Tempering the tension between science and intuition.

Scientific ideas can be difficult to access if they contradict earlier-developed intuitive theories; counterintuitive scientific statements like "bubbles have weight" are verified more slowly and less accurately than closely-matched intuitive statements like "bricks have weight" (Shtulman & Valcarcel, 2012). Here, we investigate how context and instruction influences this conflict. In Study 1, college undergraduates (n = 100) verified scientific statements interspersed with images intended to prime either a scientific interpretation of the statements or an intuitive one. Participants primed with scientific images verified counterintuitive statements more accurately, but no more quickly, than those primed with intuitive images. In Study 2, college undergraduates (n = 138) received instruction that affirmed the scientific aspects of the target domain and refuted common misconceptions. Instruction increased the accuracy of participants' responses to counterintuitive statements but not the speed of their responses. Collectively, these findings indicate that scientific interpretations of a domain can be prioritized over intuitive ones but the conflict between science and intuition cannot be eliminated altogether.

The Agreement Between an iPad Visual Field App and Humphrey Frequency Doubling Technology in Visual Field Screening at Health Fairs.

PRECIS: This is the first exploratory study demonstrating the promising potential of app-based visual fields testing in a low-resource health fair setting for community screening of high-risk Latino adults. PURPOSE: To compare the "Visual Fields Easy" (VFE) iPad application against the Humphrey Frequency Doubling Technology (FDT) N-30-5 in detecting abnormal visual fields in a low-resource health fair setting. METHODS: Latinos aged 40 to 80 years were recruited at a health fair in Los Angeles, California, in November 2017. Both eyes were tested using VFE and FDT. To account for possible nested correlations between participants and eyes, linear mixed effects models were used to estimate the difference in test time and the association in percent of missed points. A Bland-Altman plot and receiver operator characteristic curve were constructed for further comparisons. RESULTS: Forty-five participants with a mean age of 58.5 years (SD=9.5 y) were recruited and both eyes were tested (90 eyes). VFE testing took on average 141 seconds longer per eye than FDT (95% confidence interval: 137-145 s), and FDT resulted in having 7.50% more missed points than VFE (95% confidence interval: 2.56%-12.43%, P=0.002). The Bland-Altman plot depicted reduced agreement with increasing average of percent of points missed. The sensitivity and specificity of VFE were 67% and 77%, respectively, with an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of 0.71. CONCLUSIONS: In this exploratory study, VFE exhibited moderate discrimination for identifying Latino adults with abnormal visual fields compared with FDT. Agreement between FDT and VFE was greater for patients with mild-to-moderate visual field loss. Further software enhancements of app-based fields testing, in concert with other portable testing, represents promising screening methods for high-risk groups in resource-limited environments.

The Development of Cognitive Reflection in China.

Cognitive reflection is the tendency to override an intuitive response so as to engage in the reflection necessary to derive a correct response. Here, we examine the emergence of cognitive reflection in a culture that values nonanalytic thinking styles, Chinese culture. We administered a child-friendly version of the cognitive reflection test, the CRT-D, to 130 adults and 111 school-age children in China and compared performance on the CRT-D to several measures of rational thinking (belief bias syllogisms, base rate sensitivity, denominator neglect, and other-side thinking) and normative thinking dispositions (actively open-minded thinking and need for cognition). The CRT-D was a significant predictor of rational thinking and normative thinking dispositions in both children and adults, as previously found in American samples. Adults' performance on the CRT-D correlated with their performance on the original CRT, and children's performance on the CRT-D predicted rational thinking and normative thinking dispositions even after adjusting for age. These results demonstrate that cognitive reflection, rational thinking, and normative thinking dispositions converge even in a culture that emphasizes holistic, nonanalytic reasoning.

Children's Cognitive Reflection Predicts Conceptual Understanding in Science and Mathematics.

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a widely used measure of adults' propensity to engage in reflective analytic thought. The CRT is strongly predictive of many diverse psychological factors but unsuitable for use with developmental samples. Here, we examined a children's CRT, the CRT-Developmental (CRT-D), and investigated its predictive utility in the domains of science and mathematics. School-age children (N = 152) completed the CRT-D, measures of executive functioning, measures of rational thinking, and measures of vitalist-biology and mathematical-equivalence concepts. CRT-D performance predicted conceptual understanding in both domains after we adjusted for children's age, executive functioning, and rational thinking. These findings suggest that cognitive reflection supports conceptual knowledge in early science and mathematics and, moreover, demonstrate the theoretical and practical importance of children's cognitive reflection. The CRT-D will allow researchers to investigate the development, malleability, and consequences of children's cognitive reflection.

How Children's Cognitive Reflection Shapes Their Science Understanding.

Learning science requires contending with intuitions that are incompatible with scientific principles, such as the intuition that animals are alive but plants are not or the intuition that solids are composed of matter but gases are not. Here, we explore the tension between science and intuition in elementary school-aged children and whether that tension is moderated by children's tendency to reflect on their intuitions. Our participants were children between the ages of 5 and 12 years (n = 142). They were administered a statement-verification task, in which they judged statements about life and matter as true or false, as well as a children's Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT-D), in which they answered "brain teasers" designed to elicit an intuitive, yet inaccurate, response that could be corrected upon further reflection. Participants also received a tutorial on the scientific properties of life or matter, sandwiched between two blocks of the statement-verification task. We found that performance on the statement-verification task, which pitted scientific conceptions against intuitive conceptions (e.g., "cactuses are alive"), was predicted by performance on the CRT-D, independent of age. Children with higher levels of cognitive reflection verified scientific statements more accurately before the tutorial, and they made greater gains in accuracy following the tutorial. These results indicate that children experience conflict between scientific and intuitive conceptions of a domain in the earliest stages of acquiring scientific knowledge but can learn to resolve that conflict in favor of scientific conceptions, particularly if they are predisposed toward cognitive reflection.

The loss of self-incompatibility in a range expansion.

It is commonly observed that plant species' range margins are enriched for increased selfing rates and, in otherwise self-incompatible species, for self-compatibility (SC). This has often been attributed to a response to selection under mate and/or pollinator limitation. However, range expansion can also cause reduced inbreeding depression, and this could facilitate the evolution of selfing in the absence of mate or pollinator limitation. Here, we explore this idea using spatially explicit individual-based simulations of a range expansion, in which inbreeding depression, variation in self-incompatibility (SI), and mate availability evolve. Under a wide range of conditions, the simulated range expansion brought about the evolution of selfing after the loss of SI in range-marginal populations. Under conditions of high recombination between the self-incompatibility locus (S-locus) and viability loci, SC remained marginal in the expanded metapopulation and could not invade the range core, which remained self-incompatible. In contrast, under low recombination and migration rates, SC was frequently able to displace SI in the range core by maintaining its association with a genomic background with purged genetic load. We conclude that the evolution of inbreeding depression during a range expansion promotes the evolution of SC at range margins, especially under high rates of recombination.‬.

Causal learning from joint action: Collaboration helps first graders but hinders kindergartners.

This study investigated whether early school-aged children's causal learning from collaborative joint action differs from their learning from their own individual action or observation. Children in a joint condition performed causal interventions with an adult on two causal systems. Children in an independent condition took turns and observed an adult perform the same interventions on one system and performed the same interventions themselves on the other system. Joint action improved first graders' (n = 60) causal inference compared with individual action and observation. However, joint action impaired kindergartners' (n = 60) inference relative to individual action and observation. These findings demonstrate that joint action, as a component of collaborative activity, can help or hinder inductive causal learning depending on features of the learner. Children's abilities to learn from collaborative joint action undergo a developmental shift during the early school years.

Genetic rescue in a plant polyploid complex: Case study on the importance of genetic and trait data for conservation management.

Knowledge of the biology of rare plant species is indispensable to aid their survival and to inform efficient conservation actions, but in many cases relevant data are lacking. In addition, while studies of conservation genetics have provided a wealth of information on the considerations arising from inbreeding, mate limitation, or local adaptation, the impact of intraspecific polyploidy remains understudied. In this study, we examined the breeding system of the rare Australian daisy Rutidosis lanata (Asteraceae) and screened ten of its populations for their ploidy level to develop recommendations for management actions, in particular, with regard to seed sourcing and genetic rescue. We found R. lanata to represent a polyploid complex, with tetraploid, pentaploid and hexaploid individuals coexisting in the same species. Crossing experiments confirmed R. lanata to be self-incompatible. Mate availability varied from c. 49% to c. 76% across populations. Most populations showed mate availability of c. 50%-70%, suggesting that mate limitation resulting from a lack of local genetic diversity may cause or at least contribute to reduced seed set. Crossing between populations resulted in significantly higher reproductive success for all populations except one, suggesting the possibility of genetic rescue through population mixing. However, the crossing experiments also showed that pentaploids suffer from a severely reduced paternal reproductive fitness. Any additional hybrids between tetraploids and pentaploids, as would be created by mixing populations with different genome copy numbers during conservation work, would consequently exacerbate mate limitation and thus reduce population viability. We conclude that seed set and thus population viability can be maximized by mixing populations with the same number of genome copies, but that populations with different numbers should be kept spatially separated. The case of Rutidosis lanata provides an example and a potential template for examining the conservation genetics of other species that may constitute polyploid complexes.

Empirical evidence of fixed and homeostatic patterns of polyploid advantage in a keystone grass exposed to drought and heat stress.

A long-standing hypothesis in evolutionary biology is that polyploid plants have a fitness advantage over diploids in climatically variable or extreme habitats. Here we provide the first empirical evidence that polyploid advantage in these environments is caused by two distinct processes: homeostatic maintenance of reproductive output under elevated abiotic stress, and fixed differences in seed development. In an outdoor climate manipulation experiment using coastal to inland Australian populations of the perennial grass Themeda triandra Forssk., we found that total output of viable seed in drought- and heat-stressed tetraploid plants was over four times higher than in diploids, despite being equal under more favourable growing conditions. Tetraploids also consistently produced heavier seeds with longer hygroscopic awns, traits which increase propagule fitness in extreme environments. These differences add to fitness benefits associated with broader-scale local adaptation of inland T. triandra populations to drought stress. Our study provides evidence that nucleotypic effects of genome size and increased reproductive flexibility can jointly underlie polyploid advantage in plants in stressful environments, and argue that ploidy can be an important criterion for selecting plant populations for use in genetic rescue, restoration and revegetation projects, including in habitats affected by climate change.

Developmental changes in children's normative reasoning across learning contexts and collaborative roles.

What influences children's normative judgments of conventional rules at different points in development? The current study explored the effects of two contextual factors on children's normative reasoning: the way in which the rules were learned and whether the rules apply to the self or others. Peer dyads practiced a novel collaborative board game comprising two complementary roles. Dyads were either taught both the prescriptive (i.e., what to do) and proscriptive (i.e., what not to do) forms of the rules, taught only the prescriptive form of the rules, or created the rules themselves. Children then judged whether third parties were violating or conforming to the rules governing their own roles and their partner's roles. Early school-aged children's (6- to 7-year-olds; N = 60) normative judgments were strongest when they had been taught the rules (with or without the proscriptive form), but were more flexible for rules they created themselves. Preschool-aged children's (4- to 5-year-olds; N = 60) normative judgments, however, were strongest when they were taught both the prescriptive and proscriptive forms of the rules. Additionally, preschoolers exhibited stronger normative judgments when the rules governed their own roles rather than their partner's roles, whereas school-aged children treated all rules as equally normative. These results demonstrate that children's normative reasoning is contingent on contextual factors of the learning environment and, moreover, highlight 2 specific areas in which children's inferences about the normativity of conventions strengthen over development. (PsycINFO Database Record

Incorporating evolutionary processes into population viability models.

We examined how ecological and evolutionary (eco-evo) processes in population dynamics could be better integrated into population viability analysis (PVA). Complementary advances in computation and population genomics can be combined into an eco-evo PVA to offer powerful new approaches to understand the influence of evolutionary processes on population persistence. We developed the mechanistic basis of an eco-evo PVA using individual-based models with individual-level genotype tracking and dynamic genotype-phenotype mapping to model emergent population-level effects, such as local adaptation and genetic rescue. We then outline how genomics can allow or improve parameter estimation for PVA models by providing genotypic information at large numbers of loci for neutral and functional genome regions. As climate change and other threatening processes increase in rate and scale, eco-evo PVAs will become essential research tools to evaluate the effects of adaptive potential, evolutionary rescue, and locally adapted traits on persistence.

Life history mediates mate limitation and population viability in self-incompatible plant species.

Genetically controlled self-incompatibility systems represent links between genetic diversity and plant demography with the potential to directly impact on population dynamics. We use an individual-based spatial simulation to investigate the demographic and genetic consequences of different self-incompatibility systems for plants that vary in reproductive capacity and lifespan. The results support the idea that, in the absence of inbreeding effects, populations of self-incompatible species will often be smaller and less viable than self-compatible species, particularly for shorter-lived organisms or where potential fecundity is low. At high ovule production and low mortality, self-incompatible and self-compatible species are demographically similar, thus self-incompatibility does not automatically lead to reduced mate availability or population viability. Overall, sporophytic codominant self-incompatibility was more limiting than gametophytic or sporophytic dominant systems, which generally behaved in a similar fashion. Under a narrow range of conditions, the sporophytic dominant system maintained marginally greater mate availability owing to the production of S locus homozygotes. While self-incompatibility reduces population size and persistence for a broad range of conditions, the actual number of S alleles, beyond that required for reproduction, is important for only a subset of life histories. For these situations, results suggest that addition of new S alleles may result in significant demographic rescue.

Incest versus abstinence: reproductive trade-offs between mate limitation and progeny fitness in a self-incompatible invasive plant.

Plant mating systems represent an evolutionary and ecological trade-off between reproductive assurance through selfing and maximizing progeny fitness through outbreeding. However, many plants with sporophytic self-incompatibility systems exhibit dominance interactions at the S-locus that allow biparental inbreeding, thereby facilitating mating between individuals that share alleles at the S-locus. We investigated this trade-off by estimating mate availability and biparental inbreeding depression in wild radish from five different populations across Australia. We found dominance interactions among S-alleles increased mate availability relative to estimates based on individuals that did not share S-alleles. Twelve of the sixteen fitness variables were significantly reduced by inbreeding. For all the three life-history phases evaluated, self-fertilized offspring suffered a greater than 50% reduction in fitness, while full-sib and half-sib offspring suffered a less than 50% reduction in fitness. Theory indicates that fitness costs greater than 50% can result in an evolutionary trajectory toward a stable state of self-incompatibility (SI). This study suggests that dominance interactions at the S-locus provide a possible third stable state between SI and SC where biparental inbreeding increases mate availability with relatively minor fitness costs. This strategy allows weeds to establish in new environments while maintaining a functional SI system.

How young children learn from examples: descriptive and inferential problems.

Three experiments with preschool- and young school-aged children (N = 75 and 53) explored the kinds of relations children detect in samples of instances (descriptive problem) and how they generalize those relations to new instances (inferential problem). Each experiment initially presented a perfect biconditional relation between two features (e.g., all and only frogs are blue). Additional examples undermined one of the component conditional relations (not all frogs are blue) but supported another (only frogs are blue). Preschool-aged children did not distinguish between supported and undermined relations. Older children did show the distinction, at least when the test instances were clearly drawn from the same population as the training instances. Results suggest that younger children's difficulties may stem from the demands of using imperfect correlations for predictions. Older children seemed sensitive to the inferential problem of using samples to make predictions about populations.

Disagreement and causal learning: others' hypotheses affect children's evaluations of evidence.

When children evaluate evidence and make causal inferences, they are sensitive to the social context in which data are generated. This study investigated whether children learn more from evidence generated by an agent who agrees with them or from one who disagrees with them. Children in two age groups (5- and 6-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds) observed the functioning of a machine that lit up and played music in the presence of certain objects. After endorsing one of two plausible causal hypotheses, children observed a puppet either agree or disagree with their own hypotheses. The puppet then generated a further piece of evidence that confirmed, disconfirmed, or was neutral with respect to the children's hypotheses. When they were later asked to make causal inferences about objects they did not directly observe, children in both age groups responded differentially to identical evidence depending on whether the agent agreed or disagreed, and they often drew stronger inferences in response to disagreement. In addition, older children were particularly sensitive to disagreement when the evidence was ambiguous. Our results suggest that children consider the relationship between their own and others' hypotheses when evaluating evidence that others generate.

Predicting local adaptation in fragmented plant populations: implications for restoration genetics.

Understanding patterns and correlates of local adaptation in heterogeneous landscapes can provide important information in the selection of appropriate seed sources for restoration. We assessed the extent of local adaptation of fitness components in 12 population pairs of the perennial herb Rutidosis leptorrhynchoides (Asteraceae) and examined whether spatial scale (0.7-600 km), environmental distance, quantitative (Q(ST)) and neutral (F(ST)) genetic differentiation, and size of the local and foreign populations could predict patterns of adaptive differentiation. Local adaptation varied among populations and fitness components. Including all population pairs, local adaptation was observed for seedling survival, but not for biomass, while foreign genotype advantage was observed for reproduction (number of inflorescences). Among population pairs, local adaptation increased with Q(ST) and local population size for biomass. Q(ST) was associated with environmental distance, suggesting ecological selection for phenotypic divergence. However, low F(ST) and variation in population structure in small populations demonstrates the interaction of gene flow and drift in constraining local adaptation in R. leptorrhynchoides. Our study indicates that for species in heterogeneous landscapes, collecting seed from large populations from similar environments to candidate sites is likely to provide the most appropriate seed sources for restoration.

Non-additive effects of pollen limitation and self-incompatibility reduce plant reproductive success and population viability.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Mating system is a primary determinant of the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of wild plant populations. Pollen limitation and loss of self-incompatibility genotypes can both act independently to reduce seed set and these effects are commonly observed in fragmented landscapes. This study used a simulation modelling approach to assess the interacting effects of these two processes on plant reproductive performance and population viability for a range of pollination likelihood, self-incompatibility systems and S-allele richness conditions. METHODS: A spatially explicit, individual-based, genetic and demographic simulation model parameterized to represent a generic self-incompatible, short-lived perennial herb was used to conduct simulation experiments in which pollination probability, self-incompatibility type (gametophytic and sporophytic) and S-allele richness were systematically varied in combination to assess their independent and interacting effects on the demographic response variables of mate availability, seed set, population size and population persistence. KEY RESULTS: Joint effects of reduced pollination probability and low S-allele richness were greater than independent effects for all demographic response variables except population persistence under high pollinator service (>50 %). At intermediate values of 15-25 % pollination probability, non-linear interactions with S-allele richness generated significant reductions in population performance beyond those expected by the simple additive effect of each independently. This was due to the impacts of reduced effective population size on the ability of populations to retain S alleles and maintain mate availability. Across a limited set of pollination and S-allele conditions (P = 0·15 and S = 20) populations with gametophytic SI showed reduced S-allele erosion relative to those with sporophytic SI, but this had limited effects on individual fecundity and translated into only modest increases in population persistence. CONCLUSIONS: Interactions between pollen limitation and loss of S alleles have the potential to significantly reduce the viability of populations of a few hundred plants. Population decline may occur more rapidly than expected when pollination probabilities drop below 25 % and S alleles are fewer than 20 due to non-additive interactions. These are likely to be common conditions experienced by plants in small populations in fragmented landscapes and are also those under which differences in response between gameptophytic and sporophtyic systems are observed.

The influence of sampling strategies and spatial variation on the detected soil bacterial communities under three different land-use types.

To determine the influence of pooling strategies on detected soil bacterial communities, we sampled 45 soil cores each from a eucalypt woodland, a sown pasture and a revegetated site in an Australian landscape. We assessed the spatial variation within each land-use plot, including the influence of sampling distance, soil chemical characteristics and, where appropriate, proximity to trees on the soil bacterial community, by generating terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism profiles of the bacterial 16S rRNA genes. The soil bacterial community under the revegetated site was more similar to the original woodland than the pasture, and this result was found regardless of the soil- or the DNA-pooling strategy used. Analyzing as few as eight cores per plot was sufficient to detect significant differences between the bacterial communities under the different plots to be distinguished. Soil pH was found to be most strongly associated with soil bacterial community composition within the plots and there was no association found with proximity to trees. This study has investigated sampling strategies for further research into the transitions of soil microbial communities with land-use change across broader temporal and spatial scales.

The importance of pre-mating barriers and the local demographic context for contemporary mating patterns in hybrid zones of Eucalyptus aggregata and Eucalyptus rubida.

The frequency of hybridization in plants is context dependent and can be influenced by the local mating environment. We used progeny arrays and admixture and pollen dispersal analyses to assess the relative importance of pre-mating reproductive barriers and the local demographic environment as explanations of variation in hybrid frequency in three mapped hybrid zones of Eucalyptus aggregata and E. rubida. A total of 731 open-pollinated progeny from 36 E. aggregata maternal parents were genotyped using six microsatellite markers. Admixture analysis identified substantial variation in hybrid frequency among progeny arrays (0-76.9%). In one hybrid zone, hybrid frequency was related to pre-mating barriers (degree of flowering synchrony) and demographic components of the local mating environment (decreasing population size, closer proximity to E. rubida and hybrid trees). At this site, average pollen dispersal distance was less and almost half (46%) of the hybrid progeny were sired by local E. rubida and hybrid trees. In contrast, at the other two sites, pre-mating and demographic factors were not related to hybrid frequency. Compared to the first hybrid zone where most of the E. rubida (76%) and all hybrids flowered, in the remaining sites fewer E. rubida (22-41%) and hybrid trees (0-50%) flowered and their reproductive success was lower (sired 0-23% of hybrids). As a result, most hybrids were sired by external E. rubida/hybrids located at least 2-3 km away. These results indicate that although pre-mating barriers and local demography can influence patterns of hybridization, their importance can depend upon the scale of pollen dispersal.

Assessing the benefits and risks of translocations in changing environments: a genetic perspective.

Translocations are being increasingly proposed as a way of conserving biodiversity, particularly in the management of threatened and keystone species, with the aims of maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function under the combined pressures of habitat fragmentation and climate change. Evolutionary genetic considerations should be an important part of translocation strategies, but there is often confusion about concepts and goals. Here, we provide a classification of translocations based on specific genetic goals for both threatened species and ecological restoration, separating targets based on 'genetic rescue' of current population fitness from those focused on maintaining adaptive potential. We then provide a framework for assessing the genetic benefits and risks associated with translocations and provide guidelines for managers focused on conserving biodiversity and evolutionary processes. Case studies are developed to illustrate the framework.