Children's anthropomorphism of inanimate agents.

This review article examines the extant literature on animism and anthropomorphism in infants and young children. A substantial body of work indicates that both infants and young children have a broad concept of what constitutes a sentient agent and react to inanimate objects as they do to people in the same context. The literature has also revealed a developmental pattern in which anthropomorphism decreases with age, but social robots appear to be an exception to this pattern. Additionally, the review shows that children attribute psychological properties to social robots less so than people but still anthropomorphize them. Importantly, some research suggests that anthropomorphism of social robots is dependent upon their morphology and human-like behaviors. The extent to which children anthropomorphize robots is dependent on their exposure to them and the presence of human-like features. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that in infancy, a large range of inanimate objects (e.g., boxes, geometric figures) that display animate motion patterns trigger the same behaviors observed in child-adult interactions, suggesting some implicit form of anthropomorphism. The review concludes that additional research is needed to understand what infants and children judge as social agents and how the perception of inanimate agents changes over the lifespan. As exposure to robots and virtual assistants increases, future research must focus on better understanding the full impact that regular interactions with such partners will have on children's anthropomorphizing. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Learning Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Computer Science and Robotics > Robotics.

Do preschoolers trust a competent robot pointer?

How young children learn from different informants has been widely studied. However, most studies investigate how children learn verbally conveyed information. Furthermore, most studies investigate how children learn from humans. This study sought to investigate how 3-year-old children learn from, and come to trust, a competent robot versus an incompetent human when competency is established using a pointing paradigm. During an induction phase, a robot informant pointed at a toy inside a transparent box, whereas a human pointed at an empty box. During the test phase, both agents pointed at opaque boxes. We found that young children asked the robot for help to locate a hidden toy more than the human (ask questions) and correctly identified the robot to be accurate (judgment questions). However, children equally endorsed the locations pointed at by both the robot and the human (endorse questions). This suggests that 3-year-olds are sensitive to the epistemic characteristics of the informant even when its displayed social properties are minimal.

Spatial database of planted forests in East Asia.

Planted forests are critical to climate change mitigation and constitute a major supplier of timber/non-timber products and other ecosystem services. Globally, approximately 36% of planted forest area is located in East Asia. However, reliable records of the geographic distribution and tree species composition of these planted forests remain very limited. Here, based on extensive in situ and remote sensing data, as well as an ensemble modeling approach, we present the first spatial database of planted forests for East Asia, which consists of maps of the geographic distribution of planted forests and associated dominant tree genera. Of the predicted planted forest areas in East Asia (948,863 km2), China contributed 87%, most of which is located in the lowland tropical/subtropical regions, and Sichuan Basin. With 95% accuracy and an F1 score of 0.77, our spatially-continuous maps of planted forests enable accurate quantification of the role of planted forests in climate change mitigation. Our findings inform effective decision-making in forest conservation, management, and global restoration projects.

Of children and social robots.

In the target article, Clark and Fischer argue that little is known about children's perceptions of social robots. By reviewing the existing literature we demonstrate that infants and young children interact with robots in the same ways they do with other social agents. Importantly, we conclude children's understanding that robots are artifacts (e.g., not alive) develops gradually during the preschool years.

Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation.

Tropical deforestation continues at alarming rates with profound impacts on ecosystems, climate, and livelihoods, prompting renewed commitments to halt its continuation. Although it is well established that agriculture is a dominant driver of deforestation, rates and mechanisms remain disputed and often lack a clear evidence base. We synthesize the best available pantropical evidence to provide clarity on how agriculture drives deforestation. Although most (90 to 99%) deforestation across the tropics 2011 to 2015 was driven by agriculture, only 45 to 65% of deforested land became productive agriculture within a few years. Therefore, ending deforestation likely requires combining measures to create deforestation-free supply chains with landscape governance interventions. We highlight key remaining evidence gaps including deforestation trends, commodity-specific land-use dynamics, and data from tropical dry forests and forests across Africa.

Rates and drivers of aboveground carbon accumulation in global monoculture plantation forests.

Restoring forest cover is a key action for mitigating climate change. Although monoculture plantations dominate existing commitments to restore forest cover, we lack a synthetic view of how carbon accumulates in these systems. Here, we assemble a global database of 4756 field-plot measurements from monoculture plantations across all forested continents. With these data, we model carbon accumulation in aboveground live tree biomass and examine the biological, environmental, and human drivers that influence this growth. Our results identify four-fold variation in carbon accumulation rates across tree genera, plant functional types, and biomes, as well as the key mediators (e.g., genus of tree, endemism of species, prior land use) of variation in these rates. Our nonlinear growth models advance our understanding of carbon accumulation in forests relative to mean annual rates, particularly during the next few decades that are critical for mitigating climate change.

Reconsidering priorities for forest conservation when considering the threats of mining and armed conflict.

Many threats to biodiversity can be predicted and are well mapped but others are uncertain in their extent, impact on biodiversity, and ability for conservation efforts to address, making them more difficult to account for in spatial conservation planning efforts, and as a result, they are often ignored. Here, we use a spatial prioritisation analysis to evaluate the consequences of considering only relatively well-mapped threats to biodiversity and compare this with planning scenarios that also account for more uncertain threats (in this case mining and armed conflict) under different management strategies. We evaluate three management strategies to address these more uncertain threats: 1. to ignore them; 2. avoid them; or 3. specifically target actions towards them, first individually and then simultaneously to assess the impact of their inclusion in spatial prioritisations. We apply our approach to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and identify priority areas for conserving biodiversity and carbon sequestration services. We found that a strategy that avoids addressing threats of mining and armed conflict more often misses important opportunities for biodiversity conservation, compared to a strategy that targets action towards areas under threat (assuming a biodiversity benefit is possible). We found that considering mining and armed conflict threats to biodiversity independently rather than simultaneously results in 13 800-14 800 km2 and 15 700-25 100 km2 of potential missed conservation opportunities when undertaking threat-avoiding and threat-targeting management strategies, respectively. Our analysis emphasises the importance of considering all threats that can be mapped in spatial conservation prioritisation.

Preschoolers' anthropomorphizing of robots: Do human-like properties matter?

Prior work has yielded contradicting evidence regarding the age at which children consistently and correctly categorize things as living or non-living. The present study tested children's animacy judgments about robots with a Naïve Biology task. In the Naïve Biology task, 3- and 5-year-olds were asked if robots, animals, or artifacts possessed mechanical or biological internal parts. To gauge how much children anthropomorphize robots in comparison to animals and artifacts, children also responded to a set of interview questions. To examine the role of morphology, two robots were used: a humanoid robot (Nao) and a non-humanoid robot (Dash). To investigate the role of dynamic characteristics, children saw one robot behave in a goal-directed manner (i.e., moving towards a ball) and one robot exhibit non-goal-directed behavior (i.e., moving away from a ball). Children of both age groups correctly attributed biological insides to the animal and mechanical insides to the artifact. However, 3-year-olds seemed confused about what belonged inside both robots and assigned biological and mechanical insides equally. In contrast, 5-year-olds correctly assigned mechanical insides to both robots, regardless of the robot's morphology or goal-directedness. Regarding the Animacy Interview, 3-year-olds performed at chance level when asked about the animacy of robots, animals, and artifacts. In contrast, 5-year-olds correctly attributed animacy to animals and accurately refrained from anthropomorphizing artifacts and the non-humanoid robot Dash. However, 5-year-olds performed at chance for Nao, suggesting they may be confused about the psychological properties of a human-looking robot. Taken together, these findings reveal a developmental transition during the preschool years in the attribution of biological and psychological properties to social robot.

Accuracy of Primary Care Medical Home Designation in a Specialty Mental Health Clinic.

To assess whether primary care medical homes (PCMHs) are accurately identified for patients receiving care in a specialty mental health clinic within an integrated public delivery system. This study reviewed the electronic records of patients in a large urban mental health clinic. The study defined 'matching PCMH' if the same primary care clinic was listed in both the mental health and medical electronic records. This study designated all others as 'PCMH unknown.' This study assessed whether demographic factors predicted PCMH status using chi-square tests. Among 229 patients (66% male; mean age 49; 36% White, 30% Black, and 17% Asian), 72% had a matching PCMH. Sex, age, race, psychiatric diagnosis, and psychotropic medication use were not associated with matching PCMH. To improve care coordination and health outcomes for people with severe mental illness, greater efforts are needed to ensure the accurate designation of PCMHs in all mental health patient electronic records.

Protecting biodiversity and economic returns in resource-rich tropical forests.

In pursuit of socioeconomic development, many countries are expanding oil and mineral extraction into tropical forests. These activities seed access to remote, biologically rich areas, thereby endangering global biodiversity. Here we demonstrate that conservation solutions that effectively balance the protection of biodiversity and economic revenues are possible in biologically valuable regions. Using spatial data on oil profits and predicted species and ecosystem extents, we optimise the protection of 741 terrestrial species and 20 ecosystems of the Ecuadorian Amazon, across a range of opportunity costs (i.e. sacrifices of extractive profit). For such an optimisation, giving up 5% of a year's oil profits (US$ 221 million) allows for a protected area network that retains of an average of 65% of the extent of each species/ecosystem. This performance far exceeds that of the network produced by simple land area optimisation which requires a sacrifice of approximately 40% of annual oil profits (US$ 1.7 billion), and uses only marginally less land, to achieve equivalent levels of ecological protection. Applying spatial statistics to remotely sensed, historic deforestation data, we further focus the optimisation to areas most threatened by imminent forest loss. We identify Emergency Conservation Targets: areas that are essential to a cost-effective conservation reserve network and at imminent risk of destruction, thus requiring urgent and effective protection. Governments should employ the methods presented here when considering extractive led development options, to responsibly manage the associated ecological-economic trade-offs and protect natural capital. Article Impact Statement: Governments controlling resource extraction from tropical forests can arrange production and conservation to retain biodiversity and profits. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Specificity of representations in infants' visual statistical learning.

Past work has demonstrated infants' robust statistical learning across visual and auditory modalities. However, the specificity of representations produced via visual statistical learning has not been fully explored. The current study addressed this by investigating infants' abilities to identify previously learned object sequences when some object features (e.g., shape, face) aligned with prior learning and other features did not. Experiment 1 replicated past work demonstrating that infants can learn statistical regularities across sequentially presented objects and extended this finding to 16-month-olds. In Experiment 2, infants viewed test sequences in which one object feature (e.g., face) had been removed but the other feature (e.g., shape) was maintained, resulting in failure to identify familiar sequences. We further probed learning specificity by assessing infants' recognition of sequences when one feature was altered rather than removed (Experiment 3) and when one feature was uncorrelated with the original sequence structure (Experiment 4). In both cases, infants failed to identify sequences in which object features were not identical between learning and test. These findings suggest that infants are limited in their ability to generalize the statistical structure of an object sequence when the objects' features do not align between learning and test.

Comparison facilitates the use of height information by 5-month-olds in containment events.

Past research has shown a discrepancy in young infants' use of height information in occlusion and containment events-a pattern typically accounted for by event categorization and rule learning. Broadening these theories, the present experiment examined the role of comparison in young infants' reasoning about physical events. We rotated a typical setup of a top-open container 90 degrees such that the opening now faced the side. An object was held vertically aligned with the side opening, enhancing the direct comparison of height. After the object was glided behind or inside the container and became hidden, 5-month-olds detected a height change in both containment and occlusion events. Thus, enhanced support for comparison facilitated young infants' use of key information in physical events (i.e., height in containment events). The finding underscores the importance of considering the role of comparison in the research of intuitive physics in infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Clinicians' views on displaying cost information to increase clinician cost-consciousness.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate 1) clinician attitudes towards incorporating cost information into decision making when ordering imaging studies; and 2) clinician reactions to the display of Medicare reimbursement information for imaging studies at clinician electronic order entry. STUDY DESIGN: Focus group study with inductive thematic analysis. METHODS: We conducted focus groups of primary care clinicians and subspecialty physicians (nephrology, pulmonary, and neurology) (N = 50) who deliver outpatient care in 12 hospital-based clinics and community health centers in an urban safety net health system. We analyzed focus group transcripts using an inductive framework to identify emergent themes and illustrative quotations. RESULTS: Clinicians believed that their knowledge of healthcare costs was low and wanted access to relevant cost information for reference. However, many clinicians believed it was inappropriate and unethical to consider costs in individual patient care decisions. Among clinicians' negative reactions toward displaying costs at order entry, 4 underlying themes emerged: 1) belief that ordering is already limited to clinically necessary tests; 2) importance of prioritizing responsibility to patients above that to the healthcare system; 3) concern about worsening healthcare disparities; and 4) perceived lack of accountability for healthcare costs in the system. CONCLUSIONS: Although clinicians want relevant cost information, many voiced concerns about displaying cost information at clinician order entry in safety net health systems. Alternative approaches to increasing cost-consciousness may be more acceptable to clinicians.

The forecast for RAC extrapolation: mostly cloudy.

The current statutory and regulatory guidance for recovery audit contractor (RAC) extrapolation leaves providers with minimal protection against the process and a limited ability to challenge overpayment demands. Providers not only should understand the statutory and regulatory basis for extrapolation forecast, but also should be able to assess their extrapolation risk and their recourse through regulatory safeguards against contractor error. Providers also should aggressively appeal all incorrect RAC denials to minimize the potential impact of extrapolation.

Genetic polymorphisms of the beta-2 adrenergic receptor in Israelis with severe asthma compared to non-asthmatic Israelis.

BACKGROUND: It has been argued that arginine replacement in locus 16 (Arg16) of beta 2 adrenergic receptor with glycin (Gly16) increases asthma severity, while glutamin replacement in locus 27 (Gln27) with glutamic acid (Glu27) decreases it. In addition, ethnic dependency of these polymorphisms has been described, but few studies investigated its relation to asthma severity in a non-anglosaxic population. OBJECTIVES: To investigate non-anglosaxic ethnic influences on beta 2AR polymorphisms and its correlations to asthma severity. METHODS: Sixty-six Israeli Jewish and Arab asthmatics who had near-fatal asthma and/or severe nocturnal asthma and/or steroid-dependency were investigated for genetic polymorphisms of beta 2AR and compared to matched controls. The Jewish patients included both Ashkenazi (of European origin) and non-Ashkenazi (originating from the Middle East or North Africa). The results were compared with those of ethnically matched 113 non-asthmatic Israelis and non-asthmatic Anglo-Saxons described in the literature. RESULTS: We found no significant genetic differences between the asthmatics and their controls or between the various ethnic groups of our population. However, the prevalence of Glu27 was significantly lower in non-asthmatic Israelis compared to non-asthmatic Anglo-Saxons. CONCLUSIONS: The genetic distribution of beta 2AR polymorphisms in severe Israeli asthmatics is not different from that of non-asthmatic Israelis and therefore its clinical impact on asthma is probably minimal.