Novel and potential future therapeutic options in systemic autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune inflammation is caused by the loss of tolerance to specific self-antigens and can result in organ-specific or systemic disorders. Systemic autoimmune diseases affect a significant portion of the population with an increasing rate of incidence, which means that is essential to have effective therapies to control these chronic disorders. Unfortunately, several patients with systemic autoimmune diseases do not respond at all or just partially respond to available conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and targeted therapies. However, during the past few years, some new medications have been approved and can be used in real-life clinical settings. Meanwhile, several new candidates appeared and can offer promising novel treatment options in the future. Here, we summarize the newly available medications and the most encouraging drug candidates in the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren's disease, systemic sclerosis, systemic vasculitis, and autoimmune myositis.

Preschoolers retain more details from event sequences 1 week following an in-group demonstration.

Previous research highlights that the learning processes of preschool-aged children are influenced by the cultural group membership of the information sources. As of yet, however, no study has aimed to explore the influence of cultural group membership on the long-term retention of novel information. In the current study, 4-year-old children observed three event sequences that were demonstrated by either an adult speaking their native language or a foreign language speaker. In Experiment 1, children (N = 56) were allowed to imitate the events immediately. Results showed that the average number of accurately reproduced details (native = 3.26; foreign = 3.11) and the order of event elements (native = 1.69; foreign = 1.49) did not significantly differ in the two conditions. In Experiment 2, children (N = 56) were allowed to imitate only following a 1-week delay. In this case, children retained more details (native = 2.6; foreign = 2.2) and reproduced the order in the event sequences more accurately (native = 1.18; foreign = 0.87) following a native demonstration. The behavior of children in all conditions differed from a baseline group without any instruction (n = 15). These findings show that preschoolers retain more information in the long term when it was demonstrated to them by a member of their own culture. Importantly, they also learn from people belonging to different cultures-as evidenced by both the lack of difference in Experiment 1 and the difference between the out-group condition of Experiment 2 and the baseline.

Can 18-Month-Olds Revise Attributed Beliefs?

Successful social interactions rely on flexibly tracking and revising others' beliefs. These can be revised prospectively, new events leading to new beliefs, or retrospectively, when realizing that an attribution may have been incorrect. However, whether infants are capable of such belief revisions is an open question. We tested whether 18-month-olds can revise an attributed FB into a TB when they learn that a person may have witnessed an event that they initially thought she could not see. Infants first observed Experimenter 1 (E1) hiding two objects into two boxes. Then E1 left the room, and the locations of the objects were swapped. Infants then accompanied Experimenter 2 (E2) to the adjacent room. In the FB-revised-to-TB condition, infants observed E1 peeking into the experimental room through a one-way mirror, whereas in the FB-stays-FB condition, they observed E1 reading a book. After returning to the experimental room E1 requested an object by pointing to one of the boxes. In the FB-stays-FB condition, most infants chose the non-referred box, congruently with the agent's FB. However, in the FB-revised-to-TB condition, most infants chose the other, referred box. Thus, 18-month-olds revised an already attributed FB after receiving evidence that this attribution might have been wrong.

Can group representations based on relational cues warrant the rich inferences typically drawn from group membership?

Pietraszewski's model - though promising in many respects - needs to be extended so that it can explain the multitude of rich inferences that people draw from group membership. In this commentary, we highlight some facets of group thinking, especially from the field of developmental psychology, that cannot be unambiguously accounted for by a model that is built solely on relational cues.

Individuation of agents based on psychological properties in 10 month-old infants.

What makes agents fundamentally different from each other from the viewpoint of a 10-month-old infant? While infants at this age can already individuate human-like objects from non-humanlike ones and self-propelled agents from inert objects, little is known of when and how they start individuating within the domain of agents. What is clear from previous studies is that differences in surface and dynamic features are not sufficient. We hypothesized that mental properties-in this case the agents' preferences-can serve as an individuating property. In our study, we familiarized infants with two animated agents who had different preferences. The agents sequentially and repeatedly emerged from behind an occluder, and then each agent approached one of two target objects before returning behind the occluder. After familiarization, the occluder was lifted, revealing either one agent or two agents. While infants successfully individuated the agents in the preference-demonstration condition, they failed to do so in the exposure-only condition in which perceptually similar surface and dynamic features of the agents were presented but without indicating preferences. Our study thus provides evidence that mental properties can help individuate agents, grounding the claim that infants understand agents as mental entities at their core.

Representing social categories based on shared cultural knowledge in adults.

The study investigated whether adults rely on the cues of shared cultural knowledge when forming social category representations. We used a modified version of the memory confusion paradigm, where participants are presented with the photographs of people differing along social category distinctions while listening to utterances associated with the pictures. In the test phase, the task is to match the utterances to the photographs. When category representations are formed, more within-category errors than between-category errors are expected. Experiment 1 contrasted two cues in social category representations: race and shared cultural knowledge. In Experiment 2, categorisation based on shared cultural knowledge was tested without any competing cue. Experiment 3 replicated previous results about automatic race encoding when no competing social distinction was available. Experiment 4 contrasted gender with cultural category membership. The results indicate that people encode information about race, gender, and cultural background; however, the latter two are more fundamental dimensions of social categorisation.

Two-Year-Old Children Expect Native, but Not Foreign Speakers to Use the Same Tool for the Same Purpose.

Previous research has already demonstrated that even very young children are sensitive to language cues and learn differently from native and foreign speaker models. A possible explanation for this phenomenon suggests that spoken language is a sign of someone's cultural background and in this sense demonstrates the person's culture specific knowledge. The aim of the present study was to investigate what children think about native and foreign speakers' behavior in a domain that is typically regulated by cultural norms (tool usage), specifically whether they expect group members to act alike or not. In a violation of expectation paradigm, two-year-old toddlers first watched a video on which a native and a foreign speaker person used different tools for achieving the same goal. In the test phase a new native speaker model appeared and selected one of the previously seen tools for the same goal as it was used before. Results indicated that toddlers were surprised if the native speaker model had chosen the tool that had previously been used by the foreign speaker. In Experiment 2, the familiarization phase was exactly the same as in Experiment 1, but during the test phase, the model spoke a foreign language. Results, in this case, showed no significant differences between looking times. These experiments suggest that two-year-olds expect native (but not foreign) speakers to use the same tool for the same goals. As tool usage is a fundamental element of cultural knowledge, we propose that this pattern of results suggest that children expect native speakers to possess shared cultural knowledge at least in the domain of artifacts.

Social categorization based on permanent versus transient visual traits in neurotypical children and children with autism spectrum disorder.

The present study was designed to test the relative weight of different types of category markers in children's representations of social and biological kinds. We reasoned that in order to efficiently navigate through the mesh network of overlapping social categories, the representational system dedicated to processing information about social groups should be prepared to flexibly switch between potential ways of categorizing fellow humans. Thus, we hypothesized that children would assign more relevance to transient but symbolic features, such as shirt colour, when categorizing humans than other animal species. Across two experiments, we investigated whether typically developing children as well as children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder would categorize drawings of humans and dogs along a transient or a biologically set, permanent marker. The results show that both groups of children overwhelmingly selected the permanent feature to categorize dogs, however, they were more likely to categorize fellow humans based on transient features. We suggest that this tendency lays the ground for humans' ability to efficiently represent the complex structure of societies.

Action selection in imitation: Why do we still need the teleological stance? Commentary on 'The teleological stance: Past, present, and future' by Juvrud and Gredeback.

The teleological stance and natural pedagogy are integrated as a system for representing the teleological structure of novel events, including causally opaque ones. In this sense, the teleological stance allows children to build a goal hierarchy, based on which they become able to select the actions to perform.

[Small steps toward an empathic multicultural world through a new perspective of social categorization as a tool in adaptive learning].

The investigation of the role and the mechanisms of social categorization has been in the focus of psychological research for quite a long time. However, the developmental approach to categorization and the arrangement of empirical findings within this field into a unified framework have received little attention so far. Based on the currently available evidence the paper proposes a new theory of 'culturally shared knowledge'. With the help of this approach we would like to draw attention to the fundamental role of social categorization in adaptive learning. In addition to providing a theoretical explanation of the experimental results, the last chapter describes practical techniques that might prove useful in the development of an empathic multicultural environment in the future.

Young Children Selectively Imitate Models Conforming to Social Norms.

This study investigated whether toddlers would selectively imitate a demonstrator who exhibits familiarity with cultural practices in their tool-using habits over a demonstrator who consistently uses tools in an unconventional way. Three-year-old children (n = 45) watched videos depicting two models, one of whom performed tool-using actions in a conventional way, while the other model deviated from social conventions. Then, both models introduced a technique to build a tower (differing in one element). Moreover, the context of the demonstration was also manipulated: in one condition, the models expressed their teaching intentions, while in the other they performed the actions without communicative signals. Children were more willing to copy the actions of the conventionally behaving model, irrespective of the context of the demonstration.

Auditory⁻Visual Matching of Conspecifics and Non-Conspecifics by Dogs and Human Infants.

We tested whether dogs and 14⁻16-month-old infants are able to integrate intersensory information when presented with conspecific and heterospecific faces and vocalisations. The looking behaviour of dogs and infants was recorded with a non-invasive eye-tracking technique while they were concurrently presented with a dog and a female human portrait accompanied with acoustic stimuli of female human speech and a dog's bark. Dogs showed evidence of both con- and heterospecific intermodal matching, while infants' looking preferences indicated effective auditory⁻visual matching only when presented with the audio and visual stimuli of the non-conspecifics. The results of the present study provided further evidence that domestic dogs and human infants have similar socio-cognitive skills and highlighted the importance of comparative examinations on intermodal perception.

Retrospective attribution of false beliefs in 3-year-old children.

A current debate in psychology and cognitive science concerns the nature of young children's ability to attribute and track others' beliefs. Beliefs can be attributed in at least two different ways: prospectively, during the observation of belief-inducing situations, and in a retrospective manner, based on episodic retrieval of the details of the events that brought about the beliefs. We developed a task in which only retrospective attribution, but not prospective belief tracking, would allow children to correctly infer that someone had a false belief. Eighteen- and 36-month-old children observed a displacement event, which was witnessed by a person wearing sunglasses (Experiment 1). Having later discovered that the sunglasses were opaque, 36-month-olds correctly inferred that the person must have formed a false belief about the location of the objects and used this inference in resolving her referential expressions. They successfully performed retrospective revision in the opposite direction as well, correcting a mistakenly attributed false belief when this was necessary (Experiment 3). Thus, children can compute beliefs retrospectively, based on episodic memories, well before they pass explicit false-belief tasks. Eighteen-month-olds failed in such a task, suggesting that they cannot retrospectively attribute beliefs or revise their initial belief attributions. However, an additional experiment provided evidence for prospective tracking of false beliefs in 18-month-olds (Experiment 2). Beyond identifying two different modes for tracking and updating others' mental states early in development, these results also provide clear evidence of episodic memory retrieval in young children.

Learning how to use a tool: Mutually exclusive tool-function mappings are selectively acquired from linguistic in-group models.

The current study investigated whether 4-year-olds used language as a cue to social group membership to infer whether the tool-use behavior of a model needed to be encoded as indicative of the tool's function. We built on children's tendency to treat functions as mutually exclusive, that is, their propensity to refrain from using the same tool for more than one function. We hypothesized that children would form mutually exclusive tool-function mappings only if the source of the function information was a linguistic in-group person (native) as opposed to an out-group (foreign) person. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 39) were presented with four tool-function pairs by a model who had previously spoken either in their native language or in a foreign language. During the test phase, children encountered new purposes for which they could either use the demonstrated tools' color variant or use another equally suitable, as yet unseen, alternative tool. In line with our predictions, children preferred to use the alternative tool for the new function only in the native language condition (native: 63.3%; foreign: 42.7%). Experiment 2 replicated the initial finding using another foreign language and demonstrated that the lack of mutually exclusive tool choice in the foreign condition did not originate from children's failure to encode the demonstration. These findings suggest that children restrict learning artifact functions from linguistic in-group models. The mutual exclusivity principle in the domain of function learning is used more flexibly than previously proposed.

Visual Fixation Patterns During Viewing of Half-Face Stimuli in Adults: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Human faces play a special role in social cognition, since as a core signal of interpersonal communication, they convey various kinds of information (e.g., about sex, age, race, emotions, intentions). Study 1 aimed to explore how this specialization manifests itself in eye movements when looking at neutral, static, female faces. We monitored the gaze pattern of 23 adult participants using eye-tracking method. To test if template-driven processes are involved in face perception, and to see how inversion affects fixations on special facial stimuli, we presented vertically cut half-faces in upright and inverted positions (so half of each stimulus represented a half-face, whereas the other half was left blank). Our results corroborate prior findings consistently demonstrating the dominance of the triangular area marked by the eyes and the mouth, measured by the number and duration of fixations. In addition, we found evidence for so-called complementary fixations, targeted at the non-informative parts (i.e., the half that does not contain any facial information) of the pictures, suggesting that other mechanisms beyond purely stimulus-driven ones might drive looking behavior when scanning faces. Study 2 was intended to test if these systematic eye movements are face-specific or occur in case of other visual objects as well.

Gaze-Following and Reaction to an Aversive Social Interaction Have Corresponding Associations with Variation in the OXTR Gene in Dogs but Not in Human Infants.

It has been suggested that dogs' remarkable capacity to use human communicative signals lies in their comparable social cognitive skills; however, this view has been questioned recently. The present study investigated associations between oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphisms and social behavior in human infants and dogs with the aim to unravel potentially differential mechanisms behind their responsiveness to human gaze. Sixteen-month-old human infants (N = 99) and adult Border Collie dogs (N = 71) participated in two tasks designed to test (1) their use of gaze-direction as a cue to locate a hidden object, and (2) their reactions to an aversive social interaction (using the still face task for children and a threatening approach task for dogs). Moreover, we obtained DNA samples to analyze associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the OXTR (dogs: -213AG, -94TC, -74CG, rs8679682, children: rs53576, rs1042778, rs2254298) and behavior. We found that OXTR genotype was significantly associated with reactions to an aversive social interaction both in dogs and children, confirming the anxiolytic effect of oxytocin in both species. In dogs, the genotypes linked to less fearful behavior were associated also with a higher willingness to follow gaze whereas in children, OXTR gene polymorphisms did not affect gaze following success. This pattern of gene-behavior associations suggests that for dogs the two situations are more alike (potentially fear-inducing or competitive) than for human children. This raises the possibility that, in contrast to former studies proposing human-like cooperativeness in dogs, dogs may perceive human gaze in an object-choice task in a more antagonistic manner than children.

Social Pre-treatment Modulates Attention Allocation to Transient and Stable Object Properties.

Increasing evidence suggests that ostensive-communicative signals in social learning situations enable observers to focus their attention on the intrinsic features of an object (e.g., color) at the expense of ignoring transient object properties (e.g., location). Here we investigated whether off-line social cues, presented as social primes, have the same power to modulate attention allocation to stable and transient object properties as on-line ostensive-communicative cues. The first part of the experiment consisted of a pre-treatment phase, where adult male participants either received intensive social stimulation or were asked to perform non-social actions. Then, they participated in a change detection test, where they watched pairs of pictures depicting an array of five objects. On the second picture, a change occurred compared to the first picture. One object changed either its location (moving forward or backward) or was replaced by another object, and participants were required to indicate where the change had happened. We found that participants detected the change more successfully if it had happened in the location of the object; however, this difference was reduced following a socially intense pre-treatment phase. The results are discussed in relation to the claims of the natural pedagogy theory.

3-Year-Old Children Selectively Generalize Object Functions Following a Demonstration from a Linguistic In-group Member: Evidence from the Phenomenon of Scale Error.

The present study investigated 3-year-old children's learning processes about object functions. We built on children's tendency to commit scale errors with tools to explore whether they would selectively endorse object functions from a linguistic in-group over an out-group model. Participants (n = 37) were presented with different object sets, and a model speaking either in their native or a foreign language demonstrated how to use the presented tools. In the test phase, children received the object sets with two modifications: the original tool was replaced by one that was too big to achieve the goal but was otherwise identical, and another tool was added to the set that looked different but was appropriately scaled for goal attainment. Children in the Native language condition were significantly more likely to commit scale errors - that is, choose the over-sized tool - than children in the Foreign language condition (48 vs. 30%). We propose that these results provide insight into the characteristics of human-specific learning processes by showing that children are more likely to generalize object functions to a category of artifacts following a demonstration from an in-group member.

Experimental evidence for convergent evolution of maternal care heuristics in industrialized and small-scale populations.

Maternal care decision rules should evolve responsiveness to factors impinging on the fitness pay-offs of care. Because the caretaking environments common in industrialized and small-scale societies vary in predictable ways, we hypothesize that heuristics guiding maternal behaviour will also differ between these two types of populations. We used a factorial vignette experiment to elicit third-party judgements about likely caretaking decisions of a hypothetical mother and her child when various fitness-relevant factors (maternal age and access to resources, and offspring age, sex and quality) were varied systematically in seven populations-three industrialized and four small-scale. Despite considerable variation in responses, we found that three of five main effects, and the two severity effects, exhibited statistically significant industrialized/ small-scale population differences. All differences could be explained as adaptive solutions to industrialized versus small-scale caretaking environments. Further, we found gradients in the relationship between the population-specific estimates and national-level socio-economic indicators, further implicating important aspects of the variation in industrialized and small-scale caretaking environments in shaping heuristics. Although there is mounting evidence for a genetic component to human maternal behaviour, there is no current evidence for interpopulation variation in candidate genes. We nonetheless suggest that heuristics guiding maternal behaviour in diverse societies emerge via convergent evolution in response to similar selective pressures.

Feature or location? Infants and adults adopt different strategies to search for a hidden toy in an ambiguous task.

Evidence suggests that infants and adults attribute different importance to certain object properties when performing object-directed actions. Namely, infants tend to rely on information about an object's location, whereas adults are more likely to base their actions on its features. In this study, we tested whether the strategic choices of infants (aged 13 months) and adults would be modified by the context of the demonstration. Participants watched as an experimenter hid a ball under one of two different coloured containers, using either a communicative or a non-communicative manner. Then, the locations of the two containers were changed out of sight of the participant. During the test, participants were encouraged to look for the ball under one of the containers. We found that adults were more likely to follow a feature-based strategy than infants. However, there was no effect of the context of the demonstration, suggesting that communication may play different roles in encoding object properties and directing overt behaviour.