No gesture too small: An investigation into the ability of gestural information to mislead eyewitness accounts by 5- to 8-year-olds.

The accuracy of eyewitness interviews has legal and clinical implications within the criminal justice system. Leading verbal suggestions have been shown to give rise to false memories and inaccurate testimonies in children, but only a small body of research exists regarding non-verbal communication. The present study examined whether 5- to 8-year-olds in the UK could be misled about their memory of an event through exposure to leading gestural information, which suggested an incorrect response, using a variety of question and gesture types. Results showed that leading gestures significantly corrupted participants' memory compared to the control group (MD = 0.60, p < 0.001), with participants being misled by at least one question nearly three-quarters of the time. Questions about peripheral details, and gestures that were more visible and expressive, increased false memory further, with even subtle gestures demonstrating a strong misleading influence. We discuss the implications of these findings for the guidelines governing eyewitness interviews.

Manipulated exposure to television-style healthy food advertising and children's healthy food intake in nurseries.

The detrimental impact of currently disproportionate amounts of digital food advertising for processed foods high in sugar, salt, and fat (HSSF) on children's food intake and dietary health is well-documented. The potential of digital healthy food advertising to encourage healthy eating in children is much less researched. A pre-test post-test control group design was used to compare the effect of specifically designed, television-style advertisements for healthy food versus toys on 172 three-to seven-year-old children's exclusively healthy food intake (vegetable, fruit, whole-grain) in five nurseries in Germany. Within- and between-group comparisons demonstrated the effectiveness of healthy food advertising exposure to increase children's healthy food intake. Three exposures to a 1-min-advertisement for healthy food were sufficient to increase children's healthy food intake by as much as three portions. Children in the control condition ate less healthy foods following viewing of a control advertisement (a matched toy advertisement). We concluded that digital healthy food advertising is likely to increase children's healthy food intake sufficiently to help children meet daily recommended amounts of vegetables, fruit, or whole-grain bread, and that this encouragement may be required as decreases in healthy food intake were found when healthy foods were merely available.

Using virtual environments to investigate wayfinding in 8- to 12-year-olds and adults.

Wayfinding is the ability to learn and recall a route through an environment. Theories of wayfinding suggest that for children to learn a route successfully, they must have repeated experience of it, but in this experiment we investigated whether children could learn a route after only a single experience of the route. A total of 80 participants from the United Kingdom in four groups of 20 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults were shown a route through a 12-turn maze in a virtual environment. At each junction, there was a unique object that could be used as a landmark. Participants were "walked" along the route just once (without any verbal prompts) and then were asked to retrace the route from the start without any help. Nearly three quarters of the 12-year-olds, half of the 10-year-olds, and a third of the 8-year-olds retraced the route without any errors the first time they traveled it on their own. This finding suggests that many young children can learn routes, even with as many as 12 turns, very quickly and without the need for repeated experience. The implications for theories of wayfinding that emphasize the need for extensive experience are discussed.

The development of route learning in Down syndrome, Williams syndrome and typical development: investigations with virtual environments.

The ability to navigate new environments has a significant impact on the daily life and independence of people with learning difficulties. The aims of this study were to investigate the development of route learning in Down syndrome (N = 50), Williams syndrome (N = 19), and typically developing children between 5 and 11 years old (N = 108); to investigate use of landmarks; and to relate cognitive functions to route-learning ability in these groups. Overall, measures of attention and long-term memory were strongly associated with route learning, even once non-verbal ability was controlled for. All of the groups, including 5- to 6-year-old TD children, demonstrated the ability to make use of all landmark types to aid route learning; those near junctions, those further from junctions, and also distant landmarks (e.g. church spire, radio mast). Individuals with WS performed better than a matched subset of TD children on more difficult routes; we suggest that this is supported by relatively strong visual feature recognition in the disorder. Participants with DS who had relatively high levels of non-verbal ability performed at a similar level to TD participants.

Spatial exploration and navigation in Down syndrome and Williams syndrome.

We know little about the ability to explore and navigate large-scale space for people with intellectual disability (ID). In this cross-syndrome study, individuals with Down syndrome (DS), individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) and typically developing children (TD; aged 5-11 years) explored virtual environments with the goal of learning where everything was within the environment (Experiment 1) or to find six stars (Experiment 2). There was little difference between the WS and DS groups when the goal was simply to learn about the environment with no specific destination to be reached (Experiment 1); both groups performed at a level akin to a subset of TD children of a similar level of non-verbal ability. The difference became evident when the goal of the task was to locate targets in the environment (Experiment 2). The DS group showed the weakest performance, performing at or below the level of a subset of TD children at a similar level of non-verbal ability, whilst the WS group performed at the level of the TD subset group. The DS, WS and TD group also demonstrated different patterns of exploration behavior. Exploration behaviour in DS was weak and did not improve across trials. In WS, exploration behavior changed across trials but was atypical (the number of revisits increased with repeated trials). Moreover, transdiagnostic individual difference analysis (Latent Profile Analysis) revealed five profiles of exploration and navigation variables, none of which were uniquely specific to DS or to WS. Only the most extreme profile of very poor navigators was specific to participants with DS and WS. Interestingly, all other profiles contained at least one individual with DS and at least one individual with WS. This highlights the importance of investigating heterogeneity in the performance of individuals with intellectual disability and the usefulness of a data-driven transdiagnostic approach to identifying behavioral profiles.

Children's recognition of advertisements on television and on Web pages.

In this paper we consider the issue of advertising to children. Advertising to children raises a number of concerns, in particular the effects of food advertising on children's eating habits. We point out that virtually all the research into children's understanding of advertising has focused on traditional television advertisements, but much marketing aimed at children is now via the Internet and little is known about children's awareness of advertising on the Web. One important component of understanding advertisements is the ability to distinguish advertisements from other messages, and we suggest that young children's ability to recognise advertisements on a Web page is far behind their ability to recognise advertisements on television.

Learning new faces in typical and atypical populations of children.

Recognizing an individual as familiar is an important aspect of our social cognition, which requires both learning a face and recalling it. It has been suggested that children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits and abnormalities in face processing. We investigated whether the process by which unfamiliar faces become familiar differs in typically developing (TD) children, children with ASD, and children with developmental delay. Children were familiarized with a set of moving novel faces presented over a three-day period. Recognition of the learned faces was assessed at five time points during the three-day period. Both immediate and delayed recall of faces was tested. All groups showed improvements in face recognition at immediate recall, which indicated that learning had occurred. The TD population showed slightly better performance than the two other groups, however no difference was specific to the ASD group. All groups showed similar levels of improvements with time. Our results are discussed in terms of learning in ASD.

Acute serum amyloid A induces migration, angiogenesis, and inflammation in synovial cells in vitro and in a human rheumatoid arthritis/SCID mouse chimera model.

Serum amyloid A (A-SAA), an acute-phase protein with cytokine-like properties, is expressed at sites of inflammation. This study investigated the effects of A-SAA on chemokine-regulated migration and angiogenesis using rheumatoid arthritis (RA) cells and whole-tissue explants in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo. A-SAA levels were measured by real-time PCR and ELISA. IL-8 and MCP-1 expression was examined in RA synovial fibroblasts, human microvascular endothelial cells, and RA synovial explants by ELISA. Neutrophil transendothelial cell migration, cell adhesion, invasion, and migration were examined using transwell leukocyte/monocyte migration assays, invasion assays, and adhesion assays with or without anti-MCP-1/anti-IL-8. NF-kappaB was examined using a specific inhibitor and Western blotting. An RA synovial/SCID mouse chimera model was used to examine the effects of A-SAA on cell migration, proliferation, and angiogenesis in vivo. High expression of A-SAA was demonstrated in RA patients (p < 0.05). A-SAA induced chemokine expression in a time- and dose-dependent manner (p < 0.05). Blockade with anti-scavenger receptor class B member 1 and lipoxin A4 (A-SAA receptors) significantly reduced chemokine expression in RA synovial tissue explants (p < 0.05). A-SAA induced cell invasion, neutrophil-transendothelial cell migration, monocyte migration, and adhesion (all p < 0.05), effects that were blocked by anti-IL-8 or anti-MCP-1. A-SAA-induced chemokine expression was mediated through NF-kappaB in RA explants (p < 0.05). Finally, in the RA synovial/SCID mouse chimera model, we demonstrated for the first time in vivo that A-SAA directly induces monocyte migration from the murine circulation into RA synovial grafts, synovial cell proliferation, and angiogenesis (p < 0.05). A-SAA promotes cell migrational mechanisms and angiogenesis critical to RA pathogenesis.

How useful are landmarks when learning a route in a virtual environment? Evidence from typical development and Williams syndrome.

The ability to learn a route through a virtual environment was assessed in 19 older children and adults with Williams syndrome (WS) and 40 typically developing (TD) children aged 6-9 years. In addition to comparing route-learning ability across groups, we were interested in whether participants show an adult-like differentiation between "useful" and "less useful" landmarks when learning a route and the relative salience of landmark position versus landmark identity. Each virtual environment consisted of a brick wall maze with six junctions. There were 16 landmarks in the maze, half of which were on the correct path and half on incorrect paths. Results showed that both groups could learn each route to criterion (two successful completions of a route without error). During the learning phase, the WS group produced more errors than the TD group and took longer to reach criterion. This was predominantly due to the large number of perseverative errors (i.e., errors that were made at the same choice point on consecutive learning trials) made by the WS group relative to the TD children. We suggest that this reflects a difficulty in inhibiting erroneous responses in WS. During the test phase, the TD group showed stronger recall of landmarks adjacent to junctions (more useful landmarks) than of landmarks along path sections (less useful landmarks) independent of each individual's level of nonverbal ability. This pattern was also evident in the WS group but was related to level of nonverbal maturation; the differentiation between recall of junction and path landmarks increased as nonverbal ability increased across WS participants. Overall, the results demonstrate that individuals with WS can learn a route but that the development of this ability is atypical.

Short-term memory, executive control, and children's route learning.

The aim of this study was to investigate route-learning ability in 67 children aged 5 to 11years and to relate route-learning performance to the components of Baddeley's model of working memory. Children carried out tasks that included measures of verbal and visuospatial short-term memory and executive control and also measures of verbal and visuospatial long-term memory; the route-learning task was conducted using a maze in a virtual environment. In contrast to previous research, correlations were found between both visuospatial and verbal memory tasks-the Corsi task, short-term pattern span, digit span, and visuospatial long-term memory-and route-learning performance. However, further analyses indicated that these relationships were mediated by executive control demands that were common to the tasks, with long-term memory explaining additional unique variance in route learning.

Gender-based personality traits in physically aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behaviours.

BACKGROUND: The current study aimed to understand the role of callousness, affective dissonance, and two subtypes of sensation seeking personality traits - 1) disinhibition and 2) thrill and adventure seeking - in physically aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behaviours (ASB) among educated youth and to explore the gender differences in them. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE: An online survey was sent to a large sample of students at a UK university. Initially, a sample of N = 539 participants was collected but after screening out the data, N = 429 participants were included for analyses based on the sampling criteria. RESULTS: Callousness, disinhibition, and affective dissonance significantly predicted both antisocial behaviour subtypes. We found multidimensional nature of callousness in predicting antisocial behaviours, and an intriguing relationship between thrill and adventure seeking and affective dissonance. Interesting gender differences emerged. CONCLUSIONS: This study has implications for the understanding of the competitive roles of gender-based psychopathological personality traits in terms of callousness and affective dissonance and sensation seeking tendencies in physically aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behaviours.

Anxiety and Spatial Navigation in Williams Syndrome and Down Syndrome.

Individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) present with poor navigation and elevated anxiety. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between these two characteristics. Parent report questionnaires measured navigation abilities and anxiety in WS (N = 55) and DS (N = 42) as follows. Anxiety: Spence Children's Anxiety Scale and a novel measure of navigation anxiety. Navigation: Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale (SBSOD) and a novel measure of navigation competence. Most individuals were not permitted to travel independently. A relationship between navigation anxiety and SBSOD scores (but not navigation competence) was observed for both groups.

How do individuals with Williams syndrome learn a route in a real-world environment?

Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) show a specific deficit in visuo-spatial abilities. This finding, however, derives mainly from performance on small-scale laboratory-based tasks. This study investigated large-scale route learning in individuals with WS and two matched control groups (moderate learning difficulty group [MLD], typically developing group [TD]). In a non-labelling and a labelling (verbal information provided along the route) condition, participants were guided along one of two unfamiliar 1-km routes with 20 junctions, and then retraced the route themselves (two trials). The WS participants performed less well than the other groups, but given verbal information and repeated experience they learnt nearly all of the turns along the route. The extent of improvement in route knowledge (correct turns) in WS was comparable to that of the control groups. Relational knowledge (correctly identifying spatial relationships between landmarks), compared with the TD group, remained poor for both the WS and the MLD group. Assessment of the relationship between performance on the large-scale route-learning task and that on three small-scale tasks (maze learning, perspective taking, map use) showed no relationship for the TD controls, and only a few non-specific associations in the MLD and WS groups.

Ectopic lymphoid structures support ongoing production of class-switched autoantibodies in rheumatoid synovium.

BACKGROUND: Follicular structures resembling germinal centres (GCs) that are characterized by follicular dendritic cell (FDC) networks have long been recognized in chronically inflamed tissues in autoimmune diseases, including the synovium of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, it is debated whether these ectopic structures promote autoimmunity and chronic inflammation driving the production of pathogenic autoantibodies. Anti-citrullinated protein/peptide antibodies (ACPA) are highly specific markers of RA, predict a poor prognosis, and have been suggested to be pathogenic. Therefore, the main study objectives were to determine whether ectopic lymphoid structures in RA synovium: (i) express activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), the enzyme required for somatic hypermutation and class-switch recombination (CSR) of Ig genes; (ii) support ongoing CSR and ACPA production; and (iii) remain functional in a RA/severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) chimera model devoid of new immune cell influx into the synovium. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Using immunohistochemistry (IHC) and quantitative Taqman real-time PCR (QT-PCR) in synovial tissue from 55 patients with RA, we demonstrated that FDC+ structures invariably expressed AID with a distribution resembling secondary lymphoid organs. Further, AID+/CD21+ follicular structures were surrounded by ACPA+/CD138+ plasma cells, as demonstrated by immune reactivity to citrullinated fibrinogen. Moreover, we identified a novel subset of synovial AID+/CD20+ B cells outside GCs resembling interfollicular large B cells. In order to gain direct functional evidence that AID+ structures support CSR and in situ manufacturing of class-switched ACPA, 34 SCID mice were transplanted with RA synovium and humanely killed at 4 wk for harvesting of transplants and sera. Persistent expression of AID and Igamma-Cmu circular transcripts (identifying ongoing IgM-IgG class-switching) was observed in synovial grafts expressing FDCs/CD21L. Furthermore, synovial mRNA levels of AID were closely associated with circulating human IgG ACPA in mouse sera. Finally, the survival and proliferation of functional B cell niches was associated with persistent overexpression of genes regulating ectopic lymphoneogenesis. CONCLUSIONS: Our demonstration that FDC+ follicular units invariably express AID and are surrounded by ACPA-producing plasma cells provides strong evidence that ectopic lymphoid structures in the RA synovium are functional and support autoantibody production. This concept is further confirmed by evidence of sustained AID expression, B cell proliferation, ongoing CSR, and production of human IgG ACPA from GC+ synovial tissue transplanted into SCID mice, independently of new B cell influx from the systemic circulation. These data identify AID as a potential therapeutic target in RA and suggest that survival of functional synovial B cell niches may profoundly influence chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, and response to B cell-depleting therapies.

A novel model for the pre-clinical imaging of inflamed human synovial vasculature.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to explore the development of a pre-clinical nuclear imaging model as a tool for testing novel radiopharmaceutical agents for imaging and/or delivery systems to human tissues. Here we report for the first time the imaging of human synovial tissue transplanted into SCID mice using a radiolabelled anti-E-selectin antibody and NanoSPECT/CT technology. METHODS: Human synovium was transplanted into SCID mice. Two to three weeks post-transplantation tissue vasculature was stimulated with TNF-alpha by intra-graft injection 5 h prior to intravenous injection of (111)In-labelled anti-E-selectin or isotype control antibody. At 1, 4, 24 and 48 h animals were imaged and transplant activity quantified. RESULTS: Activity was detectable in the grafts at all time points, with clear delineation of the transplants in the reconstructed images. A significant difference in graft radioactivity was observed at 4 and 24 h with a significantly higher uptake (P < 0.05) of (111)In-anti-E-selectin compared with isotype control antibody. CONCLUSIONS: This article highlights NanoSPECT/CT imaging in the SCID mouse chimeric model as a powerful tool for the pre-clinical development of radiopharmaceutical and delivery agents targeting human synovial tissue in vivo.

Young children's ability to recognize advertisements in web page designs.

Identifying what is, and what is not an advertisement is the first step in realizing that an advertisement is a marketing message. Children can distinguish television advertisements from programmes by about 5 years of age. Although previous researchers have investigated television advertising, little attention has been given to advertisements in other media, even though other media, especially the Internet, have become important channels of marketing to children. We showed children printed copies of invented web pages that included advertisements, half of which had price information, and asked the children to point to whatever they thought was an advertisement. In two experiments we tested a total of 401 children, aged 6, 8, 10 and 12 years of age, from the United Kingdom and Indonesia. Six-year-olds recognized a quarter of the advertisements, 8-year-olds recognized half the advertisements, and the 10- and 12-year-olds recognized about three-quarters. Only the 10- and 12-year-olds were more likely to identify an advertisement when it included a price. We contrast our findings with previous results about the identification of television advertising, and discuss why children were poorer at recognizing web page advertisements. The performance of the children has implications for theories about how children develop an understanding of advertising.

Description of Routes in People With Intellectual Disability.

The ability to describe routes was assessed in participants with intellectual disability (ID) and participants without ID matched on chronological age (CA) or on mental age (MA). In two experiments, participants learned a route through a virtual environment until they reached a learning criterion. They were then asked to externalize their spatial knowledge in a verbal description task, a landmark recognition task, or a map completion task. Results revealed that participants with ID mainly described the route as a succession of actions ("turn left"), and participants in the CA group prescribed actions referring to a landmark ("turn left at the swing"). Yet, results from the other tasks showed that people with ID had good landmark knowledge of the environment.

Familiar face recognition in children with autism; the differential use of inner and outer face parts.

We investigated whether children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) have a deficit in recognising familiar faces. Children with ASD were given a forced choice familiar face recognition task with three conditions: full faces, inner face parts and outer face parts. Control groups were children with developmental delay (DD) and typically developing (TD) children. Children with ASD and children with DD recognised slightly fewer faces than did TD children, but there was no ASD-specific deficit. All groups displayed the dame pattern of face part superiority: full-face superiority over inner face, and inner face superiority over outer face. Thererfore, the pattern of familiar face recognition by children with ASD was similar to the pattern found in other children.

Factors influencing agreement between child self-report and parent proxy-reports on the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 (PedsQL) generic core scales.

BACKGROUND: In situations where children are unable or unwilling to respond for themselves, measurement of quality of life (QOL) is often obtained by parent proxy-report. However the relationship between child self and parent proxy-reports has been shown to be poor in some circumstances. Additionally the most appropriate statistical method for comparing ratings between child and parent proxy-reports has not been clearly established. The objectives of this study were to assess the: 1) agreement between child and parent proxy-reports on an established child QOL measure (the PedsQL) using two different statistical methods; 2) effect of chronological age and domain type on agreement between children's and parents' reports on the PedsQL; 3) relationship between parents' own well-being and their ratings of their child's QOL. METHODS: One hundred and forty-nine healthy children (5.5 - 6.5, 6.5 - 7.5, and 7.5 - 8.5 years) completed the PedsQL. One hundred and three of their parents completed these measures in relation to their child, and a measure of their own QOL (SF-36). RESULTS: Consistency between child and parent proxy-reports on the PedsQL was low, with Intra-Class correlation coefficients ranging from 0.02 to 0.23. Correlations were higher for the oldest age group for Total Score and Psychosocial Health domains, and for the Physical Health domain in the youngest age group. Statistically significant median differences were found between child and parent-reports on all subscales of the PedsQL. The largest median differences were found for the two older age groups. Statistically significant correlations were found between parents' own QOL and their proxy-reports of child QOL across the total sample and within the middle age group. CONCLUSION: Intra-Class correlation coefficients and median difference testing can provide different information on the relationship between parent proxy-reports and child self-reports. Our findings suggest that differences in the levels of parent-child agreement previously reported may be an artefact of the statistical method used. In addition, levels of agreement can be affected by child age, domains investigated, and parents' own QOL. Further studies are needed to establish the optimal predictors of levels of parent-child agreement.

Children's identification of faces from lineups: the effects of lineup presentation and instructions on accuracy.

The authors investigated whether the type of lineup and instructions given to children 6-7 or 9-10 years of age affected their identification accuracy. Children witnessed a man stealing property and were later asked to identify him in either photo or video lineups. Some lineups contained the target and some did not. Two lineup procedures were used (standard or elimination), and 2 types of instruction were used (standard or cautioning about false identification). Standard lineups with cautioning instructions decreased target-absent errors with no associated reduction in correct identifications, but elimination lineups did not. Lineup media had an interaction effect whereby correct identifications were reduced in video but not photo elimination lineups. The results are discussed in a forensic context.