Encouraging performance monitoring promotes proactive control in children

Monitoring progression towards one’s goals is essential for efficient cognitive control. Immature performance monitoring may contribute to suboptimal cognitive control engagement in childhood, potentially explaining why children engage control reactively even when proactive control would be more effective. The present study investigated whether encouraging children to actively monitor their performance results in more mature control engagement. EEG data were collected while children and adults performed a flanker task in three conditions in which they were provided no feedback, standard feedback, or were asked to estimate their own feedback. Both age groups accurately estimated their own feedback. Critically, feedback estimation promoted online performance monitoring and proactive engagement of attention and inhibition during the flanker period in children. These findings indicate that proactive control engagement in childhood can be effectively supported by encouraging performance monitoring

Synchrony as a measure of conversation difficulty: Movement coherence increases with background noise level and complexity in dyads and triads

When people interact, they fall into synchrony. This synchrony has been demonstrated in a range of contexts, from walking or playing music together to holding a conversation, and has been linked to prosocial outcomes such as development of rapport and efficiency of cooperation. While the basis of synchrony remains unclear, several studies have found synchrony to increase when an interaction is made challenging, potentially providing a means of facilitating interaction. Here we focus on head movement during free conversation. As verbal information is obscured when conversing over background noise, we investigate whether synchrony is greater in high vs low levels of noise, as well as addressing the effect of background noise complexity. Participants held a series of conversations with unfamiliar interlocutors while seated in a lab, and the background noise level changed every 15-30s between 54, 60, 66, 72, and 78 dB. We report measures of head movement synchrony recorded via high-resolution motion tracking at the extreme noise levels (i.e., 54 vs 78 dB) in dyads (n=15) and triads (n=11). In both the dyads and the triads, we report increased movement coherence in high compared to low level speech-shaped noise. Furthermore, in triads we compare behaviour in speech-shaped noise vs multi-talker babble, and find greater movement coherence in the more complex babble condition. Key synchrony differences fall in the 0.2-0.5 Hz frequency bands, and are discussed in terms of their correspondence to talkers’ average utterance durations. Additional synchrony differences occur at higher frequencies in the triads only (i.e., >5 Hz), which may relate to synchrony of backchannel cues (as multiple individuals were listening and responding to the same talker). Not only do these studies replicate prior work indicating interlocutors’ increased reliance on behavioural synchrony as task difficulty increases, but they demonstrate these effects using multiple difficulty manipulations and across different sized interaction groups

Nutritional status of children with Wilms’ tumour on admission to a South African hospital and its influence on outcome

BackgroundIn developing countries up to 77% of children with cancer have been shown to be malnourished on admission. High rates of malnutrition occur due to factors such as poverty and advanced disease. Weight can be an inaccurate parameter for nutritional assessment of children with solid tumours as it is influenced by tumour mass. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of malnutrition amongst children with Wilms tumour (WT), the level of nutritional support received on admission and the influence of nutritional status on outcome.MethodsSeventy‐six children diagnosed with WT and admitted to Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital between 2004 and 2012 were studied prospectively. Nutritional assessment was conducted using weight, height, mid‐upper arm circumference (MUAC) and triceps skinfold thickness (TSFT) prior to initiating treatment. Outcome was determined 2 years after admission. Time until commencement of nutritional resuscitation and nature, thereof, were recorded.ResultsStunting and wasting was evident in 12% and 15% of patients, respectively. The prevalence of malnutrition was 66% when MUAC, TSFT and albumin were used. Malnutrition was not a predictor of poor outcome and did not predict advanced disease. The majority of patients (84%) received nutritional resuscitation within 2 weeks of admission.ConclusionsWhen classifying nutritional status in children with WT, the utilisation of weight and height in isolation can lead to an underestimation of the prevalence of malnutrition. Nutritional assessment of children with WT should also include MUAC and TSFT. Early aggressive nutritional resuscitation is recommended.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137198/1/pbc26382.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137198/2/pbc26382_am.pd

Timing of head turns to upcoming talkers in triadic conversation: Evidence for prediction of turn ends and interruptions

In conversation, people are able to listen to an utterance and respond within only a few hundred milliseconds. It takes substantially longer to prepare even a simple utterance, suggesting that interlocutors may make use of predictions about when the talker is about to end. But it is not only the upcoming talker that needs to anticipate the prior talker ending—listeners that are simply following the conversation could also benefit from predicting the turn end in order to shift attention appropriately with the turn switch. In this paper, we examined whether people predict upcoming turn ends when watching conversational turns switch between others by analysing natural conversations. These conversations were between triads of older adults in different levels and types of noise. The analysis focused on the observer during turn switches between the other two parties using head orientation (i.e. saccades from one talker to the next) to identify when their focus moved from one talker to the next. For non-overlapping utterances, observers started to turn to the upcoming talker before the prior talker had finished speaking in 17% of turn switches (going up to 26% when accounting for motor-planning time). For overlapping utterances, observers started to turn towards the interrupter before they interrupted in 18% of turn switches (going up to 33% when accounting for motor-planning time). The timing of head turns was more precise at lower than higher noise levels, and was not affected by noise type. These findings demonstrate that listeners in natural group conversation situations often exhibit head movements that anticipate the end of one conversational turn and the beginning of another. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the value of analysing head movement as a cue to social attention, which could be relevant for advancing communication technology such as hearing devices

Timing of head turns to upcoming talkers in triadic conversation: evidence for prediction of turn-ends and interruptions

In conversation, people are able to listen to an utterance and respond within only a few hundred milliseconds. It takes substantially longer to prepare even a simple utterance, suggesting that interlocutors may make use of predictions about when the talker is about to end. But it is not only the upcoming talker that needs to anticipate the prior talker ending—listeners that are simply following the conversation could also benefit from predicting the turn end in order to shift attention appropriately with the turn switch. In this paper, we examined whether people predict upcoming turn ends when watching conversational turns switch between others by analysing natural conversations. These conversations were between triads of older adults in different levels and types of noise. The analysis focused on the observer during turn switches between the other two parties using head orientation (i.e. saccades from one talker to the next) to identify when their focus moved from one talker to the next. For non-overlapping utterances, observers started to turn to the upcoming talker before the prior talker had finished speaking in 17% of turn switches (going up to 26% when accounting for motor-planning time). For overlapping utterances, observers started to turn towards the interrupter before they interrupted in 18% of turn switches (going up to 33% when accounting for motor-planning time). The timing of head turns was more precise at lower than higher noise levels, and was not affected by noise type. These findings demonstrate that listeners in natural group conversation situations often exhibit head movements that anticipate the end of one conversational turn and the beginning of another. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the value of analysing head movement as a cue to social attention, which could be relevant for advancing communication technology such as hearing devices

Age-related differentiation in verbal and visuo-spatial working memory processing in childhood

Working memory (WM), a key feature of the cognitive system, allows for maintaining and processing information simultaneously and in a controlled manner. WM processing continuously develops across childhood, with significant increases both in verbal and visuo-spatial WM. Verbal and visuospatial WM may show different developmental trajectories, as verbal (but not visuospatial) WM relies on internal verbal rehearsal, which is less developed in younger children. We examined complex VWM and VSWM performance in 125 younger (age 4 to 6 years) and 101 older (age 8 to10 years) children. Latent multi-group modeling showed that (1) older children performed better on both verbal and visuospatial WM span tasks than younger children, (2) both age groups performed better on verbal than visuospatial WM, and (3) a model with two factors representing verbal and visuospatial WM fit the data better than a one-factor model. Importantly, the correlation between the two factors was significantly higher in younger than in older children, suggesting an age-related differentiation of verbal and spatial WM processing in middle childhood. Age-related differentiation is an important characteristic of cognitive functioning and thus the findings contribute to our general understanding of WM processing

Speech, movement, and gaze behaviours during dyadic conversation in noise

How do people have conversations in noise and make themselves understood? While many previous studies have investigated speaking and listening in isolation, this study focuses on the behaviour of pairs of individuals in an ecologically valid context. Specifically, we report the fine-grained dynamics of natural conversation between interlocutors of varying hearing ability (n = 30), addressing how different levels of background noise affect speech, movement, and gaze behaviours. We found that as noise increased, people spoke louder and moved closer together, although these behaviours provided relatively small acoustic benefit (0.32 dB speech level increase per 1 dB noise increase). We also found that increased noise led to shorter utterances and increased gaze to the speaker’s mouth. Surprisingly, interlocutors did not make use of potentially beneficial head orientations. While participants were able to sustain conversation in noise of up to 72 dB, changes in conversation structure suggested increased difficulty at 78 dB, with a significant decrease in turn-taking success. Understanding these natural conversation behaviours could inform broader models of interpersonal communication, and be applied to the development of new communication technologies. Furthermore, comparing these findings with those from isolation paradigms demonstrates the importance of investigating social processes in ecologically valid multi-person situations