Context- and Prosody-Driven ERP Markers for Dialog Focus Perception in Children

The development of language proficiency extends late into childhood and includes not only producing or comprehending sounds, words and sentences, but likewise larger utterances spanning beyond sentence borders like dialogs. Dialogs consist of information units whose value constantly varies within a verbal exchange. While information is focused when introduced for the first time or corrected in order to alter the knowledge state of communication partners, the same information turns into shared knowledge during the further course of a verbal exchange. In many languages, prosodic means are used by speakers to highlight the informational value of information foci. Our study investigated the developmental pattern of event-related potentials (ERPs) in three age groups (12, 8 and 5years) when perceiving two information focus types (news and corrections) embedded in short question-answer dialogs. The information foci contained in the answer sentences were either adequately marked by prosodic means or not. In so doing, we questioned to what extent children depend on prosodic means to recognize information foci or whether contextual means as provided by dialog questions are sufficient to guide focus processing. Only 12-year-olds yield prosody-independent ERPs when encountering new and corrective information foci, resembling previous findings in adults. Focus processing in the 8-year-olds relied upon prosodic highlighting, and differing ERP responses as a function of focus type were observed. In the 5-year-olds, merely prosody-driven ERP responses were apparent, but no distinctive ERP indicating information focus recognition. Our findings reveal substantial alterations in information focus perception throughout childhood that are likely related to long-lasting maturational changes during brain developmen

Discerning Temporal Expectancy Effects in Script Processing: Evidence from Pupillary and Eye Movement Recordings

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Accessing the temporal position of events (early or late in the event sequence) can influence the generation of predictions about upcoming events. However, it is unclear how the temporal position is processed strategically. To investigate this, we presented event pairs to 23 healthy volunteers manipulating temporal order (chronological, inverse) and temporal position (early, late). Pupil dilation, eye movements, and behavioral data, showed that chronological and early event pairs are processed with more ease than inverse and late event pairs. Indexed by the pupillary response late events and inversely presented event pairs elicited greater cognitive processing demands than early events and chronologically presented event pairs. Regarding eye movements, fixation duration was less sensitive to temporal position than to temporal order. Looking at each item of the event sequence only once was behaviorally more effective than looking multiple times at each event regardless of whether temporal position or temporal order was processed. These results emphasize that accessing temporal position and temporal order information results in dissociable behavioral patterns. While more cognitive resources are necessary for processing late and inverse items, change of information acquisition strategies turns out to be most effective when temporal order processing is required. (JINS, 2012, 18, 351–360)Peer Reviewe

Show your hands — Are you really clever? Reasoning, gesture production, and intelligence

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.This study investigates the relationship of reasoning and gesture production in individuals differing in fluid and crystallized intelligence. It combines mea-sures of speed and accuracy of processing geometric analogies with analyses of spontaneous hand gestures that accompanied young adults’ subsequent ex-planations of how they solved the geometric analogy task. Individuals with superior fluid intelligence processed the analogies more efficiently than par-ticipants with average fluid intelligence. Additionally, they accompanied their subsequent explanations with more gestures expressing movement in non- egocentric perspective. Furthermore, gesturing (but not speaking) about the most relevant aspect of the task was related to higher fluid intelligence. Within the gestures-as-simulated action framework, the results suggest that i ndividuals with superior fluid intelligence engage more in mental simulation during vi-sual imagery than those with average fluid intelligence. The findings stress the relationship between gesture production and general cognition, such as fluid intelligence, rather than its relationship to language. The role of gesture pro-duction in thinking and learning processes is discussed.Peer Reviewe

How Culture and Migration Affect Risk Assessment

We systematically linked cross-cultural literature to the Central Eight risk factors as an example of risk assessment procedures. We expected offenders with a migration background (MB) from Turkey or Arab countries to score higher on criminal history, criminal attitudes, antisocial companions, and education and employment problems in comparison to German offenders without an MB. In contrast, for offenders with an MB from Turkey or Arab countries, a reduced risk for unsatisfactory relationships with their parents, alcohol, and leisure-related factors was assumed. The Central Eight risk factors were applied retrospectively for male offenders serving a sentence length of more than 12 months. German offenders without an MB (n = 214) were compared to offenders with a Turkish (n = 135) or Arab (n = 112) MB concerning risk profiles and predictive validity. Risk profiles of offenders with an MB deviated (d = 0.25-0.56) from risk profiles of German offenders without an MB. For offenders without an MB criminal history, antisocial personality, criminal attitudes, antisocial companions, and alcohol/drug problems significantly predicted (AUC = .56-.73) different recidivism events. Similar results were found for offenders with a Turkish MB (AUC = .60-.70) except for antisocial companions (AUC = .50). Results for offenders with an Arab MB were inconclusive; only alcohol/drug problems consistently showed good predictive values (AUC = .66-.68). Findings demonstrate that a culture-sensitive approach in risk assessment is inevitable and recommendations for culture-sensitive research, risk assessment, and offender treatment are discussed

OPLAH ablation leads to accumulation of 5-oxoproline, oxidative stress, fibrosis, and elevated fillings pressures:a murine model for heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction

Aims The prevalence of heart failure with a preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is increasing, but therapeutic options are limited. Oxidative stress is suggested to play an important role in the pathophysiology of HFpEF. However, whether oxidative stress is a bystander due to comorbidities or causative in itself remains unknown. Recent results have shown that depletion of 5-oxoprolinase (OPLAH) leads to 5-oxoproline accumulation, which is an important mediator of oxidative stress in the heart. We hypothesize that oxidative stress induced by elevated levels of 5-oxoproline leads to the onset of a murine HFpEF-like phenotype. Methods and results Oplah full body knock-out (KO) mice had higher 5-oxoproline levels coupled to increased oxidative stress. Compared with wild-type (WT) littermates, KO mice had increased cardiac and renal fibrosis with concurrent elevated left ventricular (LV) filling pressures, impaired LV relaxation, yet a normal LV ejection fraction. Following the induction of cardiac ischaemia/reperfusion (IR) injury, 52.4% of the KO mice died compared with only 15.4% of the WT mice (P <0.03). Furthermore, KO mice showed a significantly increased atrial, ventricular, kidney, and liver weights compared with WT mice (P <0.05 for all). Cardiac and renal fibrosis were more pronounced following cardiac IR injury in the KO mice and these mice developed proteinuria post-IR injury. To further address the link between 5-oxoproline and HFpEF, 5-oxoproline was measured in the plasma of HFpEF patients. Compared with healthy controls (3.8 +/- 0.6 mu M), 5-oxoproline levels were significantly elevated in HFpEF patients (6.8 +/- 1.9 mu M, P <0.0001). Furthermore, levels of 5-oxoproline were independently associated with more concentric remodelling on echocardiography. Conclusion Oxidative stress induced by 5-oxoproline results in a murine phenotype reminiscent of the clinical manifestation of HFpEF without the need for surgical or pharmacological interference. Better understanding of the role of oxidative stress in HFpEF may potentially lead to novel therapeutic options

Temporal Information Processing in Short- and Long-Term Memory of Patients with Schizophrenia

Cognitive deficits of patients with schizophrenia have been largely recognized as core symptoms of the disorder. One neglected factor that contributes to these deficits is the comprehension of time. In the present study, we assessed temporal information processing and manipulation from short- and long-term memory in 34 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 34 matched healthy controls. On the short-term memory temporal-order reconstruction task, an incidental or intentional learning strategy was deployed. Patients showed worse overall performance than healthy controls. The intentional learning strategy led to dissociable performance improvement in both groups. Whereas healthy controls improved on a performance measure (serial organization), patients improved on an error measure (inappropriate semantic clustering) when using the intentional instead of the incidental learning strategy. On the long-term memory script-generation task, routine and non-routine events of everyday activities (e.g., buying groceries) had to be generated in either chronological or inverted temporal order. Patients were slower than controls at generating events in the chronological routine condition only. They also committed more sequencing and boundary errors in the inverted conditions. The number of irrelevant events was higher in patients in the chronological, non-routine condition. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia imprecisely access temporal information from short- and long-term memory. In short-term memory, processing of temporal information led to a reduction in errors rather than, as was the case in healthy controls, to an improvement in temporal-order recall. When accessing temporal information from long-term memory, patients were slower and committed more sequencing, boundary, and intrusion errors. Together, these results suggest that time information can be accessed and processed only imprecisely by patients who provide evidence for impaired time comprehension. This could contribute to symptomatic cognitive deficits and strategic inefficiency in schizophrenia

Risk and protective factors of delinquency that are sensitive to migration and culture

Present evidence regarding widely used risk assessment tools suggests that such tools may have inferior predictive validity for offenders with a migration background (MB), especially from Turkey and Arab countries. Based on a thorough literature review, we investigated additional risk and protective factors via a postdictive correlational study design. We assumed that delinquency is induced by discrimination, a conflict of values, norms of honour, a disapproval of sexual self-determination, and antisemitism. In contrast, we expected social support to diminish the risk of criminal behaviour. The sampling took place inside and outside prison, where adult men with an Arab or Turkish MB (n = 140) filled out a questionnaire. Individual norms of honour (r = .27−.41), antisemitism (r = .31−.37), and a disapproval of sexual self-determination (r = .23−.26) were positively correlated with delinquency. The best predictor was the individual’s perception of friends’ norms of honour (r = .34−.56). However, only a few significant correlations were found for a perception of individual discrimination (r = .08−.14) and an internal conflict of values (r = .11−.15), whereas global discrimination (r = .20−.29) clearly emerged as a risk factor for delinquency. Social support by nondelinquent peers could be confirmed as having a protective influence against delinquency (r=−.25−.27). Theoretical and practical implications for risk assessment are discussed.Peer Reviewe