Dual language statistical word segmentation in infancy: Simulating a language-mixing bilingual environment.

Infants are sensitive to syllable co-occurrence probabilities when segmenting words from fluent speech. However, segmenting two languages overlapping at the syllabic level is challenging because the statistical cues across the languages are incongruent. Successful segmentation, thus, relies on infants' ability to separate language inputs and track the statistics of each language. Here, we report three experiments investigating how infants statistically segment words from two overlapping languages in a simulated language-mixing bilingual environment. In the first two experiments, we investigated whether 9.5-month-olds can use French and English phonetic markers to segment words from two overlapping artificial languages produced by one individual. After showing that infants could segment the languages when the languages were presented in isolation (Experiment 1), we presented infants with two interleaved languages differing in phonetic cues (Experiment 2). Both monolingual and bilingual infants successfully segmented words from one of the two languages-the language heard last during familiarization. In Experiment 3, a conceptual replication, we replicated the findings of Experiment 2 with a different population and with different cues. As before, when 12-month-old monolingual infants heard two interleaved languages differing in English and Finnish phonetic cues, they learned only the last language heard during familiarization. Together, our findings suggest that segmenting words in a language-mixing environment is challenging, but infants possess a nascent ability to recruit phonetic cues to segment words from one of two overlapping languages in a bilingual-like environment. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pNcpxZguw.

COMT Genetic Reduction Produces Sexually Divergent Effects on Cortical Anatomy and Working Memory in Mice and Humans.

Genetic variations in catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) that modulate cortical dopamine have been associated with pleiotropic behavioral effects in humans and mice. Recent data suggest that some of these effects may vary among sexes. However, the specific brain substrates underlying COMT sexual dimorphisms remain unknown. Here, we report that genetically driven reduction in COMT enzyme activity increased cortical thickness in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and postero-parieto-temporal cortex of male, but not female adult mice and humans. Dichotomous changes in PFC cytoarchitecture were also observed: reduced COMT increased a measure of neuronal density in males, while reducing it in female mice. Consistent with the neuroanatomical findings, COMT-dependent sex-specific morphological brain changes were paralleled by divergent effects on PFC-dependent working memory in both mice and humans. These findings emphasize a specific sex-gene interaction that can modulate brain morphological substrates with influence on behavioral outcomes in healthy subjects and, potentially, in neuropsychiatric populations.

Endogenously and exogenously driven selective sustained attention: Contributions to learning in kindergarten children.

Selective sustained attention is vital for higher order cognition. Although endogenous and exogenous factors influence selective sustained attention, assessment of the degree to which these factors influence performance and learning is often challenging. We report findings from the Track-It task, a paradigm that aims to assess the contribution of endogenous and exogenous factors to selective sustained attention within the same task. Behavioral accuracy and eye-tracking data on the Track-It task were correlated with performance on an explicit learning task. Behavioral accuracy and fixations to distractors during the Track-It task did not predict learning when exogenous factors supported selective sustained attention. In contrast, when endogenous factors supported selective sustained attention, fixations to distractors were negatively correlated with learning. Similarly, when endogenous factors supported selective sustained attention, higher behavioral accuracy was correlated with greater learning. These findings suggest that endogenously and exogenously driven selective sustained attention, as measured through different conditions of the Track-It task, may support different kinds of learning.

Who is good at this game? Linking an activity to a social category undermines children's achievement.

Children's achievement-related theories have a profound impact on their academic success. Children who adopt entity theories believe that their ability to perform a task is dictated by the amount of natural talent they possess for that task--a belief that has well-documented adverse consequences for their achievement (e.g., lowered persistence, impaired performance). It is thus important to understand what leads children to adopt entity theories. In the experiments reported here, we hypothesized that the mere act of linking success at an unfamiliar, challenging activity to a social group gives rise to entity beliefs that are so powerful as to interfere with children's ability to perform the activity. Two experiments showed that, as predicted, the performance of 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 192) was impaired by exposure to information that associated success in the task at hand with membership in a certain social group (e.g., "boys are good at this game"), regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.

Remembering kinds: new evidence that categories are privileged in children's thinking.

What are the representations and learning mechanisms that underlie conceptual development? The present research provides evidence in favor of the claim that this process is guided by an early-emerging predisposition to think and learn about abstract kinds. Specifically, three studies (N=192) demonstrated that 4- to 7-year-old children have better recall for novel information about kinds (e.g., that dogs catch a bug called "fep") than for similar information about individuals (e.g., that a particular dog catches a bug called "fep"). By showing that children are particularly likely to retain information about kinds, this work not only provides a first empirical demonstration of a phenomenon that may be key to conceptual development but also makes it apparent that young children's thinking is suffused with abstractions rather than being perceptually-based and concrete.

Understanding the Impact of Sex and Gender in Osteoarthritis: Assessing Research Gaps and Unmet Needs.

Osteoarthritis (OA) affects more than 300 million individuals globally, with higher prevalence in women than in men. In addition, OA affects women and men differently, with women demonstrating both increased disease severity and disability. The Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR) convened an interdisciplinary group of expert researchers and clinicians for a roundtable meeting to review the current state of the science on OA and to identify knowledge gaps in the scientific literature, especially as they relate to the topics of sex and gender. The current review summarizes discussions from the roundtable and prioritizes areas of need that warrant further attention in OA research, diagnosis, care, and education. Improvements in basic and clinical research, clinical practice, patient education, and policy are needed to allow for better understanding as to the pathogenesis of sex- and gender-related disparities in OA.

Insights From Crossing Research Silos on Visual and Auditory Attention.

Many learning tasks that children encounter necessitate the ability to direct and sustain attention to key aspects of the environment while simultaneously tuning out irrelevant features. This is challenging for at least two reasons: (a) The ability to regulate and sustain attention follows a protracted developmental time course, and (b) children spend much of their time in environments not optimized for learning-homes and schools are often chaotic, cluttered, and noisy. Research on these issues is often siloed; that is, researchers tend to examine the relationship among attention, distraction, and learning in only the auditory or the visual domain, but not both together. We provide examples in which auditory and visual aspects of learning each have strong implications for the other. Research examining how visual information and auditory information are distracting can benefit from cross-fertilization. Integrating across research silos informs our understanding of attention and learning, yielding more efficacious guidance for caregivers, educators, developers, and policymakers.

Influences of background noise on infants and children.

The goal of this review is to provide a high-level, selected overview of the consequences of background noise on health, perception, cognition, and learning during early development, with a specific focus on how noise may impair speech comprehension and language learning (e.g., via masking). Although much of the existing literature has focused on adults, research shows that infants and young children are relatively disadvantaged at listening in noise. Consequently, a major goal is to consider how background noise may affect young children, who must learn and develop language in noisy environments despite being simultaneously less equipped to do so.

Statistical learning and the critical period: how a continuous learning mechanism can give rise to discontinuous learning.

Infants and children are generally more successful than adults in learning novel languages, a phenomenon referred to as a critical or sensitive period for language acquisition. One explanation for this critical period is the idea that children have access to a set of language learning processes or mechanisms unavailable to adults. From this perspective, developmental change is explained in terms of a discontinuity of learning processes. We suggest that this is not the only possible explanation for developmental change in language learning outcomes. Instead, we propose that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition (in particular, we highlight statistical learning) are largely continuous across the lifespan. From this perspective, developmental change is explained in terms of experience, differences in the input with age, and maturational changes in the cognitive architecture supporting learning, even while the learning process itself operates continuously across developmental time. WIREs Cogn Sci 2016, 7:276-288. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1394 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

The effect of generic statements on children's causal attributions: questions of mechanism.

Generic statements, or generics, express generalizations about entire kinds (e.g., "Girls are good at a game called 'tooki'"). In contrast, nongeneric statements express facts about specific (sets of) individuals (e.g., "Jane is good at tooki"). Aside from simply conveying information, generics and nongenerics also instill different causal perspectives on the facts expressed, implying that these facts stem from deep, inherent causes (e.g., talent) or from external, mechanistic causes (e.g., instruction), respectively. In the present research (with samples of 4- to 7-year-olds and undergraduates, N = 220), we proposed that children's causal attributions for the facts learned through these statements are determined not by the generic/nongeneric format of the statements themselves but rather by the generic/nongeneric format of the beliefs relevant to these statements. This proposal led to two specific predictions. First, the influence of the generic belief induced by a novel generic statement should be detected in any subsequent context that falls under its scope--even in circumstances that involve particular individuals. Confirming this prediction, participants often attributed a fact conveyed in a nongeneric statement (e.g., a particular girl's tooki ability) to deep, inherent causes if they had previously formed a relevant generic belief (e.g., by hearing that girls are good at tooki). Second, we predicted that nongeneric statements such as "Most girls are good at tooki" should also promote attributions to deep causes because they often ultimately give rise to generic beliefs, as suggested by recent evidence. This prediction was confirmed as well. These results clarify and expand our knowledge of the influence of language on children's understanding of the world.

Discovering words in fluent speech: the contribution of two kinds of statistical information.

To efficiently segment fluent speech, infants must discover the predominant phonological form of words in the native language. In English, for example, content words typically begin with a stressed syllable. To discover this regularity, infants need to identify a set of words. We propose that statistical learning plays two roles in this process. First, it provides a cue that allows infants to segment words from fluent speech, even without language-specific phonological knowledge. Second, once infants have identified a set of lexical forms, they can learn from the distribution of acoustic features across those word forms. The current experiments demonstrate both processes are available to 5-month-old infants. This demonstration of sensitivity to statistical structure in speech, weighted more heavily than phonological cues to segmentation at an early age, is consistent with theoretical accounts that claim statistical learning plays a role in helping infants to adapt to the structure of their native language from very early in life.