Effect Sizes for Single Word Recognition Across Adults and Children:A Meta-Analysis

Theories explaining skilled and disordered reading are based on observations about the effects of psycholinguistic variables on word naming and lexical decision performance. My interest is in reading processes in adolescents and adults who, in the absence of diagnosed organic difficulties, still struggle to attain skilled reading. In thinking about these learners, knowledge of which predictors inhibit or facilitate strong performance, and their relative importance with each other, may shape teaching practices or resources, so it's important that we have robust estimates upon which to base teaching decisions. As a baseline from which to measure this group's performance in future studies, I embarked upon a meta-analysis of the psycholinguistic research literature that studies contrasting groups and their performance in word naming and lexical decision task

Can't see the trees for the forest:The benefits of using Random Forests analysis method

As Psychologists, we are often interested in interaction effects that are small in size. Finding these, however, is a challenge, with even the most advanced statistical methods falling foul of multi collinearity, order effects, singularity and model non-convergence. I share my experience of the Random Forest approach - it allows me to enter all my predictors, co-linear and all, deals with non-normal distributions intuitively and can also assist in variable selection if I ask it to

The Psycholinguistic Markers of Single Word Recognition for Adult Learners of Literacy:A Drift Diffusion Model Analysis of adult learner lexical decision data

Adults who have yet to achieve functional literacy may struggle with accessing text. In this they may be similar to the 16-year-old students who also fail to achieve functional literacy. Still younger students may demonstrate similar profiles of low-average literacy abilities. Adult-learners however, have additional years of language experience. My study asks whether added experience with language affects adult-learner reading practices. Over 24 weeks, 218 participants - 11-12-year olds, 16-19-year-olds and adults, took part in a repeated measures experiment, completing letter search, lexical decision, isolated word naming and contextual word naming tasks three times, with ability data also collected at each time point. Similar reading practices, differentiated by reading speed and accuracy only, will indicate that language experience does not affect adult-learners' performance. Should the linguistic markers vary between groups, however, this may give rise to further exploration of adult-learners' routes to reading and the role their added language experience plays in accessing text

Generating Inner Ear Organoids from Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

This protocol describes a three-dimensional culture method for generating inner ear sensory epithelia, which comprises sensory hair cells and a concurrently arising neuronal population. Mouse embryonic stem cells are initially plated in 96-well plates with differentiation media; following aggregation, Matrigel is added in order to promote epithelialization. A series of small molecule applications is then used over the first 14 days of culture to guide differentiation towards an otic lineage. After 16-20 days, vesicles containing inner ear sensory hair cells and supporting cells arise from the cultured aggregates. Aggregates may be analyzed using immunohistochemistry and electrophysiology techniques. This system serves as a simple and relatively inexpensive in vitro model of inner ear development

Links between soil microbial communities and plant traits in a species-rich grassland under long-term climate change

Climate change can influence soil microorganisms directly by altering their growth and activity but also indirectly via effects on the vegetation, which modifies the availability of resources. Direct impacts of climate change on soil microorganisms can occur rapidly, whereas indirect effects mediated by shifts in plant community composition are not immediately apparent and likely to increase over time. We used molecular fingerprinting of bacterial and fungal communities in the soil to investigate the effects of 17 years of temperature and rainfall manipulations in a species‐rich grassland near Buxton, UK. We compared shifts in microbial community structure to changes in plant species composition and key plant traits across 78 microsites within plots subjected to winter heating, rainfall supplementation, or summer drought. We observed marked shifts in soil fungal and bacterial community structure in response to chronic summer drought. Importantly, although dominant microbial taxa were largely unaffected by drought, there were substantial changes in the abundances of subordinate fungal and bacterial taxa. In contrast to short‐term studies that report high resistance of soil fungi to drought, we observed substantial losses of fungal taxa in the summer drought treatments. There was moderate concordance between soil microbial communities and plant species composition within microsites. Vector fitting of community‐weighted mean plant traits to ordinations of soil bacterial and fungal communities showed that shifts in soil microbial community structure were related to plant traits representing the quality of resources available to soil microorganisms: the construction cost of leaf material, foliar carbon‐to‐nitrogen ratios, and leaf dry matter content. Thus, our study provides evidence that climate change could affect soil microbial communities indirectly via changes in plant inputs and highlights the importance of considering long‐term climate change effects, especially in nutrient‐poor systems with slow‐growing vegetation

Sonic Hedgehog Signaling in Inner Ear Organoid Development

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Loss of the finite cochlear hair cells of the inner ear results in sensorineural deafness. Human cochlear hair cells do not regenerate, and there is no cure for deafness. Our laboratory has established a three-dimensional culture system for deriving functional sensory hair cells from human pluripotent stem cells. A major limitation of this approach is that derived hair cells exhibit a morphological and gene expression phenotype reflective of native vestibular hair cells. Previous studies have shown that establishment of localized domains of gene expression along the dorso-ventral axis of the developing otic vesicle is necessary for proper morphogenesis of both auditory and vestibular inner ear structures. Sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling has been shown to play a key role in specification of the ventral otic vesicle and subsequent cochlear development. Here, SHH treatment was pursued as a potential strategy for inducing a patterning phenotype permissive to cochlear induction in vitro. Single-cell RNAsequencing analysis revealed that while treatment with the SHH pathway agonist Purmorphamine reduced expression of markers for the vestibular-yielding dorsal otic vesicle, upregulation of ventral otic marker genes was modest. More strikingly, the number of otic progenitors exhibiting a neuroprogenitor phenotype increased in response to Purmorphamine treatment. These results suggest that SHH pathway modulation in early-stage inner ear organoids may bias their differentiation toward a neural lineage at the expense of an epithelial lineage. The present study is the first to evaluate the patterning phenotype of human stem cell derived otic progenitors, and sheds light on the transcriptomic profile at this critical point of inner ear development. This study may also cultivate future efforts to derive cochlear cell types as well as inner ear neural cell types from human pluripotent stem cells, and contribute to the establishment of a more complete in vitro model of inner ear development.2021-08-2

Atypically-reading adults: a profile : an exploratory, longitudinal study of single word recognition processes

Approximately 16% of school leavers cannot read to a sufficient skill level so as to be called “functionally literate” (Castles et al., 2018; Leitch, 2006). This exploratory study explores the single word recognition processes of a group of atypically-reading adults in comparison with groups of younger and older readers. In the main study, we assessed orthographic, phonological and semantic skills longitudinally. We estimated their influence plus that of psycholinguistic properties such as word-frequency, consistency and neighbourhood-size on single word recognition processes by way of reaction time and accuracy data from four experimental tasks (letter search, lexical decision, single word naming and sentence reading). To support the estimation of our statistical models for the main study, we conducted a wide ranging meta-analysis of psycholinguistic predictor effects. We report the findings here and introduce the study as an accessible resource for use by the research community. Linear-mixed-effects-models estimated that the rate of change in reading-related skills was either too small or too slow to detect within the time-frame or data. Adult-learners perform similarly to all comparison groups in response latencies across all tasks. They perform similarly to 11-12- and 16-17-year-old readers in the lexical decision and sentence reading accuracy measures. They are more accurate in letter search and less accurate in word naming accuracy measures. Nonword reading skill, rather than word reading skill, is a reliable predictor in this sample. Word-frequency, age-of-acquisition, consistency and neighbourhood size show influence across tasks. We interpret the results through the lexical quality hypothesis. The predictors that are influential across the models, and the similarity of adult-learners’ performance to younger readers suggests that their orthographic, phonological and semantic knowledge is weakly correlated. Further, adult-learners may be using a dominant reading strategy that reflects sublexical processing, thereby impeding development of orthographic learning and knowledge over the longer term

Emotional Well-being for People with Cancer:A narrative review of charity sector resources and peer-reviewed articles for effects of complementary interventions

Additional to the primary health concerns for an individual with cancer are secondary symptoms that can manifest as feelings of reduced emotional well-being, increased feelings of depression or anxiety. While chemotherapy and radiotherapy form the nexus of traditional treatment, many individuals use complementary or alternative therapies (CAM) to manage these secondary health issues. The following report contains two sections. The first section details the content of five UK cancer charity webpages with respect to complementary or alternative therapies. The second section describes the results of a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles studying the effects of CAM in patients with cancer since over the last fifteen years. Macmillan Cancer Support offers the following definition, which will be used throughout this report: Conventional medical treatments are used by doctors to treat people with cancer. They include surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hormonal and targeted therapies. These treatments are scientifically tested and researched. They can cure many cancers, help people to live longer or reduce their symptoms...complementary therapies are used alongside, or in addition to, conventional medical treatments. They do not claim to cure cancer. People use them to boost their physical or emotional health. Or to relieve symptoms or side effects. Some have been scientifically tested to check how effective and safe they are...alternative therapies are used instead of conventional medical treatments. They are not tested in the same way as conventional medical treatments. Some claim to treat or cure cancer. But no alternative therapies have been proven to cure cancer or slow its growth and some may be harmful.’ (www.macmillan.org.uk/information-and-support/coping/complementary- therapies/complementary-therapies-explained/complementary-alternative- therapies.html)