affective evaluation. Therefore, a positive affective evaluation may increase the likelihood of future collaboration, even in a context in which a UIC is perceived to be challenging. Besides generating theoretical implications, our findings are of significant value for practitioners, as we highlight the need to regulate perception and affective evaluation to achieve successful UICs. We showcase sentiment analysis as a helpful foresight tool to identify those UICs that are more likely to continue over time
My son can’t socially distance or wear a mask: how families of preschool children with severe developmental delays and challenging behavior experienced the COVID-19 pandemic
Get PDFBackground: Families of children with developmental delays (DD) prior to the COVID-19 pandemic experienced inequalities in accessing health and social care services. Measures put in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus have potentially exacerbated existing inequalities and have led to additional pressures for these families.
Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional online survey of parents of young children with moderate to severe DD and challenging behaviors living in England, UK. We asked about the impact the pandemic has had on their family well-being, receipt of support, and post COVID-19 concerns.
Results: Eighty-eight parents who are participants in an ongoing clinical trial (EPICC-ID) reported a broad range of challenges they faced during the pandemic: lack of information specific to children with DD; difficulties following social distancing and isolation rules; disruption or pause of health and social care services; deterioration in parental mental health and regression of the child’s skills. Future access to services, negative long-term impact of school closures, parental unemployment were the parents’ main post-COVID-19 concerns.
Conclusions: Families of children with significant developmental delays fear lasting impact of the pandemic on their own psychological and material wellbeing and on their child’s health. These families require urgent help to meet major health and social care needs and should be prioritized within an overall children’s mental health strategy.
The article includes a commentary from parents with lived experience
Trends in the novel in French after 2000
No full textBook synopsis: This History is the first in a century to trace the development and impact of the novel in French from its beginnings to the present. Leading specialists explore how novelists writing in French have responded to the diverse personal, economic, socio-political, cultural-artistic and environmental factors that shaped their worlds. From the novel's medieval precursors to the impact of the internet, the History provides fresh accounts of canonical and lesser-known authors, offering a global perspective beyond the national borders of 'the Hexagon' to explore France's colonial past and its legacies. Accessible chapters range widely, including the French novel in Sub-Saharan Africa, data analysis of the novel system in the seventeenth century, social critique in women's writing, Sade's banned works and more. Highlighting continuities and divergence between and within different periods, this lively volume offers routes through a diverse literary landscape while encouraging comparison and connection-making between writers, works and historical periods
The role of social support in the transition to parenthood among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual persons: a systematic review
Get PDFParenting is a challenging life-cycle transition, particularly for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons who have to deal with prejudice and discrimination. Considering this position of social disadvantage and the potential protective role of social support, our aim in this work was to systematize existing knowledge about the role of social support (i.e., social support, family support, community support, LGBT support, support, and engagement) in the transition to parenthood among LGB persons. Through a systematic review process conducted in May 2019 using PRISMA guidelines, the present study identified 22 manuscripts which accomplished all inclusion criteria. Our results suggested closer relationships to the family of origin and a detachment from the LGBT community in this stage of life cycle. Furthermore, the social support received in the transition to parenthood seems to influence, not only the psychological well-being of these parents and prospective parents, but also the quality of their relationships with different support networks. Thus, we understand that inclusive clinical and human professional interventions aimed at improving the available social support networks of LGB persons and, consequently, enhance their psychosocial well-being and family relations during this life transition
Doctors’ working conditions, wellbeing and trust quality of care: A multilevel analysis
Get PDFIntroduction Doctors’ wellbeing is postulated to mediate the relationship between their
working conditions and patient care although few studies have tested this. Even fewer have
incorporated a multilevel perspective that considers the antecedents of quality of care at the
hospital. This study draws on the job demands-resource model to test the associations
between hospital-level care (mortality, patient safety incidents, patient satisfaction) with
hospital-level demands (e.g. emergency admissions) and self-reported doctors’ job demands,
job resources and wellbeing.
Method Multilevel structural equation models were used to test the proposed associations
using secondary data involving 13,239 doctors from 139 acute hospitals in England.
Results Doctors’ work engagement was associated with higher levels of job control, better
manager support, higher bed occupancy rates, and lower levels of emergency admissions.
Presenteeism among doctors was linked with higher work overload and emergency
admissions. Doctors’ work-related stress was associated with higher levels of work overload.
Patient satisfaction with their doctor was associated with doctors’ level of work overload and
job control, as well as bed occupancy rates. Work overload predicted patient safety incidents,
while the number of emergency admission predicted mortality rates. Doctors’ wellbeing did
not mediate any relationship.
Conclusion Better working conditions for hospital doctors were associated with high levels
of work engagement and lower levels of work-related stress and presenteeism, necessitating a
focus on their work environment to improve wellbeing. The relationships among doctors’
working conditions, wellbeing and patient care were not clear, highlighting the importance of
considering both statistical and methodological issues in future research
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