Cognitive Control and Individual Differences in Economic Ultimatum Decision-Making

Much publicity has been given to the fact that people's economic decisions often deviate from the rational predictions of standard economic models. In the classic ultimatum game, for example, most people turn down financial gains by rejecting unequal monetary splits. The present study points to neglected individual differences in this debate. After participants played the ultimatum game we tested for individual differences in cognitive control capacity of the most and least economic responders. The key finding was that people who were higher in cognitive control, as measured by behavioral (Go/No-Go performance) and neural (No-Go N2 amplitude) markers, did tend to behave more in line with the standard models and showed increased acceptance of unequal splits. Hence, the cognitively highest scoring decision-makers were more likely to maximize their monetary payoffs and adhere to the standard economic predictions. Findings question popular claims with respect to the rejection of standard economic models and the irrationality of human economic decision-making

Mutual intelligibility of standard and regional Dutch language varieties

© Edinburgh University Press and the Association for History and Computing 2009. In this experimental study, we aim to arrive at a global picture of the mutual intelligibility of various Dutch language varieties by carrying out a computer-controlled lexical decision task in which ten target varieties are evaluated – the Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch standard language as well as four regional varieties of both countries. We auditorily presented real as well as pseudo-words in various varieties of Dutch to Netherlandic and Belgian test subjects, who were asked to decide as quickly as possible whether the items were existing Dutch words or not. The experiment's working assumption is that the faster the subjects react, the better the intelligibility of (the language variety of) the word concerned.status: publishe

Language attitudes revisited: Auditory affective priming

In this cognitive sociolinguistic study, we aim to examine automatically activated language attitudes and to map the affective representation of language-internal variation in Dutch. We do so by applying the affective priming paradigm, an experimental-cognitive paradigm in which participants are typically faster to respond to affectively polarized target stimuli that are preceded by affectively congruent prime stimuli than affectively polarized target stimuli that are preceded by affectively incongruent prime stimuli. Specifically, we carried out an auditory affective priming experiment in which auditory word stimuli, recorded in both standard and regiolectal varieties of Dutch, were used as primes. Our findings suggest that intralingually accented Dutch words are evaluated in an automatic fashion, irrespective of their semantic meaning. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.status: publishe

Perfrin, a novel bacteriocin from a necrotic enteritis associated Clostridium perfringens strain

Necrotic enteritis in broiler chickens is associated with netB positive Clostridium perfringens type A strains. Single strain dominance is found in the gut of broiler chickens suffering from necrotic enteritis: within an outbreak, all affected animals usually carry the same clonal Clostridium perfringens strain in the affected tissue while clinically healthy chickens can carry different Clostridium perfringens clones in their intestine. It is known that Clostridium perfringens is capable of secreting factors inhibiting growth of other Clostridium perfringens strains and this characteristic is more prevalent in strains isolated from outbreaks of necrotic enteritis compared to strains isolated from the gut of healthy chickens. This characteristic could lead to extensive and selective presence of a strain that contains the genetic make-up enabling to secrete toxins that cause gut lesions. This report describes the purification and the characterization of a bacteriocin from a necrotic enteritis associated Clostridium perfringens strain exhibiting antibacterial activity against other Clostridium perfringens strains. This report describes the purification and the characterization of a bacteriocin from a necrotic enteritis associated Clostridium perfringens strain exhibiting antibacterial activity against other Clostridium perfringens strains. Amino acid sequence analysis indicated that the bacteriocin is a 11.5 kDa fragment of a 22.91 kDa protein and that it constitutes the C-terminal part of this protein. The antibacterial activity of the purified bacteriocin was abolished by proteolytic enzymes trypsin and proteinase K and by heat treatment (10 min at 80 °C). The purified bacteriocin showed inhibitory activity over a wide pH-range (4.0 to 10.0). Since the antibacterial activity of the purified bacteriocin against other Clostridium perfringens strains had a narrower spectrum than the secreting strain, most probably additional bacteriocins are produced by the strain. The bacteriocin gene was identified in 20% (10/50) of the poultry derived strains (22/50 netB positive), and was not found in 45 netB negative C. perfringens type A, B, C, D and E strains isolated from cattle, sheep, pigs, and humans. Southern blotting showed that the bacteriocin gene is not located on a plasmid. Despite the fact that the 10 strains carrying the bacteriocin gene are all netB positive strains, Perfrin and NetB are not located on the same genetic element since NetB is plasmid encoded