Search

O objetivo do estudo foi analisar a influência do ceticismo profissional sobre o gerenciamento de impressão na divulgação da informação contábil. O ceticismo profissional foi analisado por meio das variáveis mente questionadora, suspensão de julgamento, busca de conhecimento, compreensão interpessoal, autonomia e autoestima, conforme constructo de Hurtt (2010). O gerenciamento de impressão foi analisado por meio das variáveis seletividade, distorção de medição e aprimoramento de divulgação, conforme Cardoso, Leite e Aquino (2018). A pesquisa caracteriza-se como descritiva, survey e quantitativa. A amostra do estudo foi composta por 201 acadêmicos do curso de Ciências Contábeis de duas Universidades Públicas do Estado de Santa Catarina. A análise dos dados se deu por meio de estatística descritiva e regressão OLS por meio do software SPSS®. Os resultados da pesquisa demonstraram que a característica mente questionadora influencia negativamente as variáveis aprimoramento de divulgação e distorção de medição, demonstrando que quanto maior o nível da característica mente questionadora num indivíduo, menor a possibilidade de este ser influenciado por duas das técnicas de gerenciamento de impressão.

Cutting-edge hyperscanning methods led to a paradigm shift in social neuroscience. It allowed researchers to measure dynamic mutual alignment of neural processes between two or more individuals in naturalistic contexts. The ever-growing interest in hyperscanning research calls for the development of transparent and validated data analysis methods to further advance the field. We have developed and tested a dual electroencephalography (EEG) analysis pipeline, namely DEEP. Following the preprocessing of the data, DEEP allows users to calculate Phase Locking Values (PLVs) and cross-frequency PLVs as indices of inter-brain phase alignment of dyads as well as time-frequency responses and EEG power for each participant. The pipeline also includes scripts to control for spurious correlations. Our goal is to contribute to open and reproducible science practices by making DEEP publicly available together with an example mother-infant EEG hyperscanning dataset.

We prove the existence of weak solutions to a system of two diffusion equations that are coupled by a pointwise volume constraint. The time evolution is given by gradient dynamics for a free energy functional. Our primary example is a model for the demixing of polymers, the corresponding energy is the one of Flory, Huggins and deGennes. Due to the non-locality in the equations, the dynamics considered here is qualitatively different from the one found in the formally related Cahn-Hilliard equations. Our angle of attack is from the theory of optimal mass transport, that is, we consider the evolution equations for the two components as two gradient flows in the Wasserstein distance with one joint energy functional that has the volume constraint built in. The main difference to our previous work arXiv:1712.06446 is the nonlinearity of the energy density in the gradient part, which becomes singular at the interface between pure and mixed phases., Comment: 25 pages, no figures

Conversations are an essential form of communication in daily family life. Specific patterns of caregiver–child conversations have been linked to children’s socio-cognitive development and child-relationship quality beyond the immediate family environment. Recently, interpersonal neural synchronization has been proposed as a neural mechanism supporting conversation. Here, we present a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning study looking at the temporal dynamics of neural synchrony during mother–child conversation. Preschoolers (20 boys and 20 girls, M age 5;07 years) and their mothers (M age 36.37 years) were tested simultaneously with fNIRS hyperscanning while engaging in a free verbal conversation lasting for 4 min. Neural synchrony (using wavelet transform coherence analysis) was assessed over time. Furthermore, each conversational turn was coded for conversation patterns comprising turn-taking, relevance, contingency and intrusiveness. Results from linear mixed-effects modeling revealed that turn-taking, but not relevance, contingency or intrusiveness predicted neural synchronization during the conversation over time. Results are discussed to point out possible variables affecting parent–child conversation quality and the potential functional role of interpersonal neural synchronization for parent–child conversation.

This article is concerned with the existence and the long time behavior of weak solutions to certain coupled systems of fourth-order degenerate parabolic equations of gradient flow type. The underlying metric is a Wasserstein-like transportation distance for vector-valued functions, with nonlinear mobilities in each component. Under the hypothesis of (flat) convexity of the driving free energy functional, weak solutions are constructed by means of the variational minimizing movement scheme for metric gradient flows. The essential regularity estimates are derived by variational methods., Comment: 28 pages, no figures. This research has been supported by the DFG Collaborative Research Center TRR 109 "Discretization in Geometry and Dynamics"

We introduce a novel spatio-temporal discretization for nonlinear Fokker--Planck equations on the multidimensional unit cube. This discretization is based on two structural properties of these equations: the first is the representation as a gradient flow of an entropy functional in the $L^2$-Wasserstein metric; the second is the Lagrangian nature, meaning that solutions can be written as the push-forward transformation of the initial density under suitable flow maps. The resulting numerical scheme is entropy diminishing and mass conserving. Further, we are able to prove consistency in the sense that if the discrete solutions are regular independently of the mesh size, then they converge to a classical solution. Finally, we present results from numerical experiments in space dimension d=2.

We perform a numerical approximation of coherent sets in finite-dimensional smooth dynamical systems by computing singular vectors of the transfer operator for a stochastically perturbed flow. This operator is obtained by solution of a discretized Fokker-Planck equation. For numerical implementation, we employ spectral collocation methods and an exponential time differentiation scheme. We experimentally compare our approach with the more classical method by Ulam that is based on discretization of the transfer operator of the unperturbed flow.

We study the barycenter of the Hellinger--Kantorovich metric over non-negative measures on compact, convex subsets of $\mathbb{R}^d$. The article establishes existence, uniqueness (under suitable assumptions) and equivalence between a coupled-two-marginal and a multi-marginal formulation. We analyze the HK barycenter between Dirac measures in detail, and find that it differs substantially from the Wasserstein barycenter by exhibiting a local `clustering' behaviour, depending on the length scale of the input measures. In applications it makes sense to simultaneously consider all choices of this scale, leading to a 1-parameter family of barycenters. We demonstrate the usefulness of this family by analyzing point clouds sampled from a mixture of Gaussians and inferring the number and location of the underlying Gaussians., Minor changes to keep consistent with journal version

Understanding others is fundamental to interpersonal coordination and successful cooperation. One mechanism posited to underlie both effective communication and behavioral coordination is interpersonal neural synchrony. Although presumably foundational for children's social development, research on neural synchrony in naturalistic caregiver-child interactions is lacking. Using dual-functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we examined the effects of interaction quality on neural synchrony during a problem-solving task in 42 dyads of mothers and their preschool children. In a cooperation condition, mothers and children were instructed to solve a tangram puzzle together. In an individual condition, mothers and children performed the same task alone with an opaque screen between them. Wavelet transform coherence (WTC) was used to assess the cross-correlation between the two fNIRS time series. Results revealed increased neural synchrony in bilateral prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal areas during cooperative as compared to individual problem solving. Higher neural synchrony during cooperation correlated with higher behavioral reciprocity and neural synchrony predicted the dyad's problem-solving success beyond reciprocal behavior between mothers and children. State-like factors, such as maternal stress and child agency during the task, played a bigger role for neural synchronization than trait-like factors, such as child temperament. Our results emphasize neural synchrony as a biomarker for mother-child interaction quality. These findings further highlight the role of state-like factors in interpersonal synchronization processes linked to successful coordination with others and in the long-term might improve the understanding of others.

During social interactions infants predict and evaluate other people’s actions. Previous behavioral research found that infants’ imitation of others’ actions depends on these evaluations and is context-dependent: 1-year-olds predominantly imitated an unusual action (turning on a lamp with one’s forehead) when the model’s hands were free compared to when the model’s hands were occupied or restrained. In the present study, we adapted this behavioral paradigm to a neurophysiological study measuring infants’ brain activity while observing usual and unusual actions via electroencephalography. In particular, we measured differences in mu power (6 – 8 Hz) associated with motor activation. In a between-subjects design, 12- to 14-month-old infants watched videos of adult models demonstrating that their hands were either free or restrained. Subsequent test frames showed the models turning on a lamp or a soundbox by using their head or their hand. Results in the hands-free condition revealed that 12- to 14-month-olds displayed a reduction of mu power in frontal regions in response to unusual and thus unexpected actions (head touch) compared to usual and expected actions (hand touch). This may be explained by increased motor activation required for updating prior action predictions in response to unusual actions though alternative explanations in terms of general attention or cognitive control processes may also be considered. In the hands-restrained condition, responses in mu frequency band did not differ between action outcomes. This implies that unusual head-touch actions compared to hand-touch actions do not necessarily evoke a reduction of mu power. Thus, we conclude that reduction of mu frequency power is context-dependent during infants’ action perception. Our results are interpreted in terms of motor system activity measured via changes in mu frequency band as being one important neural mechanism involved in action prediction and evaluation from early on.

International audience

Various degenerate diffusion equations exhibit a waiting time phenomenon: Dependening on the "flatness" of the compactly supported initial datum at the boundary of the support, the support of the solution may not expand for a certain amount of time. We show that this phenomenon is captured by particular Lagrangian discretizations of the porous medium and the thin-film equations, and we obtain suffcient criteria for the occurrence of waiting times that are consistent with the known ones for the original PDEs. Our proof is based on estimates on the fluid velocity in Lagrangian coordinates. Combining weighted entropy estimates with an iteration technique \`a la Stampacchia leads to upper bounds on free boundary propagation. Numerical simulations show that the phenomenon is already clearly visible for relatively coarse discretizations., Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures

We consider a non-standard finite-volume discretization of a strongly non-linear fourth order diffusion equation on the $d$-dimensional cube, for arbitrary $d \geq 1$. The scheme preserves two important structural properties of the equation: the first is the interpretation as a gradient flow in a mass transportation metric, and the second is an intimate relation to a linear Fokker-Planck equation. Thanks to these structural properties, the scheme possesses two discrete Lyapunov functionals. These functionals approximate the entropy and the Fisher information, respectively, and their dissipation rates converge to the optimal ones in the discrete-to-continuous limit. Using the dissipation, we derive estimates on the long-time asymptotics of the discrete solutions. Finally, we present results from numerical experiments which indicate that our discretization is able to capture significant features of the complex original dynamics, even with a rather coarse spatial resolution., 27 pages, minor changes

We prove the global-in-time existence of nonnegative weak solutions to a class of fourth order partial differential equations on a convex bounded domain in arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our proof relies on the formal gradient flow structure of the equation with respect to the $L^2$-Wasserstein distance on the space of probability measures. We construct a weak solution by approximation via the time-discrete minimizing movement scheme; necessary compactness estimates are derived by entropy-dissipation methods. Our theory essentially comprises the thin film and Derrida-Lebowitz-Speer-Spohn equations., Comment: 17 pages, no figures

During social interactions infants predict and evaluate other people's actions. Previous behavioral research found that infants' imitation of others' actions depends on these evaluations and is context-dependent: 1-year-olds predominantly imitated an unusual action (turning on a lamp with one's forehead) when the model's hands were free compared to when the model's hands were occupied or restrained. In the present study, we adapted this behavioral paradigm to a neurophysiological study measuring infants' brain activity while observing usual and unusual actions via electroencephalography. In particular, we measured differences in mu power (6 - 8 Hz) associated with motor activation. In a between-subjects design, 12- to 14-month-old infants watched videos of adult models demonstrating that their hands were either free or restrained. Subsequent test frames showed the models turning on a lamp or a soundbox by using their head or their hand. Results in the hands-free condition revealed that 12- to 14-month-olds displayed a reduction of mu power in frontal regions in response to unusual and thus unexpected actions (head touch) compared to usual and expected actions (hand touch). This may be explained by increased motor activation required for updating prior action predictions in response to unusual actions though alternative explanations in terms of general attention or cognitive control processes may also be considered. In the hands-restrained condition, responses in mu frequency band did not differ between action outcomes. This implies that unusual head-touch actions compared to hand-touch actions do not necessarily evoke a reduction of mu power. Thus, we conclude that reduction of mu frequency power is context-dependent during infants' action perception. Our results are interpreted in terms of motor system activity measured via changes in mu frequency band as being one important neural mechanism involved in action prediction and evaluation from early on.

A fully discrete Lagrangian scheme for numerical solution of the nonlinear fourth-order DLSS equation in one space dimension is analyzed. The discretization is based on the equation’s gradient flow structure in the $$L^2$$ -Wasserstein metric. By construction, the discrete solutions are strictly positive and mass conserving. A further key property is that they dissipate both the Fisher information and the logarithmic entropy. Our main result is a proof of convergence of fully discrete to weak solutions in the limit of vanishing mesh size. Convergence is obtained for arbitrary nonnegative, possibly discontinuous initial data with finite entropy, without any CFL-type condition. The key estimates in the proof are derived from the dissipations of the two Lyapunov functionals. Numerical experiments illustrate the practicability of the scheme.

We propose a variational form of the BDF2 method as an alternative to the commonly used minimizing movement scheme for the time-discrete approximation of gradient flows in abstract metric spaces. Assuming uniform semi-convexity --- but no smoothness --- of the augmented energy functional, we prove well-posedness of the method and convergence of the discrete approximations to a curve of steepest descent. In a smooth Hilbertian setting, classical theory would predict a convergence order of two in time, we prove convergence order of one-half in the general metric setting and under our weak hypotheses. Further, we illustrate these results with numerical experiments for gradient flows on a compact Riemannian manifold, in a Hilbert space, and in the $L^2$-Wasserstein metric., 30 pages, 6 figures

A Lagrangian discretization for nonlinear aggregation-diffusion equations in one space dimension is presented, and its convergence is rigorously analyzed. In comparison to related works by the first author and Osberger (ESAIM Math Model Numer Anal 48:697–726, 2014; Found Comput Math 1–54, 2015) on Lagrangian schemes for drift-diffusion equations, convergence is proven directly on the level on the Lagrangian maps, without passage through the density formulation.

A Lagrangian numerical scheme for solving nonlinear degenerate Fokker-Planck equations in space dimensions $d\ge2$ is presented. It applies to a large class of nonlinear diffusion equations, whose dynamics are driven by internal energies and given external potentials, e.g. the porous medium equation and the fast diffusion equation. The key ingredient in our approach is the gradient flow structure of the dynamics. For discretization of the Lagrangian map, we use a finite subspace of linear maps in space and a variational form of the implicit Euler method in time. Thanks to that time discretisation, the fully discrete solution inherits energy estimates from the original gradient flow, and these lead to weak compactness of the trajectories in the continuous limit. Consistency is analyzed in the planar situation, $d=2$. A variety of numerical experiments for the porous medium equation indicates that the scheme is well-adapted to track the growth of the solution's support., Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures

In this article, we study an analog of the Bjorling problem for isothermic surfaces (that are a generalization of minimal surfaces): given a regular curve \(\gamma \) in \(\mathbb {R}^3\) and a unit normal vector field n along \(\gamma \), find an isothermic surface that contains \(\gamma \), is normal to n there, and is such that the tangent vector \(\gamma '\) bisects the principal directions of curvature. First, we prove that this problem is uniquely solvable locally around each point of \(\gamma \), provided that \(\gamma \) and n are real analytic. The main result is that the solution can be obtained by constructing a family of discrete isothermic surfaces (in the sense of Bobenko and Pinkall) from data that is read off from \(\gamma \), and then passing to the limit of vanishing mesh size. The proof relies on a rephrasing of the Gauss-Codazzi-system as analytic Cauchy problem and an in-depth-analysis of its discretization which is induced from the geometry of discrete isothermic surfaces. The discrete-to-continuous limit is carried out for the Christoffel and the Darboux transformations as well.

This paper is concerned with the existence, shape and dynamical stability of infinite-energy equilibria for a class of spatially homogeneous kinetic equations in space dimensions $d\ge2$. Our results cover in particular Bobylev's model for inelastic Maxwell molecules. First, we show under certain conditions on the collision kernel, that there exists an index $\alpha\in(0,2)$ such that the equation possesses a nontrivial stationary solution, which is a scale mixture of radially symmetric $\alpha$-stable laws. We also characterize the mixing distribution as the fixed point of a smoothing transformation. Second, we prove that any transient solution that emerges from the NDA of some (not necessarily radial symmetric) $\alpha$-stable distribution converges to an equilibrium. The key element of the convergence proof is an application of the central limit theorem to a representation of the transient solution as a weighted sum of projections of randomly rotated i.i.d. random vectors.