Children's Ability to Navigate Competitive Contexts- The Role of Gender and Socio-Cognitive Skills

A crucial aspect of children’s development is learning to navigate the diverse contexts within their social world. Competitive contexts are unique in that individuals must attempt to perform well or win, but also maintain social relationships with peers or competitors. This study assessed how the context (winning/tying/losing), gender, and socio-cognitive skills affected children’s game play and communication with opponents. Four- to six-year-old children (N= 102) played a rigged game on an electronic tablet against fictional peers (who participants believed were real children). Children sent verbal messages to their opponents after receiving feedback that they had won, tied or lost. Children’s performance in the game improved after receiving feedback that they had won or tied previous games but did not improve after feedback that they were losing. Girls performed better on the competitive game than boys, regardless of context. Girls with higher executive functioning abilities showed more improvement in their performance after receiving feedback that they were winning. Better theory of mind abilities predicted better game play performance for both genders, regardless of perceived outcome. In a losing context, boys’ messages to opponents on the final trial showed more pro-social content than girls. Moreover, girls became continuously less pro-social towards their opponents after feedback that they were losing. Older children displayed higher levels of pro-social behaviour regardless of context. This research provides new insights into how context, gender and socio-cognitive skills influence pre-schooler’s performance and social behaviours in a competitive environment

Experimental position-time entanglement with degenerate single photons

We report an experiment in which two-photon interference occurs between degenerate single photons that never meet. The two photons travel in opposite directions through our fibre-optic interferometer and interference occurs when the photons reach two different, spatially separated, 2-by-2 couplers at the same time. We show that this experiment is analogous to the conventional Franson-type entanglement experiment where the photons are entangled in position and time. We measure wavefunction overlaps for the two photons as high as 94 $\pm$ 3%.Comment: Updated to published version, new fig. 4., corrected typo

Surface acoustic wave-induced electroluminescence intensity oscillation in planar light-emitting devices

Electroluminescence emission from surface acoustic wave-driven light-emitting diodes (SAWLEDs) is studied by means of time-resolved techniques. We show that the intensity of the SAW-induced electroluminescence is modulated at the SAW frequency (~1 GHz), demonstrating electron injection into the p-type region synchronous with the SAW wavefronts.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Children accept information from incongruent speakers when the context explains the communicative incongruence

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.100813. © 2019. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Past work has shown that children are less likely to solicit information from speakers who use incongruent communicative cues (i.e., demonstrate an emotion nonverbally that differs from the emotional valence of the words) versus those who use congruent cues. The present study explored whether school-age children show flexibility in their decisions to avoid incongruent speakers based on the situational context and speakers’ awareness of the context. Older children (9–10 years old), but not younger children (7–8 years old), demonstrated this flexibility. Within a speaker reliability paradigm, incongruent speakers were more likely to be solicited for information when the situational context rendered their affect more appropriate. Moreover, older children showed appreciation for the speakers’ perspective; they were more likely to solicit information from incongruent speakers when the speaker was aware (versus unaware) of the context. Such findings demonstrate the growth in children’s ability to integrate various cues when judging information sources across the school-age years.Funder 1, This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant awarded to EN

Children's reactions to inequality: Associations with empathy and parental teaching

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2020.101189. © 2020. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/While children generally prefer equal distributions of resources, we know little about the contextual and individual variability in these preferences. The present work examined experimental manipulations and associations between individual differences in empathy and parental teaching of “just world beliefs”, and children's perceptions of, and reactions to, unequal distributions. Children (aged 5–8, N = 96) watched videos of two puppets receiving unequal resources in varying contexts: distribution by one or multiple individuals, crossed with taking the perspective of the advantaged or disadvantaged puppet. Age was positively associated with perceived unfairness. Behavioural reactions to distributions were associated with individual and contextual factors: Greater cognitive empathy and lower teaching of just world beliefs were associated with increased rectification, and children with greater affective empathy favoured the disadvantaged puppet, but these relations only emerged in certain contexts. Findings provide guidance for interventions aimed at promoting morality, suggesting emphasis on behavioural responses to inequality and empathy-training.Funder 1,This work was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant awarded to E.N. and a SSHRC Insight Grant awarded to R.B

Magnetic-field-induced reduction of the exciton polarization splitting in InAs quantum dots

By the application of an in-plane magnetic field, we demonstrate control of the fine structure polarisation splitting of the exciton emission lines in individual InAs quantum dots. The selection of quantum dots with certain barrier composition and confinement energies is found to determine the magnetic field dependent increase or decrease of the separation of the bright exciton emission lines, and has enabled the splitting to be tuned to zero within the resolution of our experiments. Observed behaviour allows us to determine g-factors and exchange splittings for different types of dots.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

A lithographic approach for quantum dot-photonic crystal nanocavity coupling in dilute nitrides

We report on a novel lithographic approach for the fabrication of integrated quantum dot (QD)-photonic crystal (PhC) nanocavity systems. We exploit unique hydrogen's ability to tailor the band gap energy of dilute nitride semiconductors to fabricate isolated site-controlled QDs via a spatially selective hydrogenation at the nanometer-scale. A deterministic integration of the realized site-controlled QDs with PhC nanocavities is provided by the inherent realignment precision (~ 20 nm) of the electron beam lithography system used for the fabrication of both QDs and PhC cavities. A detailed description of the fabrication steps leading to the realization of integrated QD-PhC cavity systems is provided, together with the experimental evidence of a weak coupling effect between the single-photon emitter and the PhC cavity

Broadband omnidirectional antireflection coating based on subwavelength surface Mie resonators

Reflection is a natural phenomenon that occurs when light passes the interface between materials with different refractive index. In many applications, such as solar cells or photodetectors, reflection is an unwanted loss process. Many ways to reduce reflection from a substrate have been investigated so far, including dielectric interference coatings, surface texturing, adiabatic index matching and scattering from plasmonic nanoparticles. Here we present an entirely new concept that suppresses the reflection of light from a silicon surface over a broad spectral range. A two-dimensional periodic array of subwavelength silicon nanocylinders designed to possess strongly substrate-coupled Mie resonances yields almost zero total reflectance over the entire spectral range from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared. This new antireflection concept relies on the strong forward scattering that occurs when a scattering structure is placed in close proximity to a high-index substrate with a high optical density of states

Intercomparison of bidirectional reflectance distribution function measurements at in- and out-of-plane geometries

10 pags., 8 figs., 5 tabs.In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the measurements of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) in industry and research and development. However, there is currently no dedicated key comparison to demonstrate the scale conformity. To date, scale conformity has been proved only for classical in-plane geometries, in comparisons between different national metrology institutes (NMIs) and designated institutes (DIs). This study aims at expanding that with nonclassical geometries, including, for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, two out-of-plane geometries. A total of four NMIs and two DIs participated in a scale comparison of the BRDF measurements of three achromatic samples at 550 nm in five measurement geometries. The realization of the scale of BRDF is a well-understood procedure, as explained in this paper, but the comparison of the measured values presents slight inconsistencies in some geometries, most likely due to the underestimation of measurement uncertainties. This underestimation was revealed and indirectly quantified using the Mandel-Paule method, which provides the interlaboratory uncertainty. The results from the presented comparison allow the present state of the BRDF scale realization to be evaluated, not only for classical in-plane geometries, but also for out-of-plane geometries.This work has been done in the frame of the EMPIR project 18SIB03 (BxDiff ) that has received funding from the EMPIR programme co-financed by the participating states and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation ProgrammePeer reviewe

Spectroscopic study of mid-infrared light emitting diodes

Imperial Users onl