When High-Capacity Readers Slow Down and Low-Capacity Readers Speed Up: Working Memory and Locality Effects

We examined the effects of argument-head distance in SVO and SOV languages (Spanish and German), while taking into account readers´ working memory capacity and controlling for expectation (Levy, 2008) and other factors. We predicted only locality effects, that is, a slowdown produced by increased dependency distance (Gibson, 2000; Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). Furthermore, we expected stronger locality effects for readers with low working memory capacity. Contrary to our predictions, low-capacity readers showed faster reading with increased distance, while high-capacity readers showed locality effects. We suggest that while the locality effects are compatible with memory-based explanations, the speedup of low-capacity readers can be explained by an increased probability of retrieval failure. We present a computational model based on ACT-R built under the previous assumptions, which is able to give a qualitative account for the present data and can be tested in future research. Our results suggest that in some cases, interpreting longer RTs as indexing increased processing difficulty and shorter RTs as facilitation may be too simplistic: The same increase in processing difficulty may lead to slowdowns in high-capacity readers and speedups in low-capacity ones. Ignoring individual level capacity differences when investigating locality effects may lead to misleading conclusions.Fil: Nicenboim, Bruno. Universitat Potsdam; AlemaniaFil: Logacev, Pavel. Universitat Potsdam; AlemaniaFil: Gattei, Carolina Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Ciencias Humanas, Sociales y Ambientales; ArgentinaFil: Vasishth, Shravan. Universitat Potsdam; Alemani

Venous-derived angioblasts generate organ-specific vessels during embryonic development

Formation and remodeling of vascular beds are complex processes orchestrated by multiple signaling pathways. While it is well accepted that vessels of a particular organ display specific features that enable them to fulfill distinct functions, the embryonic origins of tissue-specific vessels, as well as the molecular mechanisms regulating their formation, are poorly understood. The subintestinal plexus of the zebrafish embryo comprises vessels that vascularize the gut, liver and pancreas, and as such represents an ideal model to investigate the early steps of organ-specific vessel formation. Here we show that both arterial and venous components of the subintestinal plexus originate from a pool of specialized angioblasts residing in the floor of the Posterior Cardinal Vein (PCV). Using live imaging of zebrafish embryos, in combination with photoconvertable transgenic reporters, we demonstrate that these angioblasts undergo two phases of migration and differentiation. Initially, a subintestinal vein (SIV) forms and expands ventrally through a bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-dependent step of collective migration. Concomitantly, a VEGF-dependent shift in the directionality of migration, coupled to the upregulation of arterial markers is observed, which culminates with the generation of the supraintestinal artery (SIA). Altogether our results establish the zebrafish subintestinal plexus as an advantageous model for the study of organ-specific vessel development, and provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms controlling its formation. More broadly, our findings suggest that PCV-specialized angioblasts contribute not only to the formation of the early trunk vasculature, but also to the establishment of late forming-, tissue specific vascular beds

Venous-derived angioblasts generate organ-specific vessels during zebrafish embryonic development

open11siFormation and remodeling of vascular beds are complex processes orchestrated by multiple signaling pathways. Although it is well accepted that vessels of a particular organ display specific features that enable them to fulfill distinct functions, the embryonic origins of tissue-specific vessels and the molecular mechanisms regulating their formation are poorly understood. The subintestinal plexus of the zebrafish embryo comprises vessels that vascularize the gut, liver and pancreas and, as such, represents an ideal model in which to investigate the early steps of organ-specific vessel formation. Here, we show that both arterial and venous components of the subintestinal plexus originate from a pool of specialized angioblasts residing in the floor of the posterior cardinal vein (PCV). Using live imaging of zebrafish embryos, in combination with photoconvertable transgenic reporters, we demonstrate that these angioblasts undergo two phases of migration and differentiation. Initially, a subintestinal vein forms and expands ventrally through a Bone Morphogenetic Protein-dependent step of collective migration. Concomitantly, a Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor-dependent shift in the directionality of migration, coupled to the upregulation of arterial markers, is observed, which culminates with the generation of the supraintestinal artery. Together, our results establish the zebrafish subintestinal plexus as an advantageous model for the study of organ-specific vessel development and provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms controlling its formation. More broadly, our findings suggest that PCV-specialized angioblasts contribute not only to the formation of the early trunk vasculature, but also to the establishment of late-forming, tissue-specific vascular beds.openHen, Gideon; Nicenboim, Julian; Mayseless, Oded; Asaf, Lihee; Shin, Masahiro; Busolin, Giorgia; Hofi, Roy; Almog, Gabriella; Tiso, Natascia; Lawson, Nathan D.; Yaniv, KarinaHen, Gideon; Nicenboim, Julian; Mayseless, Oded; Asaf, Lihee; Shin, Masahiro; Busolin, Giorgia; Hofi, Roy; Almog, Gabriella; Tiso, Natascia; Lawson, Nathan D.; Yaniv, Karin

Making everyday things talk:Speculative conversations into the future of voice interfaces at home

What if things had a voice? What if we could talk directly to things instead of using a mediating voice interface such as an Alexa or a Google Assistant? In this paper, we share our insights from talking to a pair of boots, a tampon, a perfume bottle, and toilet paper among other everyday things to explore their conversational capabilities. We conducted Thing Interviews using a more-than-human design approach to discover a thing's perspectives, worldviews and its relations to other humans and nonhumans. Based on our analysis of the speculative conversations, we identified some themes characterizing the emergent qualities of people's relationships with everyday things. We believe the themes presented in the paper may inspire future research on designing everyday things with conversational capabilities at home

Bayes Factors for Mixed Models: a Discussion

van Doorn et al. (2021) outlined various questions that arise when conducting Bayesian model comparison for mixed effects models. Seven response articles offered their own perspective on the preferred setup for mixed model comparison, on the most appropriate specification of prior distributions, and on the desirability of default recommendations. This article presents a round-table discussion that aims to clarify outstanding issues, explore common ground, and outline practical considerations for any researcher wishing to conduct a Bayesian mixed effects model comparison

HHEX is a transcriptional regulator of the VEGFC/FLT4/PROX1 signaling axis during vascular development.

Formation of the lymphatic system requires the coordinated expression of several key regulators: vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGFC), its receptor FLT4, and a key transcriptional effector, PROX1. Yet, how expression of these signaling components is regulated remains poorly understood. Here, using a combination of genetic and molecular approaches, we identify the transcription factor hematopoietically expressed homeobox (HHEX) as an upstream regulator of VEGFC, FLT4, and PROX1 during angiogenic sprouting and lymphatic formation in vertebrates. By analyzing zebrafish mutants, we found that hhex is necessary for sprouting angiogenesis from the posterior cardinal vein, a process required for lymphangiogenesis. Furthermore, studies of mammalian HHEX using tissue-specific genetic deletions in mouse and knockdowns in cultured human endothelial cells reveal its highly conserved function during vascular and lymphatic development. Our findings that HHEX is essential for the regulation of the VEGFC/FLT4/PROX1 axis provide insights into the molecular regulation of lymphangiogenesis

Eye movements reveal delayed use of construction-based pragmatic information during online sentence reading: A case of Chinese Lian…dou Construction

An ERP study demonstrated that construction-based pragmatic constraints in Chinese (e.g., lian…dou that constrains a low-likelihood event and is similar to even in English) can rapidly influence sentence comprehension and the mismatch of such constraints would lead to increased neural activity on the mismatching word. Here we examine to what extent readers’ eye movements can instantly reveal the difficulties of mismatching constraints when participants read sentences with the structure lian + determiner phrase + object noun + subject noun + dou + verb phrase (VP) + final commenting clause. By embedding high-likelihood or neutral events in the construction, we created incongruent and underspecified sentences and compared such sentences with congruent ones describing events of low expectedness. Relative to congruent sentences, the VP region of incongruent sentences showed no significant differences on first-pass reading time measures, but the total fixation duration was reliably longer. Moreover, readers made more regressions from the VP and the sentence-final region to previous regions in the incongruent than the congruent condition. These findings suggest that the effect of pragmatic constraints is observable during naturalistic sentence reading, reflecting the activation of the construction-based pragmatic information for the late integration of linguistic and extra-linguistic information at sentential level