How do children share information in groups?

Group decision making should be particularly beneficial when group members share unique information, because then a group can make a better decision than each group member alone. This study examined how elementary-school children share unique information during group decision making. Seventy-nine groups of 3 same-sex and same-age 7- and 9-year-old children (N = 237) had to decide which 1 of 2 hypothetical candidates should play the lead role in a school musical. When information was unshared, group members had to exchange their uniquely held information to identify the best candidate. Only a minority of groups picked the best candidate when information was unshared. Yet, groups of 7-year-old children were better at identifying the best candidate and were less likely to focus on the discussion of shared information than groups of 9-year-olds. These findings are interpreted with reference to processes underlying information sharing in groups, namely collective information sampling, preference-consistent evaluation, and collaborative inhibition/intersubjectivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved

Cellular Basis for Response Diversity in the Olfactory Periphery

An emerging idea in olfaction is that temporal coding of odor specificity can be intrinsic to the primary olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs). As a first step towards understanding whether lobster ORNs are capable of generating odor-specific temporal activity and what mechanisms underlie any such heterogeneity in discharge pattern, we characterized different patterns of activity in lobster ORNs individually and ensemble using patch-clamp recording and calcium imaging. We demonstrate that lobster ORNs show tonic excitation, tonic inhibition, phaso-tonic excitation, and bursting, and that these patterns are faithfully reflected in the calcium signal. We then demonstrate that the various dynamic patterns of response are inherent in the cells, and that this inherent heterogeneity is largely determined by heterogeneity in the underlying intrinsic conductances