Self-Directed Home-Based Dim-Light Melatonin Onset Collection: The Circadia Pilot Study.

Study Objectives: To test the feasibility of a novel at-home salivary Dim Light Melatonin Onset (DLMO) assessment protocol to measure the endogenous circadian phase of 10 individuals ( 1 Advanced Sleep-Wake Phase Disorder patient (ASWPD), 4 Delayed Sleep-Wake Phase Disorder patients (DSWPD), and 5 controls). Methods: The study involved 10 participants (sex at birth: females = 9; male= 1), who ranged between 27 to 63 years old, with an average age of 38 years old. Our study population consisted of 7 individuals who identified as white and 3 who identified as Asian. Our participants were diverse in gender identity (woman = 7, male = 1, transgender = 1, nonbinary = 1, none = 1).The study tracked the sleep and activity patterns of 10 individuals over a 5-6 week period using self-reported online sleep diaries and objective actigraphy data. Participants completed two self-directed DLMO assessments, approximately one week apart, adhering to objective compliance measures. Participants completed the study entirely remotely: they completed all sleep diaries and other evaluations online and were mailed a kit with all materials needed to perform the actigraphy and at-home sample collections. Results: Salivary DLMO times were calculated for 8/10 participants using the Hockeystick method. DLMO times were on average 3 hours and 18 minutes earlier than self-reported sleep onset times (DSPD: 12:04 AM, controls: 9:55 PM.) Among the 6 participants for whom we calculated two separate DLMO times, DLMOs 1 and 2 were 96% correlated (p<0.0005.). Conclusions: Our results indicate that self-directed, at-home DLMO assessments are feasible and accurate. The current protocol may serve as a framework to reliably assess circadian phase in both clinical and general populations.

Mobile Apps for Dietary and Food Timing Assessment: Evaluation for Use in Clinical Research.

BACKGROUND: Over the last decade, health mobile apps have become an increasingly popular tool used by clinicians and researchers to track food consumption and exercise. However, many consumer apps lack the technological features for facilitating the capture of critical food timing details. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to introduce users to 11 apps from US app stores that recorded both dietary intake and food timing to establish which one would be the most appropriate for clinical research. METHODS: To determine a viable app that recorded both dietary intake and food timing for use in a food timing-related clinical study, we evaluated the time stamp data, usability, privacy policies, the accuracy of nutrient estimates, and general features of 11 mobile apps for dietary assessment that were available on US app stores. The following apps were selected using a keyword search of related terms and reviewed: text entry apps-Cronometer, DiaryNutrition, DietDiary, FoodDiary, Macros, and MyPlate; image entry apps-FoodView and MealLogger; and text plus image entry apps-Bitesnap, myCircadianClock, and MyFitnessPal. RESULTS: Our primary goal was to identify apps that recorded food time stamps, which 8 (73%) of the 11 reviewed apps did. Of the 11 apps, only 4 (36%) allowed users to edit the time stamps. Next, we sought to evaluate the usability of the apps using the System Usability Scale across 2 days, and 82% (9/11) of the apps received favorable scores for usability. To enable use in research and clinical settings, the privacy policies of each app were systematically reviewed using common criteria, with 1 (9%) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant app (Cronometer). Furthermore, protected health information was collected by 9 (82%) of the 11 apps. Finally, to assess the accuracy of the nutrient estimates generated by these apps, we selected 4 sample food items and a 3-day dietary record to input into each app. The caloric and macronutrient estimates of the apps were compared with the nutrient estimates provided by a registered dietitian using the Nutrition Data System for Research database. In terms of the 3-day food record, the apps were found to consistently underestimate daily calories and macronutrients compared with the Nutrition Data System for Research output. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, we found that the Bitesnap app provided flexible dietary and food timing functionality capable of being used in research and clinical settings, whereas most other apps lacked in the necessary food timing functionality or user privacy.

Referential context and executive functioning influence children's resolution of syntactic ambiguity.

Classic studies reveal two striking differences between preschoolers and adults in online sentence comprehension. Adults (a) recruit referential context cues to guide syntactic parsing, interpreting an ambiguous phrase as a modifier if a modifier is needed to single out the intended referent among multiple options, and (b) use late-arriving information to recover from misinterpretation. Five-year-olds fail on both counts, appearing insensitive to the referential context and often failing to recover from parsing errors (Trueswell, Sekerina, Hill, & Logrip, 1999). But other findings suggest that 5-year-olds show delayed rather than absent sensitivity to the referential context, and that individual differences in executive functioning predict children's ability to recover from garden-path errors. In 2 experiments, we built on these findings, focusing on whether children recruit referential-context cues if given time to do so. Children heard temporarily ambiguous instructions (e.g., Put the frog on the pond into the tent), while we monitored their eye-gaze and actions. We used a slow speech rate, and manipulated referential context between rather than within subjects, to give children time to bring referential context cues into play. Across experiments, eye-movement and action analyses revealed emerging sensitivity to the referential context. Moreover, error rates and eye-movement patterns indicating failures to revise were predicted by individual differences in executive function (scores in Simon Says and Flanker tasks). These data suggest that children, like adults, use referential context information in syntactic processing under some circumstances; the findings are also consistent with a role for domain-general executive function in resolution of syntactic ambiguity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Football versus football: effect of topic on /r/ realization in American and English sports fans.

Can the topic of a conversation, when heavily associated with a particular dialect region, influence how a speaker realizes a linguistic variable? We interviewed fans of English Premier League soccer at a pub in Columbus, Ohio. Nine speakers of British English and eleven speakers of American English were interviewed about their favorite American football and English soccer teams. We present evidence that the soccer fans in this speech community produce variants more consistent with Standard American English when talking about American football than English soccer. Specifically, speakers were overall more /r/-ful (F3 values were lower in rhotic environments) when talking about their favorite American football team. Numeric trends in the data also suggest that exposure to both American and British English, being a fan of both sports, and task may mediate these effects.

The effects of matched stimulation and response interruption and redirection on vocal stereotypy.

Stereotypy has been classified as repetitive behavior that does not serve any apparent function. Two procedures that have been found to reduce rates of vocal stereotypy effectively are response interruption and redirection (RIRD) and noncontingent access to matched stimulation (MS). The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of RIRD alone, MS alone, and MS combined with RIRD. One participant's results suggested similar suppressive effects on vocal stereotypy across treatment conditions. For the second participant, a slightly greater suppression of stereotypy was associated with MS + RIRD. In addition, both participants emitted a greater frequency of appropriate vocalizations in conditions with RIRD. Data suggest that the addition of MS might facilitate the implementation of RIRD in applied settings.

Children are not like older adults: a diffusion model analysis of developmental changes in speeded responses.

Children (n = 130; M(age) = 8.51-15.68 years) and college-aged adults (n = 72; M(age) = 20.50 years) completed numerosity discrimination and lexical decision tasks. Children produced longer response times (RTs) than adults. R. Ratcliff's (1978) diffusion model, which divides processing into components (e.g., quality of evidence, decision criteria settings, nondecision time), was fit to the accuracy and RT distribution data. Differences in all components were responsible for slowing in children in these tasks. Children extract lower quality evidence than college-aged adults, unlike older adults who extract a similar quality of evidence as college-aged adults. Thus, processing components responsible for changes in RTs at the beginning of the life span are somewhat different from those responsible for changes occurring with healthy aging.

Rules of engagement: incomplete and complete pronoun resolution.

Research on shallow processing suggests that readers sometimes encode only a superficial representation of a text and fail to make use of all available information. Greene, McKoon, and Ratcliff (1992) extended this work to pronouns, finding evidence that readers sometimes fail to automatically identify referents even when these are unambiguous. In this paper we revisit those findings. In 11 recognition probe, priming, and self-report experiments, we manipulated Greene et al.'s stories to discover under what circumstances a pronoun's referent is automatically understood. We lengthened the stories from 4 to 8 lines. This simple manipulation led to automatic and correct resolution, which we attribute to readers' increased engagement with the stories. We found evidence of resolution even when the additional text did not mention the pronoun's referent. In addition, our results suggest that the pronoun temporarily boosts the referent's accessibility, an advantage that disappears by the end of the next sentence. Finally, we present evidence from memory experiments that supports complete pronoun resolution for the longer but not the shorter stories.

Verbs in the lexicon: Why is hitting easier than breaking?

Adult speakers use verbs in syntactically appropriate ways. For example, they know implicitly that the boy hit at the fence is acceptable but the boy broke at the fence is not. We suggest that this knowledge is lexically encoded in semantic decompositions. The decomposition for break verbs (e.g. crack, smash) is hypothesized to be more complex than that for hit verbs (e.g. kick, kiss). Specifically, the decomposition of a break verb denotes that "an entity changes state as the result of some external force" whereas the decomposition for a hit verb denotes only that "an entity potentially comes in contact with another entity." In this article, verbs of the two types were compared in a lexical decision experiment - Experiment 1 - and they were compared in sentence comprehension experiments with transitive sentences (e.g. the car hit the bicycle and the car broke the bicycle) - Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 1, processing times were shorter for the hit than the break verbs and in Experiments 2 and 3, processing times were shorter for the hit sentences than the break sentences, results that are in accord with the complexities of the postulated semantic decompositions.

Searching for Judy: how small mysteries affect narrative processes and memory.

Current theories of text processing say little about how authors' narrative choices, including the introduction of small mysteries, can affect readers' narrative experiences. Gerrig, Love, and McKoon (2009) provided evidence that 1 type of small mystery-a character introduced without information linking him or her to the story-affects readers' moment-by-moment processing. For that project, participants read stories that introduced characters by proper name alone (e.g., "Judy") or with information connecting the character to the rest of the story (e.g., "our principal Judy"). In an online recognition probe task, responses to the character's name 3 lines after his or her introduction were faster when the character had not been introduced with connecting information, suggesting that the character remained accessible awaiting resolution. In the 4 experiments in this article, we extend our theoretical analysis of small mysteries. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found evidence that trait information (e.g., "daredevil Judy") is not sufficient to connect a character to a text. In Experiments 3 and 4, we found evidence that the moment-by-moment processing effects of such small mysteries also affect readers' memory for the stories. We interpret the results in terms of Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration model of discourse processing.

The effect of steady state exercise on circulating human IgE and IgG in young healthy volunteers with known allergy.

Allergy prevalence in the general population has been increasing since the 1980s and there is increasing evidence of a higher incidence of allergy or asthma in elite athletes. For individuals suffering from allergy to airborne allergens, such as pollen, exercise may exacerbate their condition due to increased ventilation during exercise. The effect of an acute steady state moderate intensity exercise task on circulating immunoglobulin E was therefore assessed in volunteers with known allergy. Immunoglobulin concentrations were assessed in young healthy volunteers with allergy (n=14) and control non-allergic volunteers (n=7) pre- and post- an acute steady state moderate intensity exercise task (60% W(max) for 40 min). Airborne allergic volunteers (n=7) displayed increased IgE levels (31% increase) (p<0.01) but food allergic volunteers (n=7) showed decreased IgE levels, following exercise (53% decrease) (p<0.01). There was no significant change in IgG levels in volunteers with food or airborne allergy or in control volunteers in response to exercise. Acute steady state moderate exercise significantly altered circulating IgE concentrations in volunteers with known allergy, while IgE concentrations in non-allergy sufferers did not change.

Waiting for Brandon: How Readers Respond to Small Mysteries.

When readers experience narratives they often encounter small mysteries-questions that a text raises that are not immediately settled. In our experiments, participants read stories that introduced characters by proper names (e.g., "It's just that Brandon hasn't called in so long"). Resolved versions of the stories specified the functions those characters' assumed in their narrative worlds with respect to the other characters (e.g., Brandon was identified as the speaker's grandson); unresolved versions of the stories did not immediately provide that information. We predicted that characters whose functions were still unresolved would remain relatively accessible in the discourse representations. We tested that prediction in Experiments 1 and 2 by asking participants to indicate whether a name (e.g., Brandon) had appeared in the story. Participants responded most swiftly when the characters remained unresolved. In the latter experiments, we demonstrated that the presence of an unresolved character disrupted processing of information that followed that character's introduction (Experiment 3) but not information that preceded that introduction (Experiment 4). These results support the general importance of providing a theoretical account of readers' responses to narrative mysteries.