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Past research on interspecies communication has shown that animals can be trained to use Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices, such as soundboards, to make simple requests of their caretakers. The recent uptake in AIC devices by hundreds of pet owners around the world offers a novel opportunity to investigate whether AIC is possible with owner-trained family dogs. To answer this question, we carried out two studies to test pet dogs ability to recognise and respond appropriately to food-related, play-related, and outside-related words on their soundboards. One study was conducted by researchers, and the other by citizen scientists who followed the same procedure. Further, we investigated whether these behaviours depended on the identity of the person presenting the word (unfamiliar person or dogs owner) and the mode of its presentation (spoken or produced by a pressed button). We find that dogs produced contextually appropriate behaviours for both play-related and outside-related words regardless of the identity of the person producing them and the mode in which they were produced. Therefore, pet dogs can be successfully taught by their owners to associate words recorded onto soundboard buttons to their outcomes in the real world, and they respond appropriately to these words even when they are presented in the absence of any other cues, such as the owners body language.

The lack of standardized language assessment tools in Russian impedes clinical work, evidence-based practice, and research in Russian-speaking clinical populations. To address this gap in assessment of neurogenic language disorders, we developed and standardized a new comprehensive assessment instrument-the Russian Aphasia Test (RAT). The principal novelty of the RAT is that each subtest corresponds to a specific level of linguistic processing (phonological, lexical-semantic, syntactic, and discourse) in different domains: auditory comprehension, repetition, and oral production. In designing the test, we took into consideration various (psycho)linguistic factors known to influence language performance, as well as specific properties of Russian. The current paper describes the development of the RAT and reports its psychometric properties. A tablet-based version of the RAT was administered to 85 patients with different types and severity of aphasia and to 106 age-matched neurologically healthy controls. We established cutoff values for each subtest indicating deficit in a given task and cutoff values for aphasia based on the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve analysis of the composite score. The RAT showed very high sensitivity (> .93) and specificity (> .96), substantiating its validity for determining presence of aphasia. The tests high construct validity was evidenced by strong correlations between subtests measuring similar linguistic processes. The concurrent validity of the test was also strong as demonstrated by a high correlation with an existing aphasia battery. Overall high internal, inter-rater, and test-retest reliability were obtained. The RAT is the first comprehensive aphasia language battery in Russian with properly established psychometric properties. It is sensitive to a wide range of language deficits in aphasia and can reliably characterize individual profiles of language impairments. Notably, the RAT is the first comprehensive aphasia test in any language to be fully automatized for administration on a tablet, maximizing further standardization of presentation and scoring procedures.

OBJECTIVE:The ultimate goal of reading is to understand written text. To accomplish this, children must first master decoding, the ability to translate printed words into sounds. Although decoding and reading comprehension are highly interdependent, some children struggle to decode but comprehend well, whereas others with good decoding skills fail to comprehend. The neural basis underlying individual differences in this discrepancy between decoding and comprehension abilities is virtually unknown. METHODS:We investigated the neural basis underlying reading discrepancy, defined as the difference between reading comprehension and decoding skills, in a three-part study: 1) The neuroanatomical basis of reading discrepancy in a cross-sectional sample of school-age children with a wide range of reading abilities (Experiment-1; n = 55); 2) Whether a discrepancy-related neural signature is present in beginning readers and predictive of future discrepancy (Experiment-2; n = 43); and 3) Whether discrepancy-related regions are part of a domain-general or a language specialized network, utilizing the 1000 Functional Connectome data and large-scale reverse inference from Neurosynth.org (Experiment-3). RESULTS:Results converged onto the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), as related to having discrepantly higher reading comprehension relative to decoding ability. Increased gray matter volume (GMV) was associated with greater discrepancy (Experiment-1). Region-of-interest (ROI) analyses based on the left DLPFC cluster identified in Experiment-1 revealed that regional GMV within this ROI in beginning readers predicted discrepancy three years later (Experiment-2). This region was associated with the fronto-parietal network that is considered fundamental for working memory and cognitive control (Experiment-3). INTERPRETATION:Processes related to the prefrontal cortex might be linked to reading discrepancy. The findings may be important for understanding cognitive resilience, which we operationalize as those individuals with greater higher-order reading skills such as reading comprehension compared to lower-order reading skills such as decoding skills. Our study provides insights into reading development, existing theories of reading, and cognitive processes that are potentially significant to a wide range of reading disorders.

Investigation about metacognitive awareness of reading strategies (MARS) has mainly focused on paper-based reading rather than online reading. Gender, reading media preferences, and English proficiency levels (EPL) account for students' differences in MARS. However, existing studies are still debating the predictive power of these variables on MARS. MARS was assumed to influence English reading comprehension even though research that firmly supports this assumption seems rare. Therefore, we examined Indonesian university students' MARS in online reading activities using data from 1412 university students in Indonesia. They were categorized into gender, reading media preferences, and EPL. The One-Way MANOVA results showed students' differences in MARS based on their gender, (F = 20.456, p < 0.05), reading media preferences, (F = 2.82, p < 0.05), and students' EPL, (F = 5.988, p < 0.05). The multiple regression analysis showed that global, support, and problem-solving strategies were simultaneously associated with English reading comprehension scores. This study emphasizes the effect of the variables on students' MARS differences and discloses the association between MARS and English reading comprehension., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Anggia, Habók. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Scientific literature is presented in complex language, most frequently in English, and includes technical jargon that represents a challenge to comprehension of an English as a foreign language (EFL) nursing student. Yet scientific literature is a powerful and trustworthy source of evidence to guide nursing practice., Purpose: The aim is to examine two reading interventions (Translation vs Synthesization) and to determine which one produces long-term sustainability effects in scientific research reading comprehension., Method: A two-group posttest-only randomized comparative design was used in which 120 participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Several instruments were used to collect the data., Results: Study findings showed that the synthesization group significantly produced better results when compared with the translation group on both the immediate (p = 0.01) and the delayed (p = 0.013) reading comprehension tests. It shows also that gender differences have a significant impact on reading comprehension with a favor to males in the long-term reading comprehension outcome (p = 0.038) of synthesization and females in the short-term reading comprehension outcome (p = 0.015) of translation. English proficiency was significant with determination, metacognitive, and social skills in the synthesization group (p = 0.00, p = 0.01, p = 0.007 respectively)., Conclusion: The results suggested that synthesization could be an effective reading approach in improving EFL nursing students' reading comprehension of scientific literature., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Al-Moteri et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Political partisanship might lead educated adults-even the highly numerate-to reason selectively about numbers that are relevant to and support their ideology ("motivated numeracy"). In this pre-registered study, we sought to examine the replicability of motivated numeracy, and investigate whether cognitive support (number lines) that improves the reasoning of children might also improve the reasoning of political partisans. To test this, we asked 1000 adults about their political ideology and asked them to interpret fictional data, in a table or number-line format, about ideology relevant (i.e., the effect of gun control on crime) or irrelevant (i.e., the effect of skin cream on rash) issues. We failed to replicate motivated numeracy when political identity was used but observed motivated numeracy when prior attitude was used. Moreover, data presented on number lines elicited 75 percent greater accuracy than data presented in tables, regardless of whether the information was ideology-relevant, or whether data supported, was neutral to, or contradicted participants' political outlooks. Findings imply that political partisans require cognitive support to be more objective about policy data., Competing Interests: NO authors have competing interests., (Copyright: © 2024 Yu, Opfer. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: If communicated adequately, numerical decision-relevant information can support informed and shared decision making. Visual formats are recommended, but which format supports patients depending on their health literacy (HL) levels for specific decisions is unclear., Study Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate: 1) the effect of survival rates and side-effects presentation formats on comprehension and 'feeling informed'; 2) differential effects among women with higher/lower HL, with adjuvant systemic breast cancer therapy as case example., Methods: Two online experiments among women from the Dutch population without a history of breast cancer were conducted. Experiment 1 had a 3 (survival rate format: text block-bar graph-icon array) x 2 (HL: low-high) between-subjects design. Experiment 2 had a 5 (side-effects format: no probability information-probability information in numbers with or without a visualisation-probability information in numbers with or without a visualisation accompanied by a description of the side-effects) x 2 (HL: low-high) design. Primary outcomes were comprehension and feeling informed (Experiment 2 only). Formats were previously designed in co-creation with patients., Results: In Experiment 1, presentation format did not affect gist or verbatim comprehension. Higher HL was associated with higher gist comprehension. Experiment 2 showed an interaction between presentation format and HL on 'feeling informed'. When provided with visualised probability information without a description of the side-effects, women with lower HL felt better informed than women with higher HL., Conclusion: Visual formats did not enhance comprehension of survival rate information beyond a well-designed text block format. However, none of the formats could overcome HL differences. When designing decision-relevant information, visualisations might not necessarily provide an advantage over structured numerical information for both patients with lower and higher HL. However, a deeper understanding of presenting side-effect information is warranted., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 van Strien-Knippenberg et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

We report a design study that assessed the feasibility of Enacted Reading Comprehension (ERC), an intervention designed to teach 3rd and 4th grade students (n = 40 and 25, respectively) to use gestures to understand an increasingly abstract set of texts. Students were taught to use gestures to understand the idea of "opposing forces" in a concrete setting-the forces at play as tectonic plates move past each other-and then taught to use the gestures to understand opposing forces in more abstract situations. For example, students were taught to use gestures to understand the opposing sides of an argument, and to understand the internal conflicts that arise as individuals are faced with moral dilemmas. The results of our design study suggest that ERC has promise as a method for introducing students to the idea of using gesture to understand text content, and to employ this strategy in a range of reading contexts.

A classic debate in cognitive science revolves around understanding how children learn complex linguistic patterns, such as restrictions on verb alternations and contractions, without negative evidence. Recently, probabilistic models of language learning have been applied to this problem, framing it as a statistical inference from a random sample of sentences. These probabilistic models predict that learners should be sensitive to the way in which sentences are sampled. There are two main types of sampling assumptions that can operate in language learning: strong and weak sampling. Strong sampling, as assumed by probabilistic models, assumes the learning input is drawn from a distribution of grammatical samples from the underlying language and aims to learn this distribution. Thus, under strong sampling, the absence of a sentence construction from the input provides evidence that it has low or zero probability of grammaticality. Weak sampling does not make assumptions about the distribution from which the input is drawn, and thus the absence of a construction from the input as not used as evidence of its ungrammaticality. We demonstrate in a series of artificial language learning experiments that adults can produce behavior consistent with both sets of sampling assumptions, depending on how the learning problem is presented. These results suggest that people use information about the way in which linguistic input is sampled to guide their learning.

Flipped classes can improve English language teaching and learning, especially reading outcomes, by enhancing student engagement and motivation through interactive and captivating educational materials. The goal of this study is to examine the effects of different schema activations in different English flipped class formats in pre-reading activities on the reading comprehension of students with different reading proficiency levels. A quasi-experimental research design was employed involving 30 first-year students from the first university and 28 first-year students from the second university in Surabaya, Indonesia, who were studying English as a general course at an intermediate level. The study used informed consent and two different formats, A and B, where pre-reading tasks were completed in class or asynchronously online, respectively. The study found that using video-based pre-reading activities in flipped class can improve comprehension and schema acquisition. Flipped classes can provide personalized learning experiences, but its effectiveness varies depending on the strategies and delivery methods used. While most students benefit from flipped classes, those who struggle with self-discipline and time management may find it challenging to adapt to the online component and may experience lower performance as a result., Competing Interests: The authors of this manuscript have thoroughly reviewed the journal’s policy on competing interests, and we unequivocally declare that there are no competing interests associated with this work. We affirm that neither financial nor non-financial interests exist that could be perceived to influence or bias the outcomes or interpretations presented in this research. Our commitment to transparency and integrity in research is paramount, and we affirm that there are no relationships or activities that could compromise the impartiality or objectivity of this study. This statement is in line with the journal’s guidelines, and we assure the readers and the scientific community of the accuracy and completeness of this declaration., (Copyright: © 2024 Fahmi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Expectation-based theories of language processing, such as Surprisal theory, are supported by evidence of anticipation effects in both behavioural and neurophysiological measures. Online measures of language processing, however, are known to be influenced by factors such as lexical association that are distinct from—but often confounded with—expectancy. An open question therefore is whether a specific locus of expectancy related effects can be established in neural and behavioral processing correlates. We address this question in an event-related potential experiment and a self-paced reading experiment that independently cross expectancy and lexical association in a context manipulation design. We find that event-related potentials reveal that the N400 is sensitive to both expectancy and lexical association, while the P600 is modulated only by expectancy. Reading times, in turn, reveal effects of both association and expectancy in the first spillover region, followed by effects of expectancy alone in the second spillover region. These findings are consistent with the Retrieval-Integration account of language comprehension, according to which lexical retrieval (N400) is facilitated for words that are both expected and associated, whereas integration difficulty (P600) will be greater for unexpected words alone. Further, an exploratory analysis suggests that the P600 is not merely sensitive to expectancy violations, but rather, that there is a continuous relation. Taken together, these results suggest that the P600, like reading times, may reflect a meaning-centric notion of Surprisal in language comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to age four, children succeed in non-elicited-response false-belief tasks but fail elicited-response false-belief tasks. To explain this discrepancy, the processing-load account argues that the capacity to represent beliefs emerges in infancy, as indicated by early success on non-elicited-response tasks, but that children's ability to demonstrate this capacity depends on the processing demands of the task and children's processing skills. When processing demands exceed young children's processing abilities, such as in standard elicited-response tasks, children fail despite their capacity to represent beliefs. Support for this account comes from recent evidence that reducing processing demands improves young children's performance: when demands are sufficiently reduced, 2.5-year-olds succeed in elicited-response tasks. Here we sought complementary evidence for the processing-load account by examining whether increasing processing demands impeded children's performance in a non-elicited-response task. 3-year-olds were tested in a preferential-looking task in which they heard a change-of-location false-belief story accompanied by a picture book; across children, we manipulated the amount of linguistic ambiguity in the story. The final page of the book showed two images: one that was consistent with the main character's false belief and one that was consistent with reality. When the story was relatively unambiguous, children looked reliably longer at the false-belief-consistent image, successfully demonstrating their false-belief understanding. When the story was ambiguous, however, this undermined children's performance: looking times to the belief-consistent image were correlated with verbal ability, and only children with verbal skills in the upper quartile of the sample demonstrated a significant preference for the belief-consistent image. These results support the processing-load account by demonstrating that regardless of whether a task involves an elicited response, children's performance depends on the processing demands of the task and their processing skills. These findings also have implications for alternative, deflationary accounts of early false-belief understanding.

In the present preregistered study, we evaluated the possibility of a shared cognitive mechanism during verbal and non-verbal tasks and therefore the implication of domain-general cognitive control during language comprehension. We hypothesized that a behavioral cost will be observed during a dual-task including both verbal and non-verbal difficult processing. Specifically, to test this claim, we designed a dual-task paradigm involving: an auditory language comprehension task (sentence comprehension) and a non-verbal Flanker task (including congruent and incongruent trials). We manipulated sentence ambiguity and evaluated if the ambiguity effect modified behavioral performances in the non-verbal Flanker task. Under the assumption that ambiguous sentences induce a more difficult process than unambiguous sentences, we expected non-verbal flanker task performances to be impaired only when a simultaneous difficult language processing is performed. This would be specifically reflected by a performance cost during incongruent Flanker items only during ambiguous sentence presentation. Conversely, we observed a facilitatory effect for the incongruent Flanker items during ambiguous sentence suggesting better non-verbal inhibitory performances when an ambiguous sentence was simultaneously processed. Exploratory data analysis suggests that this effect is not only related to a more difficult language processing but also to the previous (n-1) Flanker item. Indeed, results showed that incongruent n-1 Flanker items led to a facilitation of the incongruent synchronized Flanker items only when ambiguous sentences were conjointly presented. This result, even if it needs to be corroborated in future studies, suggests that the recruitment of executive control mechanisms facilitates subsequent executive control implication during difficult language processing. The present study suggests a common executive control mechanism during difficult verbal and non-verbal tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sea-level rise resulting from climate change is impacting coasts around the planet. There is strong scientific consensus about the amount of sea-level rise to 2050 (0.24–0.32 m) and a range of projections to 2100, which vary depending on the approach used and the mitigation measures taken to reduce carbon emissions. Despite this strong scientific consensus regarding the reality of climate change-related sea-level rise, and the associated need to engage publics in adaptation and mitigation efforts, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding people's understanding of the issue. Here we investigate public understanding of the amount, rate and causes of sea-level rise. Data from a representative sample of New Zealand adults showed a suprising tendency for the public to overestimate the scientifically plausible amount of sea-level rise by 2100 and to identify melting sea ice as its primary causal mechanism. These findings will be valuable for scientists communicating about sea-level rise, communicators seeking to engage publics on the issue of sea-level rise, and media reporting on sea-level rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work has shown that young children can learn about preferences by observing the choices and emotional reactions of other people, but there is no unified account of how this learning occurs. We show that a rational model, built on ideas from economics and computer science, explains the behavior of children in several experiments, and offers new predictions as well. First, we demonstrate that when children use statistical information to learn about preferences, their inferences match the predictions of a simple econometric model. Next, we show that this same model can explain children's ability to learn that other people have preferences similar to or different from their own and use that knowledge to reason about the desirability of hidden objects. Finally, we use the model to explain a developmental shift in preference understanding.

As perceivers, we need to understand context to make social judgments about emotion, such as judging whether emotion is appropriate. We propose a graphic novel-like method, the emotion storyboard, for use in research on social judgments of emotion. Across two studies, participants were randomly assigned to read emotion storyboards or written vignettes to compare the efficacy of the emotion storyboard to that of vignettes in studies on social judgments of emotion. In Study 1, undergraduates (N = 194) answered comprehension questions and rated story clarity and immersion. Participants also made social judgments of emotion by rating main character emotion control and appropriateness of intensity. To further compare the efficacy of the methods, in Study 2, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (N = 213) answered comprehension questions while response times were recorded, rated clarity, answered a race manipulation check, and rated main character emotion type appropriateness. Overall, emotion storyboards resulted in greater clarity ratings, greater race manipulation check accuracy, and in some instances, enhanced comprehension and comprehension response times relative to vignettes. In emotion storyboards, main character emotion was rated more controlled and more appropriate in intensity, but not different in emotion type appropriateness, than in vignettes. Overall, the method offers a new method of examining social elements of emotion that enhances comprehension and maximizes experimental efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International scientific collaborations have always been regarded as critical actions to address global pandemics, however, there was an obvious uncertainty between international collaboration and the COVID-19 control. We aim to combine digital data-based strategies to produce meaningful and advanced insights into the imbalance between COVID-19 and international collaboration, as well as reveal possible influencing factors, and ultimately enhance global collaboration. We conducted three retrospective cohort studies using respectively COVID-19 data from WHO, a complete dataset of scientific publications on coronavirus-related research from WoS, and daily data from Google Trends (GT). The results of geovisualization and spatiotemporal analysis revealed that the global COVID19 pandemic still remains serious. The global issue of imbalance between international collaborations and pandemic does exit, and the nations with good pandemic control had their own characteristics in above-mentioned correlation. Digital epidemiology provides, at least in part, evidence-based assessment and scientific advice to understand the imbalance between international collaborations and COVID-19. Our investigation demonstrates that transdisciplinary conversation through digital data-based strategies can help us fully understand the complex factors influencing the effectiveness of international scientific collaboration, thus facilitating the global response to COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic communication requires understanding of words in relation to their context. Among various aspects of context, one that has received relatively little attention until recently is the speakers themselves. We asked whether comprehenders' online language comprehension is affected by the perceived reliability with which a speaker formulates pragmatically well-formed utterances. In two eye-tracking experiments, we conceptually replicated and extended a seminal work by Grodner and Sedivy (2011). A between-participant manipulation was used to control reliability with which a speaker follows implicit pragmatic conventions (e.g., using a scalar adjective in accordance with contextual contrast). Experiment 1 replicated Grodner and Sedivy's finding that contrastive inference in response to scalar adjectives was suspended when both the spoken input and the instructions provided evidence of the speaker's (un)reliability: For speech from the reliable speaker, comprehenders exhibited the early fixations attributable to a contextually-situated, contrastive interpretation of a scalar adjective. In contrast, for speech from the unreliable speaker, comprehenders did not exhibit such early fixations. Experiment 2 provided novel evidence of the reliability effect in the absence of explicit instructions. In both experiments, the effects emerged in the earliest expected time window given the stimuli sentence structure. The results suggest that real-time interpretations of spoken language are optimized in the context of a speaker identity, characteristics of which are extrapolated across utterances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study assesses the quality and readability of Arabic online information about orthodontic pain. With the increasing reliance on the internet for health information, especially among Arabic speakers, it's critical to ensure the accuracy and comprehensiveness of available content. Our methodology involved a systematic search using the Arabic term for (Orthodontic Pain) in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This search yielded 193,856 results, from which 74 websites were selected based on predefined criteria, excluding duplicates, scientific papers, and non-Arabic content., Materials and Methods: For quality assessment, we used the DISCERN instrument, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmarks, and the Health on the Net (HON) code. Readability was evaluated using the Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) scores., Results: Results indicated that none of the websites received the HONcode seal. The DISCERN assessment showed median total scores of 14.96 (± 5.65), with low overall quality ratings. In JAMA benchmarks, currency was the most achieved aspect, observed in 45 websites (60.81%), but none met all four criteria simultaneously. Readability scores suggested that the content was generally understandable, with a median FKGL score of 6.98 and a median SMOG score of 3.98, indicating middle school-level readability., Conclusion: This study reveals a significant gap in the quality of Arabic online resources on orthodontic pain, highlighting the need for improved standards and reliability. Most websites failed to meet established quality criteria, underscoring the necessity for more accurate and trustworthy health information for Arabic-speaking patients., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Alassaf et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The literature has confirmed that when managers increase profits through earnings management, the readability of annual reports may be reduced Lo (2017), Ye (2018). Whether this conclusion is suitable for Chinese corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, however, is still unclear. Based on the panel data of 5083 Chinese non-financial listed companies from 2010 to 2019, this paper adopts multiple linear regression to investigate the impact of earnings management on the readability of Chinese CSR reports. The results show that: (1) There is a significant negative correlation between earnings management and the readability of Chinese CSR reports, with the readability of Chinese annual reports as a mediating variable. (2) The negative effect is more significant when companies are not punished for violations, when the internal control index is low, when companies lack ISO14001 certification and when companies do not have independent third-party authentication for Chinese CSR reports. (3) When earnings management just exceeds zero, the readability of Chinese CSR reports decreases. (4) The economic consequences of reducing the readability of Chinese CSR reports are that financing costs are increased and environmental performance is decreased. To improve the quality of information disclosure of listed companies, the recommendations are as follows: First, the government should issue CSR reporting standards to reduce the manipulation of Chinese CSR reports. Second, Chinese CSR reports disclosed by listed companies must be audited by independent third parties to enhance the credibility of the information. Third, the company needs to strengthen its external and internal supervision to reduce the manipulation space for the readability of Chinese CSR reports. This study extends the negative relationship between earnings management and the readability from annual reports to Chinese CSR reports. To prevent investors from detecting earnings management, the readability of Chinese CSR reports may be reduced. At the same time, the study has definitely added value to the existing literature in the domain of CSR., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Ren, Yao. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

This study investigated the relationship between autistic traits, expressiveness, readability (both actual and perceived), social favourability, and likability. Sixty participants designated as 'targets' were video recorded in a range of social scenarios and their autistic traits were measured using the Autism Spectrum Quotient. The videos were then shown to 106 new participants designated 'perceivers', who were split into three groups to make judgments related to readability, expressiveness, and social favourability respectively. Mediation analyses revealed that autistic traits negatively impacted both perceived likeability and social favourability, mediated by lowered expressiveness. Autistic traits also directly impacted readability, which was not mediated by expressiveness. The findings show how the level of autistic traits of a target can influence how they are socially perceived by others., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Alkhaldi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Accurate and fast measurement of physical activity is important for surveillance. Even though many physical activity questionnaires (PAQ) are currently used in research, it is unclear which of them is the most reliable, valid, and easy to use. This systematic review aimed to identify existing brief PAQs, describe and compare their measurement properties, and assess their level of readability., Methods: We performed a systematic review based on the PRISMA statement. Literature searches were conducted in six scientific databases. Articles were included if they evaluated validity and/or reliability of brief (i.e., with a maximum of three questions) physical activity or exercise questionnaires intended for healthy adults. Due to the heterogeneity of studies, data were summarized narratively. The level of readability was calculated according to the Flesch-Kincaid formula., Results: In total, 35 articles published in English or Spanish were included, evaluating 32 distinct brief PAQs. The studies indicated moderate to good levels of reliability for the PAQs. However, the majority of results showed weak validity when validated against device-based measurements and demonstrated weak to moderate validity when validated against other PAQs. Most of the assessed PAQs met the criterion of being "short," allowing respondents to complete them in less than one minute either by themselves or with an interviewer. However, only 17 questionnaires had a readability level that indicates that the PAQ is easy to understand for the majority of the population., Conclusions: This review identified a variety of brief PAQs, but most of them were evaluated in only a single study. Validity and reliability of short and long questionnaires are found to be at a comparable level, short PAQs can be recommended for use in surveillance systems. However, the methods used to assess measurement properties varied widely across studies, limiting the comparability between different PAQs and making it challenging to identify a single tool as the most suitable. None of the evaluated brief PAQs allowed for the measurement of whether a person fulfills current WHO physical activity guidelines. Future development or adaptation of PAQs should prioritize readability as an important factor to enhance their usability., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Tcymbal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objectives: Graphic display formats are often used to enhance health information. Yet limited attention has been paid to graph literacy in people of lower education and lower socioeconomic status (SES). This study aimed to: 1) examine the relationship between graph literacy, numeracy, health literacy and sociodemographic characteristics in a Medicaid-eligible population 2) determine the impact of graph literacy on comprehension and preference for different visual formats. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey among people in the US on Medicaid, and of presumed lower education and SES. Results: The mean graph literacy score among 436 participants was 1.47 (SD 1.05, range: 0 to 4). Only graph literacy was significantly associated with overall comprehension (p <.001). Mean comprehension scores were highest for the table format (1.91), closely followed by bar graph (1.85) and icon array (1.80). Information comprehension was aligned with preference scores. Conclusions: Graph literacy in a Medicaid-eligible population was lower than previous estimates in the US. Tables were better understood, with icon arrays yielding the lowest score. Preferences aligned with comprehension. Practice implications: It may be necessary to reconsider the use of graphic display formats when designing information for people with lower educational levels. Further research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to understand others' mental states, and that these mental states can differ from our own. Although healthy adults have little trouble passing conceptual tests of ToM (e.g., the false belief task [1]), they do not always succeed in using ToM [2,3]. In order to be successful in referential communication, listeners need to correctly infer the way in which a speaker's perspective constrains reference and inhibit their own perspective accordingly. However, listeners may require prompts to take these effortful inferential steps. The current study investigated the possibility of embedding prompts in the instructions for listeners to make inference about using a speaker's perspective. Experiment 1 showed that provision of a clear introductory example of the full chain of inferences resulted in large improvement in performance. Residual egocentric errors suggested that the improvement was not simply due to superior comprehension of the instructions. Experiment 2 further dissociated the effect by placing selective emphasis on making inference about inhibiting listeners' own perspective versus using the speaker's perspective. Results showed that only the latter had a significant effect on successful performance. The current findings clearly demonstrated that listeners do not readily make inferences about using speakers' perspectives, but can do so when prompted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two cross-modal priming experiments were conducted to investigate morphological processing in Chinese spoken word recognition during sentence comprehension. Participants heard sentences that contained opaque prime words and performed lexical decisions on visual targets that were related to second morpheme meanings of opaque words or whole-word meanings. The targets were presented at the auditory onset of the second morphemes or the subsequent syllables after the opaque primes to examine the time course of effects. In a neutral sentence context (Experiment 1), opaque word morpheme meanings produced morphological priming on target word recognition, which preceded lexical priming. When context biased toward whole opaque words (Experiment 2), morphological priming disappeared, while the effect of lexical meanings remained significant and emerged earlier than the effect of lexical meanings in the neutral context. These findings suggest that morphemes play a role in Chinese spoken word recognition, but their effects depend on the prior context during sentence comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crosswise model is an indirect questioning technique designed to control for socially desirable responding. Although the technique has delivered promising results in terms of improved validity in survey studies of sensitive issues, recent studies have indicated that the crosswise model may sometimes produce false positives. Hence, we investigated whether an insufficient understanding of the crosswise model instructions might be responsible for these false positives and whether ensuring a deeper understanding of the model and surveying more highly educated respondents reduces the problem of false positives. To this end, we experimentally manipulated the amount of information respondents received in the crosswise model instructions. We compared a crosswise model condition with only brief instructions and a crosswise model condition with detailed instructions and additional comprehension checks. Additionally, we compared the validity of crosswise model estimates between a higher- and a lower-educated subgroup of respondents. Our results indicate that false positives among highly educated respondents can be reduced when detailed instructions and comprehension checks are employed. Since false positives can also occur in direct questioning, they do not appear to be a specific flaw of the crosswise model, but rather a more general problem of self-reports on sensitive topics. False negatives were found to occur for all questioning techniques, but were less prevalent in the crosswise model than in the direct questioning condition. We highlight the importance of comprehension checks when applying indirect questioning and emphasize the necessity of developing instructions suitable for lower-educated respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic negation acts by inhibiting the representation of information under its scope, often leading to the representation of positive alternative states of affairs. Motivational direction refers to approach/avoidance intentionality in our interactions with environmental stimuli expressed by means of verbs (e.g., "accept" vs "reject"). We consider it plausible that negation interacts with direction to represent the true motivation of the protagonist in sentence understanding (e.g., if an approach action is negated it is represented as avoidance). In the first study, we examine this interaction offline by asking participants to judge approach or avoidance meaning of affirmative (e.g., "he/she included/excluded meat") and negative sentences ("he/she did not include/exclude meat"). Results support that negation reversed participants' interpretation of sentence motivational direction. In a further study, we carried out two probe recognition experiments to examine the interaction during sentence comprehension; in both, the critical probe was the word referring to the target of the action (e.g., "meat"). In the first experiment, participants had to recognize the probe word presented 1500 milliseconds after sentence offset, while for the second one, the delay was 500 milliseconds. Results showed that at 1500 ms, target recognition took significantly more time for negated avoidance sentences than for the other conditions. Therefore, representing negated avoidance sentences seems to imply more complex processing, as avoidance verbs would be implicitly negative. By contrast, at the 500 ms delay, negation impaired target recognition for both approach and avoidance sentences, suggesting an unspecific inhibitory effect of negation at that sentence processing stage. Implication of these results for both research on negation and in action understanding are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the connection between the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG) has been found to be essential for the comprehension of relative clause (RC) sentences, it remains unclear how the LIFG and the LSTG interact with each other, especially during the processing of Chinese RC sentences with different processing difficulty. This study thus conducted a 2 × 2 (modifying position × extraction position) factorial analyses to examine how these two factors influences regional brain activation. The results showed that, regardless of the modifying position, greater activation in the LIFG was consistently elicited in Chinese subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) with non-canonical word order than object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) with canonical word order, implying that the LIFG subserving the ordering process primarily contributes to the processing of information with increased integration demands due to the non-canonical sequence. Moreover, the directional connection between the LIFG and the LSTG appeared to be modulated by different modifying positions. When the RC was at the subject-modifying position, the effective connectivity from the LIFG to the LSTG was dominantly activated for sentence comprehension; whereas when the RC was at the object-modifying position thus being more difficult, it might be the feedback mechanism from the LSTG back to the LIFG that took place in sentence processing. These findings reveal that brain activation in between the LIFG and the LSTG may be dynamically modulated by different processing difficulty and suggest the relative specialization but extensive collaboration involved in the LIFG and the LSTG for sentence comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irony is one of the linguistic means in which intended and expressed meaning diverge. It serves social-communicative functions, requires the understanding of the speaker's mental state and its comprehension takes place at an advanced stage of language acquisition. In the present study, we investigated 8-year old's irony comprehension and social skills and asked their parents about their preferred use of irony towards their children. We then compared children with the highest scores in irony comprehension test with those with lower scores. The full sample included 46 families from Poland. Results show positive associations between children's levels of irony comprehension and levels of mothers irony use. No such relations were found for fathers. No differences were found in ToM scores between proficient and non-proficient irony comprehenders. Our findings provide a base for future studies to study the use of irony in child-parent talk in more diverse culturally and linguistically diverse populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most readily-observable and influential cue to one's credibility is their confidence. Although one's confidence correlates with knowledge, one should not always trust confident sources or disregard hesitant ones. Three experiments (N = 662; 3- to 12-year-olds) examined the developmental trajectory of children's understanding of 'calibration': whether a person's confidence or hesitancy correlates with their knowledge. Experiments 1 and 2 provide evidence that children use a person's history of calibration to guide their learning. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed a developmental progression in calibration understanding: Children preferred a well-calibrated over a miscalibrated confident person by around 4 years, whereas even 7- to 8-year-olds were insensitive to calibration in hesitant people. The widespread implications for social learning, impression formation, and social cognition are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emoji are an important substitute for non-verbal cues (such as facial expressions) in online written communication. So far, however, little is known about individual differences regarding how they are perceived. In the current study, we examined the influence of gender, age, and culture on emoji comprehension. Specifically, a sample of 523 participants across the UK and China completed an emoji classification task. In this task, they were presented with a series of emoji, each representing one of six facial emotional expressions, across four commonly used platforms (Apple, Android, WeChat, and Windows). Their task was to choose from one of six labels (happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful, disgusted) which emotion was represented by each emoji. Results showed that all factors (age, gender, and culture) had a significant impact on how emojis were classified by participants. This has important implications when considering emoji use, for example, conversation with partners from different cultures., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Drawing on Critical Metaphor Analysis, this study investigates major metaphors of the COVID-19 pandemic used by the Chinese government in the specific genre of news picture. It examines patterns of metaphor use in the first year of the pandemic in China and explains how and why the government employs the identified metaphors in the Chinese political context. Results reveal that pandemic metaphors (45%) are not as widely used in news pictures as presumed, the vast majority (95%) are rendered in verbal mode, and the most salient metaphors used in news pictures are the UP/DOWN (spatial), WAR, FAMILY, and COMPETITION metaphors. This study then addresses how COVID-19 metaphors are used in the Chinese political context and claims that the Chinese government uses specific metaphors with persuasive and ideological functions. The WAR metaphor aids comprehension of abstract concepts of the pandemic treatment, the FAMILY metaphor fosters empathy among Chinese individuals to counter blame and discrimination in society, UP/DOWN (spatial) and COMPETITION metaphors stimulate action to overcome the common "enemy." WAR and FAMILY metaphors also contribute to the construction of a greater sense of collectivism and play a crucial role in fostering a positive national identity. Implications, limitations and some directions for future research are suggested., Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Fu Feifei. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

In the present study, we analyzed a large corpus of English-language online media articles covering genome-wide association studies (GWAS), exemplifying the use of computational methods to study science communication in biological sciences. We analyzed trends in media coverage, readability, themes, and mentions of ethical and social issues, in over 5,000 websites published from 2005 to 2018 from 3,555 GWAS publications on 1,943 different traits, identified via GWAS Catalog using a text-mining approach to inform the discussion about genetic literacy and media coverage. We found that 22.9% of GWAS papers received media attention but most were described in language too complex to be understood by the public. Ethical issues are rarely mentioned and mentions of translation are increasing over time. We predicted media attention based on year of publication, number of genetic associations identified, study sample size, and journal impact factor, using a regression model (r2 = 38.7%). We found that chronotype, educational attainment, alcohol and coffee consumption, sexual orientation, tanning, and hair color received substantially more attention than predicted by the regression model. We also evaluated the prevalence of the clickbait "one gene, one disease" headlines (e.g., "Scientists Say They've Found Gene That Causes Breast Cancer") and found that it is declining. In sum, online media coverage of GWAS should be more accessible, introduce more modern genetics terms, and when appropriate, ELSI should be mentioned. Science communication research can benefit from big data and text-mining techniques which allow us to study trends and changes in coverage trends across thousands of media outlets. Results can be explored interactively in a website we have built for this manuscript: https://jjmorosoli.shinyapps.io/newas/., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Morosoli et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Obtaining written informed consent from participants before enrolment in a study is essential. A previous study showed that only 50% of the participants in clinical trials understood the components of informed consent, and the methods of participants' understanding of informed consent were controversial. This updated meta-analysis aimed to estimate the proportion of participants in clinical trials who understand the different informed consent components. PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, and Scopus were searched till April 2023. Therapeutic misconception, ability to name one risk, knowing that treatments were being compared, and understanding the nature of the study, the purpose of the study, the risks and side-effects, the direct benefits, placebo, randomization, voluntariness, freedom to withdraw, the availability of alternative treatment if withdrawn from the trial, confidentiality, compensation, or comprehension were evaluated. This meta-analysis included 117 studies (155 datasets; 22,118 participants). The understanding of the risks and side-effects was investigated in the largest number of studies (n = 100), whereas comparehension was investigated in the smallest number (n = 11). The highest proportions were 97.5%(95% confidence interval (CI): 97.1-97.9) for confidentiality, 95.9% (95% confidence interval (CI): 95.4-96.4) for compensation, 91.4% (95% CI: 90.7-92.1) for the nature of study, 68.1% (95% CI: 51.6-84.6) for knowing that treatments were being compared, and 67.3% (95% CI: 56.6-78) for voluntary nature of participants. The smallest proportions were the concept of placebo (4.8%, 95%CI: 4.4-5.2) and randomization(39.4%, 95%CI: 38.3-40.4). Our findings suggested that most participants understood the fundamental components of informed consent (study confidentiality, nature, compensation, voluntariness, and freedom to withdraw). The understanding of other components, such as placebo and randomization was less satisfactory., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Wu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objective: To explore the relationships between screen exposure, parent-child interactions and comprehension in 8-month-old infants, and to examine whether shared viewing and parent-child conversation during screen exposure may play mediating role in that relationships., Methods: The sample included 437 infants aged 8 months from the Children's Health Department of Guiyang Maternal and Child Health Hospital during January 2022 to February 2023. The use of electronic screen devices was assessed using a screen exposure questionnaire. The Brigance Parent-child interactions Scale was used to assess parent-child interactions and the Putonghua Communicative Development Inventory (PCDI) scale was used to assess infants' word comprehension., Results: 48.7% of infants were found to be using screens 1-2 days per week. There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) in the PCDI-comprehension scores of screen-exposed infants compared to non-screen-exposed infants. Shared viewing and parent-child conversation during screen exposure were positively associated with parent-child interactions (p < 0.05). Mediation analysis revealed that parent-child conversation fully mediated between screen exposure and PCDI-comprehension, but partially mediated between parent-child interactions and PCDI-comprehension., Conclusions: Shared viewing and parent-child conversation during screen exposure may mediate between screen exposure and comprehension development. Shared viewing, parent-child conversation and parent-child interactions may be protective factors for screen exposure in comprehension development. Suggests that parents should accompany and communicate with their children when they use electronic screen devices to reduce the negative impact of screen exposure on children's comprehension., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Tu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Journals are trying to make their papers more accessible by creating a variety of research summaries including graphical abstracts, video abstracts, and plain language summaries. It is unknown if individuals with science, science-related, or non-science careers prefer different summaries, which approach is most effective, or even what criteria should be used for judging which approach is most effective. A survey was created to address this gap in our knowledge. Two papers from Nature on similar research topics were chosen, and different kinds of research summaries were created for each one. Questions to measure comprehension of the research, as well as self-evaluation of enjoyment of the summary, perceived understanding after viewing the summary, and the desire for more updates of that summary type were asked to determine the relative merits of each of the summaries. Results: Participants (n = 538) were randomly assigned to one of the summary types. The response of adults with science, science-related, and non-science careers were slightly different, but they show similar trends. All groups performed well on a post-summary test, but participants reported higher perceived understanding when presented with a video or plain language summary (p<0.0025). All groups enjoyed video abstracts the most followed by plain language summaries, and then graphical abstracts and published abstracts. The reported preference for different summary types was generally not correlated to the comprehension of the summaries. Here we show that original abstracts and graphical abstracts are not as successful as video abstracts and plain language summaries at producing comprehension, a feeling of understanding, and enjoyment. Our results indicate the value of relaxing the word counts in the abstract to allow for more plain language or including a plain language summary section along with the abstract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How various types of focus differ with respect to exhaustivity has been a topic of enduring interest in language studies. However, most of the theoretical work explicating such associations has done so cross-linguistically, and little research has been done on how people process and respond to them during language comprehension. This study therefore investigates the associations between the concept of exhaustivity and three focus types in Chinese (wh, cleft, and only foci) using a trichotomous-response design in two experiments: a forced-choice judgment and a self-paced reading experiment, both with adult native speakers. Its results show that, whether engaged in conscious decision-making or an implicit comprehension process, the participants distinguished only-focus and cleft-focus from wh-focus clearly, and also that there are specific differences between only-focus and cleft-focus in conscious decision-making. This implies that, in terms of the relationship between exhaustivity and the focus types under investigation, cleft-focus and only-focus behave very similarly during language comprehension despite the existence of some fine distinctions between them. In other words, the potential linguistic levels that exhaustivity encodes in Chinese cleft-focus render it more similar to only-focus than to wh-focus. These results are broadly in line with the semantic account that distinguishes cleft from only-focus, i.e., that cleft encodes exhaustivity in not-at-issue presupposition and only-focus encodes exhaustivity in at-issue assertion, while both express semantically encoded exhaustivity, triggering robust language-processing patterns that differ from patterns of wh-focus in Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Somatization processes are usually associated with a lack of insight or with emotional unawareness, especially in adolescents where the ability for self-reflection is beginning to mature. However, the extent to which different levels of insight explain variations in somatization remains understudied. This study aimed to evaluate whether high-level emotional awareness (comprehension) but not low-level awareness (only attention) is needed to psychologically cope with suffering, thus leading to lower somatization. Specific predictions were: 1) High attention along with High comprehension will be associated with significantly lower frequency of somatic complaints than other combinations (Low attention and Low comprehension, or High attention but Low comprehension); 2) In absence of comprehension, no attention will be more optimal than attention only, because only-attention might work as an amplificatory of suffering without the possibility of processing it. Self-reports of meta-cognitive processes, somatization, and control variables were obtained from 264 adolescents from a non-clinical population (54.5% female; aged 12–18, M = 14.7, SD = 1.7). In line with expectations, results revealed significant differences in the effects of insight positions on somatization: Attention+Comprehension (M = 4.9, SE = 0.9) < Nothing (M = 7.1, SE = 0.3) < Only attention (M = 8.9, SE = 0.7). Compared to Nothing, Attention+comprehension was associated with significantly reduced somatic complaints (B = -2.2, p = 0.03, 95% CI -4,1 to 0.2). However, Only attention was associated with increased somatic complaints compared to the other two conditions (B = 1.8, p = 0.03, 95% CI 0.2 to 3.4; B = 4, CI 95% 1.6–6.3, p = 0.001, respectively). This highlights the role of higher-order awareness (i.e., comprehension or clarity) in the processing of suffering and stresses its value in the adaptive coping of emotional distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Word comprehension across semantic categories is a key area of language development. Using online automated eye-tracking technology to reduce response demands during a word comprehension test may be advantageous in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Objectives: To measure online accuracy of word recognition across eleven semantic categories in preschool children with ASD and in typically developing (TD) children matched for gender and developmental age. Methods: Using eye-tracker methodology we measured the relative number of fixations on a target image as compared to a foil of the same category shown simultaneously on screen. This online accuracy measure was considered a measure of word understanding. We tested the relationship between online accuracy and offline word recognition and the effects of clinical variables on online accuracy. Twenty-four children with ASD and 21 TD control children underwent the eye-tracking task. Results: On average, children with ASD were significantly less accurate at fixating on the target image than the TD children. After multiple comparison correction, no significant differences were found across the eleven semantic categories of the experiment between preschool children with ASD and younger TD children matched for developmental age. The ASD group showed higher intragroup variability consistent with greater variation in vocabulary growth rates. Direct effects of non-verbal cognitive levels, vocabulary levels and gesture productions on online word recognition in both groups support a dimensional view of language abilities in ASD. Conclusions: Online measures of word comprehension across different semantic categories show higher interindividual variability in children with ASD and may be useful for objectively monitor gains on targeted language interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), present in 2 out of every 30 children, affects primarily oral language abilities and development in the absence of associated biomedical conditions. We report the first experimental study that examines relative clause (RC) comprehension accuracy and processing (via looking preference) in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD, testing the predictions from competing domain-specific versus domain-general theoretical accounts. We compared children with DLD (N = 22) with their age-matched typically-developing (TD) children (AM-TD, N = 23) aged 6;6-9;7 and language-matched (and younger) TD children (YTD, N = 21) aged 4;7-7;6, using a referent selection task. Within-subject factors were: RC type (subject-RCs (SRCs) versus object-RCs (ORCs); relativizer (classifier (CL) versus relative marker ge3 RCs). Accuracy measures and looking preference to the target were analyzed using generalized linear mixed effects models. Results indicated Cantonese children with DLD scored significantly lower than their AM-TD peers in accuracy and processed RCs significantly slower than AM-TDs, but did not differ from the YTDs on either measure. Overall, while the results revealed evidence of a SRC advantage in the accuracy data, there was no indication of additional difficulty associated with ORCs in the eye-tracking data. All children showed a processing advantage for the frequent CL relativizer over the less frequent ge3 relativizer. These findings pose challenges to domain-specific representational deficit accounts of DLD, which primarily explain the disorder as a syntactic deficit, and are better explained by domain-general accounts that explain acquisition and processing as emergent properties of multiple converging linguistic and non-linguistic processes., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Lai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Supply chain resilience has garnered significant attention from both scholars and practitioners. However, the complex nature of the topic has resulted in a dearth of research on its key elements and formation mechanisms. To bridge this knowledge gap, we implemented grounded theory and conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 interviewees, which led to the identification of six key elements of supply chain resilience through open coding, axial coding, selective coding, and theoretical model saturation testing. These elements are product supply resilience, resource resilience, partner resilience, information response resilience, capital resilience, and knowledge resilience. Drawing from the key elements and the three phases of supply chain resilience (readiness, response, and recovery), we illustrated its formation mechanism and constructed a theoretical model of the influencing factors and pathways of supply chain resilience. We devised a questionnaire based on the coding results and confirmed its reasonableness and validity with a small sample of 109 questionnaires. Subsequently, a large sample of 409 questionnaires was used to test and validate the theoretical model using structural equation modeling, demonstrating that the identified key elements positively impact supply chain resilience. In sum, our paper enriches the comprehension of supply chain resilience by identifying its key elements and elaborating on its formation mechanism., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Ke et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Several studies have shown the relevance among students of the quality of their interpersonal relationships for their academic achievement. Nevertheless, most studies available have explored the relation between the cognitive functioning and academic achievement without taking into account the quality of the relationships experienced in the school environment. Furthermore, the studies that have begun to consider the joint role of these factors in the prediction of academic achievement are scant. Therefore, it appears of relevance to deepen the relation between cognitive functioning and quality of school relationships in order to support students' academic achievement and the potential of youth. In this paper, we examined the moderating role of the quality of student-teacher relationships and school bonding (STR-SB) in the associations of fluid intelligence (Gf) with academic achievement among adolescents (N = 219). A multiple-group structural equation modelling analysis revealed that STR-SB quality moderated unexpectedly only the link between Gf and mathematics. The findings support the idea that the quality of student-teacher relationships may be a relevant dimension to be considered to clarify the association between cognitive functioning and academic achievement., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Semeraro et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Numerous studies have provided experience-based or theory-based frameworks for the basis of judgment of learning (JOL). However, few studies have directly measured processing experience and beliefs related to the same cue in one experiment and examined their joint contribution to JOLs. The present study focused on font-size effects and aimed to examine the simultaneous contribution of processing fluency and beliefs to the effect of font size on JOLs. We directly measured processing fluency via self-paced study time. We also directly measured participants’ beliefs via two approaches: pre-study global differentiated predictions (GPREDs) as an indicator of preexisting beliefs about font size and memory and ease of learning judgments (EORs) as online generated item-specific beliefs about fluency. In Experiment 1, EORs partially mediated the font-size effect, whereas self-paced study time did not. In Experiments 2a and 2b, EORs mediated the font-size effect; at the same time, beliefs about font size and memory moderated the font-size effect. In summary, the present study demonstrates a major role of beliefs underlying the font-size effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehending natural language quantifiers (like many, all, or some) involves linguistic and numerical abilities. However, the extent to which both factors play a role is controversial. In order to determine the specific contributions of linguistic and number skills in quantifier comprehension, we examined two groups of participants that differ in their language abilities while their number skills appear to be similar: Participants with Down syndrome (DS) and participants with Williams syndrome (WS). Compared to rather poor linguistic skills of individuals with DS, individuals with WS display relatively advanced language abilities. Participants with WS also outperformed participants with DS in a quantifier comprehension task while number knowledge did not differ between the two groups. When compared to typically developing (TD) children of the same mental age, participants with WS displayed similar levels regarding quantifier abilities, but participants with DS performed worse than the control group. Language abilities but not number skills also significantly predicted quantifier knowledge in a linear regression analysis, stressing the importance of linguistic abilities for quantifier comprehension. In addition to determining the skills that are relevant for comprehending quantifiers, our findings provide the first demonstration of how quantifiers are acquired by individuals with DS and WS, an issue not investigated so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiencing a syntactic structure affects how we process subsequent instances of that structure. This phenomenon, called structural priming, is observed both in language production and in language comprehension. However, while abstract syntactic structures can be primed independent of lexical overlap in sentence production, evidence for structural priming in comprehension is more elusive. In addition, when structural priming in comprehension is found, it can often be accounted for in terms of participants’ explicit expectations. Participants may use the structural repetition over several sentences and build expectations, which create a priming effect. Here, we use a new experimental paradigm to investigate structural priming in sentence comprehension independent of lexical overlap and of participants’ expectations. We use an outcome dependent variable instead of commonly used online measures, which allows us to more directly compare these effects with those found in sentence production studies. We test priming effects in syntactically homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions on a sentence-picture matching task that forces participants to fully parse the sentences. We observe that, while participants learn the structural regularity in the homogeneous condition, structural priming is also found in the heterogeneous condition, in which participants do not expect any particular structure. In fact, we find that a single prime is enough to trigger priming. Our results indicate that–like in sentence production–structural priming can be observed in sentence comprehension without lexical repetition and independent of participants’ expectation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the factors that determine academic performance is an essential part of educational research. Existing research indicates that class attendance is a useful predictor of subsequent course achievements. The majority of the literature is, however, based on surveys and self-reports, methods which have well-known systematic biases that lead to limitations on conclusions and generalizability as well as being costly to implement. Here we propose a novel method for measuring class attendance that overcomes these limitations by using location and bluetooth data collected from smartphone sensors. Based on measured attendance data of nearly 1,000 undergraduate students, we demonstrate that early and consistent class attendance strongly correlates with academic performance. In addition, our novel dataset allows us to determine that attendance among social peers was substantially correlated (>0.5), suggesting either an important peer effect or homophily with respect to attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cueing facilitates retention and transfer of multimedia learning. From the perspective of cognitive load theory (CLT), cueing has a positive effect on learning outcomes because of the reduction in total cognitive load and avoidance of cognitive overload. However, this has not been systematically evaluated. Moreover, what remains ambiguous is the direct relationship between the cue-related cognitive load and learning outcomes. A meta-analysis and two subsequent meta-regression analyses were conducted to explore these issues. Subjective total cognitive load (SCL) and scores on a retention test and transfer test were selected as dependent variables. Through a systematic literature search, 32 eligible articles encompassing 3,597 participants were included in the SCL-related meta-analysis. Among them, 25 articles containing 2,910 participants were included in the retention-related meta-analysis and the following retention-related meta-regression, while there were 29 articles containing 3,204 participants included in the transfer-related meta-analysis and the transfer-related meta-regression. The meta-analysis revealed a statistically significant cueing effect on subjective ratings of cognitive load (d = −0.11, 95% CI = [−0.19, −0.02], p < 0.05), retention performance (d = 0.27, 95% CI = [0.08, 0.46], p < 0.01), and transfer performance (d = 0.34, 95% CI = [0.12, 0.56], p < 0.01). The subsequent meta-regression analyses showed that dSCL for cueing significantly predicted dretention for cueing (β = −0.70, 95% CI = [−1.02, −0.38], p < 0.001), as well as dtransfer for cueing (β = −0.60, 95% CI = [−0.92, −0.28], p < 0.001). Thus in line with CLT, adding cues in multimedia materials can indeed reduce SCL and promote learning outcomes, and the more SCL is reduced by cues, the better retention and transfer of multimedia learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing visual question answering methods typically concentrate only on visual targets in images, ignoring the key textual content in the images, thereby limiting the depth and accuracy of image content comprehension. Inspired by this, we pay attention to the task of text-based visual question answering, address the performance bottleneck issue caused by over-fitting risk in existing self-attention-based models, and propose a scenario text visual question answering method called INT2-VQA that fuses knowledge manifestation based on inter-modality and intra-modality collaborations. Specifically, we model the complementary priori knowledge of locational collaboration between visual targets and textual targets across modalities and the contextual semantical collaboration among textual word targets within a modality. Based on this, a universal knowledge-reinforced attention module is designed to achieve a unified encoding manifestation of both relations. Extensive ablation experiments, contrast experiments, and visual analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and prove its superiority over the other state-of-the-art methods., Competing Interests: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work., (Copyright: © 2023 Xianli Sheng. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

While late second language (L2) learning is assumed to be largely explicit, there is evidence that adults are able to acquire grammar under incidental exposure conditions, and that the acquisition of this knowledge may be implicit in nature. Here, we revisit the question of whether adults can learn grammar incidentally and investigate whether word order and morphology are susceptible to incidental learning to the same degree. In experiment 1, adult English monolinguals were exposed to an artificial language (Kepidalo) that had case marking and variable word order: a canonical Subject-Object-Verb order and a non-canonical Object-Subject-Verb. In a five-session online study, participants received vocabulary training while being incidentally exposed to grammar, and completed a series of picture-selection and grammaticality judgment tasks assessing grammatical knowledge. Despite extensive exposure to input, and although performance on vocabulary increased significantly across sessions, learners' grammatical comprehension showed little improvement over time, and this was limited to Subject-Object-Verb sentences only. Furthermore, participants were better at detecting word order than case marking violations in the grammaticality judgment tasks. Experiment 2 further increased the amount of incidental exposure whilst examining native speakers of German, which exhibits higher morphological richness. Testing was followed by a post-test metalinguistic awareness questionnaire. Although greater learning effects were observed, participants continued to have difficulties with case marking. The findings also demonstrated that language outcomes were modulated by learners' level of metalinguistic awareness. Taken together, the results of the two experiments underscore adult learners' difficulty with case marking and point towards the presence of a threshold in incidental L2 grammar learning, which appears to be tightly linked to prior first language experience. In addition, our findings continue to highlight the facilitative role of conscious awareness on L2 outcomes., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Kenanidis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)