Vocal development in a large‐scale crosslinguistic corpus

This study evaluates whether early vocalizations develop in similar ways in children across diverse cultural contexts. We analyze data from daylong audio recordings of 49 children (1–36 months) from five different language/cultural backgrounds. Citizen scientists annotated these recordings to determine if child vocalizations contained canonical transitions or not (e.g., “ba” vs. “ee”). Results revealed that the proportion of clips reported to contain canonical transitions increased with age. Furthermore, this proportion exceeded 0.15 by around 7 months, replicating and extending previous findings on canonical vocalization development but using data from the natural environments of a culturally and linguistically diverse sample. This work explores how crowdsourcing can be used to annotate corpora, helping establish developmental milestones relevant to multiple languages and cultures. Lower inter‐annotator reliability on the crowdsourcing platform, relative to more traditional in‐lab expert annotators, means that a larger number of unique annotators and/or annotations are required, and that crowdsourcing may not be a suitable method for more fine‐grained annotation decisions. Audio clips used for this project are compiled into a large‐scale infant vocalization corpus that is available for other researchers to use in future work

Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to assess cognitive function in infants in rural Africa

Cortical mapping of cognitive function during infancy is poorly understood in low-income countries due to the lack of transportable neuroimaging methods. We have successfully piloted functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a neuroimaging tool in rural Gambia. Four-to-eight month old infants watched videos of Gambian adults perform social movements, while haemodynamic responses were recorded using fNIRS. We found distinct regions of the posterior superior temporal and inferior frontal cortex that evidenced either visual-social activation or vocally selective activation (vocal > non-vocal). The patterns of selective cortical activation in Gambian infants replicated those observed within similar aged infants in the UK. These are the first reported data on the measurement of localized functional brain activity in young infants in Africa and demonstrate the potential that fNIRS offers for field-based neuroimaging research of cognitive function in resource-poor rural communities

Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to assess cognitive function in infants in rural Africa

Cortical mapping of cognitive function during infancy is poorly understood in low-income countries due to the lack of transportable neuroimaging methods. We have successfully piloted functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a neuroimaging tool in rural Gambia. Four-to-eight month old infants watched videos of Gambian adults perform social movements, while haemodynamic responses were recorded using fNIRS. We found distinct regions of the posterior superior temporal and inferior frontal cortex that evidenced either visual-social activation or vocally selective activation (vocal > non-vocal). The patterns of selective cortical activation in Gambian infants replicated those observed within similar aged infants in the UK. These are the first reported data on the measurement of localized functional brain activity in young infants in Africa and demonstrate the potential that fNIRS offers for field-based neuroimaging research of cognitive function in resource-poor rural communities

Preparation and Characterization of Electrospun Polysaccharide FucoPol-Based Nanofiber Systems

The electrospinnability of FucoPol, a bacterial exopolysaccharide, is presented for the first time, evaluated alone and in combination with other polymers, such as polyethylene oxide (PEO) and pullulan. The obtained fibers were characterized in terms of their morphological, structural and thermal properties. Pure FucoPol fibers could not be obtained due to FucoPol’s low water solubility and a lack of molecular entanglements. Nanofibers were obtained via blending with PEO and pullulan. FucoPol:PEO (1:3 w/w) showed fibers with well-defined cylindrical structure, since the higher molecular weight of PEO helps the continuity of the erupted jet towards the collector, forming stable fibers. WAXS, DSC and TGA showed that FucoPol is an amorphous biopolymer, stable until 220◦C, whereas FucoPol-PEO fibers were stable until 140◦C, and FucoPol:pullulan fibers were stable until 130◦C. Interestingly, blended components influenced one another in intermolecular order, since new peaks associated to intermolecular hierarchical assemblies were seen by WAXS. These results make FucoPol-based systems viable candidates for production of nanofibers for packaging, agriculture, biomedicine, pharmacy and cosmetic applications

An online database of infant functional near infraRed spectroscopy studies: a community-augmented systematic review

Until recently, imaging the infant brain was very challenging. Functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a promising, relatively novel technique, whose use is rapidly expanding. As an emergent field, it is particularly important to share methodological knowledge to ensure replicable and robust results. In this paper, we present a community-augmented database which will facilitate precisely this exchange. We tabulated articles and theses reporting empirical fNIRS research carried out on infants below three years of age along several methodological variables. The resulting spreadsheet has been uploaded in a format allowing individuals to continue adding new results, and download the most recent version of the table. Thus, this database is ideal to carry out systematic reviews. We illustrate its academic utility by focusing on the factors affecting three key variables: infant attrition, the reliability of oxygenated and deoxygenated responses, and signal-to-noise ratios. We then discuss strengths and weaknesses of the DBIfNIRS, and conclude by suggesting a set of simple guidelines aimed to facilitate methodological convergence through the standardization of reports

Correlates of mobile screen media use among children aged 0-8: Protocol for a systematic review

Background: Childhood is a crucial period for shaping healthy behaviours; however, it currently appears to be dominated by screen time. A large proportion of young children do not adhere to the screen time recommendations, with the use of mobile screen devices becoming more common than fixed screens. Existing systematic reviews on correlates of screen time have focused largely on the traditional fixed screen devices such as television. Reviews specially focused on mobile screen media are almost non-existent. This paper describes the protocol for conducting a systematic review of papers published between 2009 and 2015 to identify the correlates of mobile screen media use among children aged 0–8 years. Methods: A systematic literature search of electronic databases will be carried out using different combinations of keywords for papers published in English between January 2009 and December 2015. Additionally, a manual search of reference lists and citations will also be conducted. Papers that have examined correlates of screen time among children aged 0–8 will be included in the review. Studies must include at least one type of mobile screen media (mobile phones, electronic tablets or handheld computers) to be eligible for inclusion. This study will identify correlates of mobile screen-viewing among children in five categories: (i) child biological and demographic correlates, (ii) behavioural correlates, (iii) family biological and demographic correlates, (iv) family structure-related correlates and (v) socio-cultural and environmental correlates. PRISMA statement will be used for ensuring transparency and scientific reporting of the results.Discussion: This study will identify the correlates associated with increased mobile screen media use among young children through the systematic review of published peer-reviewed papers. This will contribute to addressing the knowledge gap in this area. The results will provide an evidence base to better understand correlates of mobile screen media use and potentially inform the development of recommendations to reduce screen time among those aged 0–8 years

The impact of recent and long-term experience on access to word meanings: Evidence from large-scale internet-based experiments

Many word forms map onto multiple meanings (e.g., ‘‘ace”). The current experiments explore the extent to which adults reshape the lexical–semantic representations of such words on the basis of experience, to increase the availability of more recently accessed meanings. A naturalistic web-based experiment in which primes were presented within a radio programme (Experiment 1; N = 1800) and a lab-based experiment (Experiment 2) show that when listeners have encountered one or two disambiguated instances of an ambiguous word, they then retrieve this primed meaning more often (compared with an unprimed control condition). This word-meaning priming lasts up to 40 min after exposure, but decays very rapidly during this interval. Experiments 3 and 4 explore longer term word-meaning priming by measuring the impact of more extended, naturalistic encounters with ambiguous words: recreational rowers (N = 213) retrieved rowing related meanings for words (e.g., ‘‘feather”) more often if they had rowed that day, despite a median delay of 8 hours. The rate of rowing-related interpretations also increased with additional years’ rowing experience. Taken together these experiments show that individuals’ overall meaning preferences reflect experience across a wide range of timescales from minutes to years. In addition, priming was not reduced by a change in speaker identity (Experiment 1), suggesting that the phenomenon occurs at a relatively abstract lexical–semantic level. The impact of experience was reduced for older adults (Experiments 1, 3, 4) suggesting that the lexical–semantic representations of younger listeners may be more malleable to current linguistic experience