Inferring unseen causes : developmental and evolutionary origins

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 639072).Human adults can infer unseen causes because they represent the events around them in terms of their underlying causal mechanisms. It has been argued that young preschoolers can also make causal inferences from an early age, but whether or not nonhuman apes can go beyond associative learning when exploiting causality is controversial. However, much of the developmental research to date has focused on fully-perceivable causal relations or highlighted the existence of a causal relationship verbally and these were found to scaffold young children’s abilities. We examined inferences about unseen causes in children and chimpanzees in the absence of linguistic cues. Children (N=129, aged 3-6 years) and zoo-living chimpanzees (N=11, aged 7-41 years) were presented with an event in which a reward was dropped through an opaque forked-tube into one of two cups. An auditory cue signaled which of the cups contained the reward. In the causal condition, the cue followed the dropping event, making it plausible that the sound was caused by the reward falling into the cup; and in the arbitrary condition, the cue preceded the dropping event, making the relation arbitrary. By 4-years of age, children performed better in the causal condition than the arbitrary one, suggesting that they engaged in reasoning. A follow-up experiment ruled out a simpler associative learning explanation. Chimpanzees and 3-year-olds performed at chance in both conditions. These groups’ performance did not improve in a simplified version of the task involving shaken boxes; however, the use of causal language helped 3-year-olds. The failure of chimpanzees could reflect limitations in reasoning about unseen causes or a more general difficulty with auditory discrimination learning.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

What happened? Do preschool children and capuchin monkeys spontaneously use visual traces to locate a reward?

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement no. 639072). Edinburgh Zoo's Living Links Research Facility is core supported by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (registered charity no.: SC004064) through funding generated by its visitors, members and supporters.The ability to infer unseen causes from evidence is argued to emerge early in development and to be uniquely human. We explored whether preschoolers and capuchin monkeys could locate a reward based on the physical traces left following a hidden event. Preschoolers and capuchin monkeys were presented with two cups covered with foil. Behind a barrier, an experimenter (E) punctured the foil coverings one at a time, revealing the cups with one cover broken after the first event and both covers broken after the second. One event involved hiding a reward, the other event was performed with a stick (order counterbalanced). Preschoolers and, with additional experience, monkeys could connect the traces to the objects used in the puncturing events to find the reward. Reversing the order of events perturbed the performance of 3-year olds and capuchins, while 4-year-old children performed above chance when the order of events was reversed from the first trial. Capuchins performed significantly better on the ripped foil task than they did on an arbitrary test in which the covers were not ripped but rather replaced with a differently patterned cover. We conclude that by 4 years of age children spontaneously reason backwards from evidence to deduce its cause.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Effect of Nasal Packing on Oxidative Stress in Septoplasty Operation

Objective:To evaluate the effects of nasal septal surgery and type of nasal packing used on local and systemic oxidative stress.Methods:Fifteen patients who were scheduled for septoplasty under local anaesthesia with isolated septal deviation were included in the study. Venous blood samples were collected preoperatively, postoperatively upon anterior nasal packaging, immediately after nasal packaging was removed and 2 hours following removal of nasal packaging. At the start of the incision and just after removal of the nasal packaging 2x2-mm sized nasal mucosal samples were taken. Malonylaldehyde (MDA) was measured as a parameter of local oxidative stress, and glutathione (GSH) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) as parameters of the local antioxidant system. Systemic MDA, catalase and nitric oxide were measured.Results:GSH and SOD levels decreased postoperatively in the septal mucosa just after nasal package removal, whereas MDA increased significantly (p<0.001). Systemic MDA levels decreased in comparison to preoperative levelsbetween the phases, however NO and catalase levels increased (p<0.05, p<0.01).Conclusion:Local oxidative stress occurs after septoplasy operation but no biochemical effect is observed systemically. Local oxidative stress is influenced by surgical intervention, surgical technique and packing material. New comparative studies are required between study groups with no nasal packaging

The structure of executive functions in preschool children and chimpanzees

Executive functions (EF) are a core aspect of cognition. Research with adult humans has produced evidence for unity and diversity in the structure of EF. Studies with preschoolers favour a 1-factor model, in which variation in EF tasks is best explained by a single underlying trait on which all EF tasks load. How EF are structured in nonhuman primates remains unknown. This study starts to fill this gap through a comparative, multi-trait multi-method test battery with preschoolers (N = 185) and chimpanzees (N = 55). The battery aimed at measuring working memory updating, inhibition, and attention shifting with three non-verbal tasks per function. For both species the correlations between tasks were low to moderate and not confined to tasks within the same putative function. Factor analyses produced some evidence for the unity of executive functions in both groups, in that our analyses revealed shared variance. However, we could not conclusively distinguish between 1-, 2- or 3-factor models. We discuss the implications of our findings with respect to the ecological validity of current psychometric research

Characteristics of food allergy in children: National multicenter study

Conference: Congress of the European-Academy-of-Allergy-and-Clinical-Immunology (EAACI) Location: Lisbon, PORTUGAL Date: JUN 01-05, 2019Background : Food allergies impose a significant burden on the life of the child and the family. In this study, to determine the demographic characteristics of food allergies, we investigated the characteristics of patients with food allergies in different regions of Pediatric Allergy- Immunology departments in Turkey. Method : Turkey ' s National Study of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Society has conducted a Study Group on Food Allergies. 25 centers participated in this multicenter, cross- sectional and descriptive study.European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunolog

Inferring unseen causes : exploring the developmental and evolutionary origins

Human adults excel at inferring and exploiting the causal relations in the world. This certainly contributed to the unprecedented advancements in many areas of life from technology to health and astronomy, not seen in other non-human species. What might have led to this capacity? Is the ability to identify causal relations a uniquely human ability? When does it emerge in human development? Do we represent our environments in fundamentally different ways than other non-human animals? In this thesis, I aimed to expand our understanding concerning these questions. If this is a core human capacity, we may find its precursors in other non-human primates. On the other hand, it may be a late emerging capacity in childhood with the development of language and through cultural input. Then there may not be a continuity with other primates. In my theoretical chapters, I brought together the previous literature to identify the factors that might have facilitated and/or hampered children’s and non-human primates’ performances while they were dealing with causal reasoning tasks. In the light of the challenges presented by this type of research and my goals, I proposed novel paradigms that are suitable to test causal reasoning abilities of young children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys. In three studies, I found that by 4-years of age children were able to infer causal relations based on evidence alone. Three-year-olds did not succeed in the tasks but seemed to have benefited from verbal scaffolding provided by the experimenter. The performance of the chimpanzees and capuchins did not lead to decisive conclusions towards the lack or the presence of this capacity. However, the findings highlighted the importance of prior experience in animal learning. The results and their implications are further discussed."This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. [639072]); and I was awarded the St Leonard’s College Scholarship from the University of St Andrews." -- Fundin

Inferring unseen causes:developmental and evolutionary origins

Human adults can infer unseen causes because they represent the events around them in terms of their underlying causal mechanisms. It has been argued that young preschoolers can also make causal inferences from an early age, but whether or not nonhuman apes can go beyond associative learning when exploiting causality is controversial. However, much of the developmental research to date has focused on fully-perceivable causal relations or highlighted the existence of a causal relationship verbally and these were found to scaffold young children’s abilities. We examined inferences about unseen causes in children and chimpanzees in the absence of linguistic cues. Children (N=129, aged 3-6 years) and zoo-living chimpanzees (N=11, aged 7-41 years) were presented with an event in which a reward was dropped through an opaque forked-tube into one of two cups. An auditory cue signaled which of the cups contained the reward. In the causal condition, the cue followed the dropping event, making it plausible that the sound was caused by the reward falling into the cup; and in the arbitrary condition, the cue preceded the dropping event, making the relation arbitrary. By 4-years of age, children performed better in the causal condition than the arbitrary one, suggesting that they engaged in reasoning. A follow-up experiment ruled out a simpler associative learning explanation. Chimpanzees and 3-year-olds performed at chance in both conditions. These groups’ performance did not improve in a simplified version of the task involving shaken boxes; however, the use of causal language helped 3-year-olds. The failure of chimpanzees could reflect limitations in reasoning about unseen causes or a more general difficulty with auditory discrimination learning