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The English use of "they" to refer to a singular referent that is non-specific or of unknowngender dates back to the 1300s. Recently, "they" has emerged as the dominant pronounfor individuals who identify as gender nonbinary, and a coherent subset of Englishspeakers (innovators) explicitly accept "they" when referring to a specific individual ofknown gender ((i) “Sarah slept because they were tired”) in off-line judgments. Thepresent work examines whether on-line comprehension difficulty patterns with off-linejudgments. Using a maze-task, participants' read sentences like (i) containing “they” withplural or singular subjects, or “he/she” with named subjects that matched or mismatchedin their typical gender. Gender mismatched evoked reading difficulty. Plural “they” alsocaused difficulty, but significantly less. Innovators experienced less difficulty with singular“they” than non-innovators, but still processed plural “they” faster than singular “they”.This work suggests that the grammar of “they” may have yet to stabilize even forinnovative speakers.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was used to measure population levels of conceptual alignment among two polar sensory metaphors and clusters of concepts to which they are commonly applied. A total of 873 participants were tested online, to compare within- and between-cluster alignments of concepts associated with two different polar sensory metaphors (up/down and black/white). IAT results were sensitive to semantic alignments that were also picked up by Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) using a large-scale corpus of English. However, even with these semantic alignments taken into account, the dual categorization results demonstrated strong metaphor-cluster alignments over and above the predictions of LSA. It is proposed that, rather than ontogenetic development of metaphoric concepts based on sensorimotor experience, conventionalized sensorimotor metaphors in language may be cognitive tools that provide language learners with insights supported by conceptual properties of a phylogenetically evolved perceptual interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: During multisensory emotion perception, the attention devoted to the visual versus the auditory modality (i.e., modality dominance) varies depending on the cultural background of the perceiver. In the present study, we examined (a) how cultural familiarity influences multisensory emotion perception in Eastern and Western cultures and (b) the underlying processes accounting for the cultural difference in modality dominance. Method: Native Mandarin speakers from China and native English speakers from the United States were presented with audiovisual emotional stimuli from their own culture (i.e., familiar) and from a different culture (i.e., unfamiliar) and asked to evaluate the emotion from one of the two modalities. Across modalities, the emotions were either the same (i.e., congruent, happy face, and happy voice) or different (i.e., incongruent, happy face, and sad voice). Results: When the input was in a familiar cultural context, American participants were more influenced by the visual modality, while Chinese participants were more influenced by the auditory modality. While both groups integrated the incongruent emotion from the irrelevant modality, only the American group integrated the congruent emotion from the irrelevant modality. When the input was in a less familiar cultural context, both groups showed increased visual dominance, but only the Chinese group simultaneously showed decreased auditory dominance. Conclusions: We conclude that cultural background and input familiarity interact to influence modality dominance during multisensory emotion perception. Public Significance Statement: The present study reveals that American participants were more influenced by facial expressions than vocal expressions, while Chinese participants were more influenced by vocal expressions than facial expressions during multisensory emotion perception. Recognizing these differences could facilitate communication and interactions between individuals from East Asian and Western cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to identify relationships between school climate, proactive personality, achievement motivation, and the trait creativity of primary school students by means of a path model. We examined 603 Chinese primary school students in terms of their perceptions of their school climates and relationships with teachers and peers. The results indicated that school climate exerted a direct and significant impact on students' trait creativity. Both proactive personality and achievement motivation mediated the relations between school climate and trait creativity. The findings suggest that schools should foster an open, tolerant, atmosphere that encourages innovation and be aware of the value of good teacher-student and peer relationships in this regard.

Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we examined the strengthand speed of access to lexical knowledge (e.g., ourrepresentation of the word dog in our mental vocabulary) andsemantic knowledge (e.g., our knowledge that a dog isassociated with a leash) via both spoken words (e.g., “dog”)and characteristic sounds (e.g., a dog’s bark). Results showthat both spoken words and characteristic sounds activatelexical and semantic knowledge, but with different patterns.Spoken words activate lexical knowledge faster thancharacteristic sounds do, but with the same strength. Incontrast, characteristic sounds access semantic knowledgestronger than spoken words do, but with the same speed.These findings reveal similarities and differences in theactivation of conceptual knowledge by verbal and non-verbalmeans and advance our understanding of how auditory inputis cognitively processed.

A europium-functionalized, dual-emissive, metal–organic framework-based fluorescence sensor (EuUCNDA) was constructed via post-synthetic modification of an UiO-66-type precursor through coordination interactions. EuUCNDA exhibited extremely high selectivity and sensitivity for malachite green (MG) with a low detection limit of 13.01 nM, a wide linear concentration range (0.05–50 μM), excellent anti-interference properties, a rapid response (<1 min), and the possibility of recycling. The good sensing performance of EuUCNDA enables the practical detection of MG in fish pond water and grass carp with good recoveries. Moreover, EuUCNDA can be reused for sensing MG and over 90% of fluorescence intensity can be restored after 7 cycles. Furthermore, EuUCNDA-embedded paper-based sensors combined with smartphone imaging afford portable and visual monitoring of MG in real samples. Notably, besides good sensing performance, EuUCNDA could efficiently remove MG from water. Hence, this work provides a recyclable and sensitive fluorescence sensor for portable, visual, rapid detection and efficient removal of MG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]