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Purpose: The lexical quality (LQ) hypothesis predicts that a skilled reader's lexicon will be inhabited by a range of low- to high-quality items, and the probability of representing a word with high quality varies as a function of person-level, word-level, and item-specific variables. These predictions were tested with spelling accuracy as a gauge of LQ. Method: Item-response based crossed random effects models explored simultaneous contributions of person-level (e.g. participant's decoding skill), word-level (e.g. word's transparency rating), item-specific (e.g. participant's familiarity with specific word), and person-by-word interaction predictors (e.g. decoding by transparency rating interaction) to the spelling of 25 commonly misspelled irregular English words in 61 undergraduate university students (M = 19.4 years, 70.49% female, 39.34% Hispanic, 81.97% White). Results: Substantial variance among individuals in item-level spelling accuracy was accounted for by person-level decoding skill; item-specific familiarity, proportion of schwas correctly represented, and correctly identifying the word from its mispronunciation; and an interaction of transparency rating by general decoding skill. Conclusions: Consistent with the LQ hypothesis, results suggest that one's ability to form a high-quality lexical representation of a given word depends on a complex combination of person-level abilities, word-level characteristics, item-specific experiences, and an interaction between person- and word-level influences.

The core task of reading is to look at letters and identify their sounds and meaning. In English, the spelling system is "quasiregular," meaning it includes many reliable patterns (some so reliable they could be called "rules") but also many inconsistent ones (the sound of "EA" in "heat" vs. "head"). The triangle model of reading (Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989) demonstrates that novice readers gradually learn the connections between the features of words, including their letters, the ways they make sounds, and the concepts that comprise their meaning. Learners' knowledge changes gradually based on experience pronouncing printed words. Eventually, the reader will say words with variable patterns (like how to say "EA") correctly but be unable to articulate rules associated with their pronunciation--because rules are not an inherent part of the learning process. Building robust knowledge of reading words aloud sometimes happens without any help. However, novice readers will often learn more in less time if the teacher explains the structure of the language in terms of sound-spelling rules (sometimes termed "patterns" to emphasize their variability). This type of instruction, phonics, has known value in supporting reading development. However, distinguishing between the underlying learning process (which doesn't involve rules) and associated teaching practices (which often do) has implications for practitioners. Students will benefit from a balance of implicit and explicit forms of instruction, including simple strategies for reading words, teaching high-utility rules, emphasizing practice over explanation, and using letters when doing phonemic awareness activities.

Male-protagonist overrepresentation exists in US children’s books and varies as afunction of author-gender and target audience age (Casey et al., 2021). We investigate whether these patterns appear across cultures by coding 437 bestselling children’s books from China and comparing them to the US dataset. Mixed-effects and chi-square models revealed cross-cultural male-overrepresentation. Effects of author-gender showed that books written by American male authors and Chinese female authors were associated with greater male-overrepresentation. Effects of target audience age showed that books written for 3-8-year-olds in the US and 3-5-year-olds in China exhibited the most male-overrepresentation, suggesting that children in these age groups may be particularly vulnerable to inequitable gender representation in print media. This is the first study to examine gender representation in Chinese children’s books on a large scale and to directly compare rates of gender representation across cultures. Implications for educational practices and literacy development will be discussed.

Many characters in written Chinese incorporate components (radicals) that provide cues to meaning. These cues are often partial, and some are misleading because they are unrelated to the character's meaning. Previous studies have shown that radicals influence the reader's processing of the characters in which they occur (e.g., Feldman and Siok in J Memory Language 40(4):559-576, 1999). We investigated whether readers automatically activate the semantic information associated with a radical even when it is irrelevant to the character's meaning, using a modified version of the Van Orden (Memory Cogn 15(3):181-198, 1987) task with auditory semantic relatedness ratings on test items. Fifty-one Mandarin speakers participated in the study. On each trial they saw a reference category such as "animal" prior to seeing a character then indicated whether the target character was a member of that category. Decisions were slower and less accurate when a target that is not a member of the target category contained a radical that is. For example, if the category is "found in the kitchen," the answer for the target [character omitted] "ticket" is no; however the character contains the misleading radical [character omitted] "knife". These patterns suggest that readers process the semantics of the radical even when it is not relevant to the meaning of the character. The results further verify the role of radical semantics in character processing and raise questions as to whether repetitions of experience with the idiosyncrasies of the script may result in some of the irrelevant semantics influencing the meaning of the character.

Learning environments are rich with structure but learning that structure can take considerable effort. Given that thesequence with which knowledge is accumulated is important for development (Smith & Slone, 2017), we consider whetheroptimizing the sequence of training examples can accelerate learning, as evaluated by out of sample generalization. Toexamine this issue we used established connectionist networks that map an orthographic input to a phonological output(Cox, Cooper Borkenhagen, & Seidenberg, 2018; Plaut et al., 1996). Utilizing machine teaching (Sen et al., 2018; Zhu,2015) to optimize word selection for a 10,000 word sequence, we observe an 8% average gain (over 100 sequences) ongeneralization accuracy (from 51% to 59%) compared to matched random sequences. These findings have implicationsfor learning domains where generalization is critical, like reading development where the child needs to gain as muchknowledge as possible from limited experience.

Learning to read English requires learning the complex statis-tical dependencies between orthography and phonology. Pre-vious research has focused on how these statistics are learnedin neural network models provided with as much training asneeded. Children, however, are expected to acquire this knowl-edge in a few years of school with only limited instruction. Weexamined how these mappings can be learned efficiently, de-fined by tradeoffs between the number of words that are explic-itly trained and the number that are correct by generalization.A million models were trained, varying the sizes of randomly-selected training sets. For a target corpus of about 3000 words,training sets of 200–300 words were most efficient, producinggeneralization to as many as 1800 untrained words. Composi-tion of the 300 word training sets also greatly affected general-ization. The results suggest directions for designing curriculathat promote efficient learning of complex material.

Abstract Background Tattoos and piercings are becoming increasingly popular in many countries around the world. Individuals seeking such body modifications have reported diverse psychological motives. Besides purely superficial considerations, tattoos and piercings can also have a deep, personal meaning. For example, they can mark and support the emotional processing of significant life events, including formative experiences from early childhood. However, there is a lack of studies that examine the links of tattoos and piercings with experiences of childhood abuse and neglect in large, population-based samples. Methods We investigated the association of reports of childhood abuse and neglect with the acquisition of body modifications (tattoos and piercings) within a representative German community sample. Survey participants (N = 1060; ages 14–44 years) were questioned whether they had tattoos and piercings and filled out the 28-item Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short Form (CTQ-SF). Results Tattoos and piercings were more common among individuals who reported childhood abuse and neglect. The proportion of participants with tattoos and piercings increased as a function of the severity of all assessed types of abuse and neglect (emotional, physical, and sexual abuse; emotional and physical neglect). In logistic regression analyses which included the covariates age, gender, education, and income, the sum of significant kinds of childhood abuse and neglect was positively related to having tattoos and/or piercings (OR = 1.37 [95% CI 1.19–1.58]). Conclusions The results corroborate previous research indicating that body modifications could have special significance for individuals who have survived adversity, in particular interpersonal trauma at the hands of caregivers. These findings could inform screening procedures and low-threshold access to psychotherapeutic care.

Can the science of reading contribute to improving educational practices, allowing more students to become skilled readers? Much has been learned about the behavioral and brain bases of reading, how students learn to read, and factors that contribute to low literacy. The potential to use research findings to improve literacy outcomes is substantial but remains largely unrealized. The lack of improvement in literacy levels, especially among students who face other challenges such as poverty, has led to new pressure to incorporate the science of reading in curricula, instructional practices, and teacher education. In the interest of promoting these efforts, the authors discuss three issues that could undermine them: the need for additional translational research linking reading science to classroom activities, the oversimplified way that the science is sometimes represented in the educational context, and the fact that theories of reading have become more complex and less intuitive as the field has progressed. Addressing these concerns may allow reading science to be used more effectively and achieve greater acceptance among educators.

Neural network models of reading provide a good account of many aspects of normal and disordered performance, butthe training procedures are unrealistically comprehensive. Unlike models, child learners have limited instructional timeand are explicitly taught only a small subset of the words they will regularly encounter. To address this discrepancy weinvestigated alternative learning procedures in a standard orthography-to-phonology multilayer network, to identify oneswhich involve a small, teachable subset of words that facilitate learning untrained words with less effort. We also asked,for any such set, whether the procedure can be improved by optimizing the training sequence. Candidate training setsand sequences were derived using a model-based procedure and from elementary reading curricula. The results indicatetradeoffs between the size and composition of the training set and generalization. These procedures suggest pedagogicalsolutions to the problem of learning more than there is time to teach.

Many Chinese characters consist of probabilistic cues to meaning or pronunciation. We investigated whether readersautomatically activate the semantics associated with a familiar phonetic even when it is putatively irrelevant. In a lexicaldecision task, primes were semantically related to the overall character, the sub-lexical component, or not related to either.Latencies were significantly faster when primes were related to the meaning of the phonetic and related to the meaningof the entire target as compared to unrelated prime-target pairs. The magnitudes of the priming effects were larger forlower frequency targets. Results indicate that readers activate the semantics of a phonetic even when it is unrelated to themeaning of the character. This suggests that the irrelevant semantics may influence the meaning of a character, and alsochallenges standard analyses in which such characters are considered morphemes because phonetics can also contribute tomeaning.

Introduction: Older adults use the emergency department (ED) at high rates, including for illnesses that could be managed by their primary care providers (PCP). Policymakers have implemented barriers and incentives, often financial, to try to modify use patterns but with limited success. This study aims to understand the factors that influence older adults’ decision to obtain acute illness care from the ED rather than from their PCPs. Methods: We performed a qualitative study using a directed content analysis approach from February to October 2013. Fifteen community-dwelling older adults age≥65 years who presented to the ED of an academic medical center hospital for care and who were discharged home were enrolled. Semi-structured interviews were conducted initially in the ED and subsequently in patients’ homes over the following six weeks. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, verified, and coded. The study team jointly analyzed the data and identified themes that emerged from the interviews. Results: The average age of study participants was 74 years (standard deviation ±7.2 years); 53% were female; 80% were white. We found five themes that influenced participants’ decisions to obtain acute illness care from the ED: limited availability of PCP-based care, variable interactions with healthcare providers and systems, limited availability of transportation for illness care, desire to avoid burdening friends and family, and previous experiences with illnesses.  Conclusion: Community-dwelling older adults integrate multiple factors when deciding to obtain care from an ED rather than their PCPs. These factors relate to personal and social considerations, practical issues, and individual perceptions based on previous experiences. If these findings are validated in confirmatory studies, policymakers wishing to modify where older adults receive care should consider person-centered interventions at the system and individual level, such as decision support, telemedicine, improved transport services, enhancing PCPs’ capabilities, and enhancing EDs’ resources to care for older patients.

China now tops the list of countries with the largest annual number of scientific publications. At the same time, China also leads the list of countries with the highest proportion of scientific publication retractions. The rise in this academic misconduct in China has given Chinese researchers a bad reputation and likely led to lower manuscript acceptance rates in academic journals. Plagiarism can be thwarted by strengthening ethics training for students and researchers, as well as implementing penalties for plagiarism offenses in universities, research institutions, and academic journals. The aims of this review are to summarize the characteristics of different types of plagiarism, to offer suggestions for incorporating ethical training into Chinese educators' curricula, as well as to point to various available scientific ethics training resources.

Objective: The objective of this study was to describe and discuss patterns of migraine medication use in the entire Norwegian population. Methods: In this nationwide, observational study, all individuals with a migraine-related prescription between 2010 and 2020 were identified using the Norwegian Prescription Database. The outcomes of interest were the incidence and 1-year prevalence of migraine medication users, as well as individuals with triptan overuse. Patterns of medication use were statistically compared between women and men adjusted for age, year of treatment start, comorbidities and county of residence calculating adjusted odds ratios (aOR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: We identified 327,904 migraine medication users. The incidence ranged from 0.39% to 0.46%, and the 1-year prevalence increased from 1.99% to 2.99%. Preventive use increased >50% during the study period. Preventives were significantly more often prescribed to women than to men (39.72% vs. 33.75%; aOR 1.41, 95% CI 1.38 to 1.44). Triptan overuse was significantly more common among women, but women with overuse were more often using preventives, as compared to men (56.64% vs 52.69%; aOR = 1.43, 95% CI 1.37 to 1.49). Conclusion: The prevalence of medically treated migraine is low. Overuse of triptans is frequent, especially among women. Clinicians should be encouraged to try out different triptans, recognize triptan overuse, and prescribe preventives when indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is great interest in understanding the viral genomic predictors of phenotypic traits that allow influenza A viruses to adapt to or become more virulent in different hosts. Machine learning techniques have demonstrated promise in addressing this critical need for other pathogens because the underlying algorithms are especially well equipped to uncover complex patterns in large datasets and produce generalizable predictions for new data. As the body of research where these techniques are applied for influenza A virus phenotype prediction continues to grow, it is useful to consider the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches to understand what has prevented these models from seeing widespread use by surveillance laboratories and to identify gaps that are underexplored with this technology. Methods and Results: We present a systematic review of English literature published through 15 April 2021 of studies employing machine learning methods to generate predictions of influenza A virus phenotypes from genomic or proteomic input. Forty-nine studies were included in this review, spanning the topics of host discrimination, human adaptability, subtype and clade assignment, pandemic lineage assignment, characteristics of infection, and antiviral drug resistance. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that biases in model design and a dearth of wet laboratory follow-up may explain why these models often go underused. We, therefore, offer guidance to overcome these limitations, aid in improving predictive models of previously studied influenza A virus phenotypes, and extend those models to unexplored phenotypes in the ultimate pursuit of tools to enable the characterization of virus isolates across surveillance laboratories.

The diversity of influenza A viruses (IAV) is primarily hosted by two highly divergent avian orders: Anseriformes (ducks, swans and geese) and Charadriiformes (gulls, terns and shorebirds). Studies of IAV have historically focused on Anseriformes, specifically dabbling ducks, overlooking the diversity of hosts in nature, including gull and goose species that have successfully adapted to human habitats. This study sought to address this imbalance by characterizing spillover dynamics and global transmission patterns of IAV over 10 years at greater taxonomic resolution than previously considered. Furthermore, the circulation of viral subtypes in birds that are either host-adapted (low pathogenic H13, H16) or host-generalist (highly pathogenic avian influenza-HPAI H5) provided a unique opportunity to test and extend models of viral evolution. Using Bayesian phylodynamic modelling we uncovered a complex transmission network that relied on ecologically divergent bird hosts. The generalist subtype, HPAI H5 was driven largely by wild geese and swans that acted as a source for wild ducks, gulls, land birds, and domestic geese. Gulls were responsible for moving HPAI H5 more rapidly than any other host, a finding that may reflect their long-distance, pelagic movements and their immuno-naïve status against this subtype. Wild ducks, long viewed as primary hosts for spillover, occupied an optimal space for viral transmission, contributing to geographic expansion and rapid dispersal of HPAI H5. Evidence of inter-hemispheric dispersal via both the Pacific and Atlantic Rims was detected, supporting surveillance at high latitudes along continental margins to achieve early detection. Both neutral (geographic expansion) and non-neutral (antigenic selection) evolutionary processes were found to shape subtype evolution which manifested as unique geographic hotspots for each subtype at the global scale. This study reveals how a diversity of avian hosts contribute to viral spread and spillover with the potential to improve surveillance in an era of rapid global change.

The present study was conducted with the aim of constructing and validating a short form of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). The NPI is the most widely-applied measure for the assessment of narcissistic personality traits and, therefore, it is of great relevance for many research questions in personality and social psychology. To develop the short scale, we first found the optimal eight-item solution among all valid combinations of the NPI-15 items in an exploratory subsample (n = 1,165) of our complete representative sample of the German general population. We then validated this model in a confirmatory subsample (n = 1,126). Additionally, we examined its invariance across age groups and sex, as well as its reliability, as well as construct and predictive validity —comparing it to the NPI-15. Our results indicate that the NPI-8 is a valid and reliable measure of narcissistic personality with minimal losses compared to the 15-item version. Particularly where brevity and an economical assessment are desired, the NPI-8 should be considered.

Abstract In 2018, our team collected aerosols samples from five poultry farms in Malaysia. Influenza D virus was detected in 14% of samples. One sample had an 86.3% identity score similar to NCBI accession number MH785020.1. This is the first molecular sequence of influenza D virus detected in Southeast Asia from a bioaerosol sample. Our findings indicate that further study of role of IDV in poultry is necessary.

Treatment wetlands have emerged as a potential option for the treatment of oil sands process-affected water (OSPW). The long-term viability of these treatment systems relies, in part, on the health and productivity of wetland vegetation. The aim of this study is to investigate the physiological and community-level effects on wetland vegetation at the Kearl Treatment Wetland (KTW) following exposure to different OSPW sources. Annual vegetation assessments were performed during 2016–2021 to monitor species composition, total percent cover, species richness, species morphology (plant stem density, leaf length, and leaf width), and plant vigor in the KTW. Cattail was found to dominate the deep-water zones whereas water sedge was found to dominate the shallow-water zones of the wetland. Species richness in the KTW decreased with time which is typical of constructed wetlands receiving industrial effluents. No changes in plant stem density of cattails or water sedge were observed; however, leaf length decreased from 2019 to 2021, and leaf width decreased from 2020 to 2021. Plant vigor ratings increased in the KTW each year suggesting that the vegetation does not show any major signs of phytotoxicity from OSPW exposure. These results demonstrate the complex dynamics and resiliency of the vegetative community in treatment wetlands, but continued efforts to monitor plant uptake and accumulation are needed to fully assess the phytotoxic effects of OSPW exposure.