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Despite Africa’s reserves of renewable energy, policymakers rely on traditional energy sources to improve macroeconomic outcomes, thus contributing to global warming. We investigated the relationship between renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and growth in oil-producing Angola, Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt, Gabon, Congo Republic, Libya, Nigeria, and Sudan from 1990–2014 using a second-generation panel data analysis. Our motivation was to demonstrate Africa’s growing CO2 emissions (doubled in 20 years) and influence on global warming and also influence on African oil-producing countries’ growth performance. Our objective was to analyze how renewable energy and CO2 emissions contribute to economic growth. We employed a bootstrap panel LM cointegration—accounting for the horizontal cross-sectional dependency—the AMG estimator to analyze cointegration coefficients, and the country-based Kónya panel causality test. Our findings showed no significant effect of renewable energy on economic growth, confirming the neutrality hypothesis. One reason may relate to the under-utilization of their renewable energy potential by these countries. The results reveal a significantly positive effect of CO2 emissions on growth for Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Egypt. Hence, we recommend that policymakers pay more attention to renewable energy. An extension of our research could determine the optimum mixture of renewable and traditional energy production that would guarantee economic growth while reducing global warming.

Abstract Background Nursing students are highly susceptible to depression given the heavy workload and clinical demands of the curriculum. Depression has negative impacts on their health and academic performance. This study aimed to determine the determinants of depression amongst nursing students in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. Methods A cross-sectional analysis of 447 nursing students recruited from a combination of state-owned and private nursing institutions in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon from January – April 2018 was carried out. Independent correlates of depression were determined using multivariable regression analysis, with the level of significance set at 95%. Results The overall prevalence of depression (Patient Health Questionnaire - 9 > 4) and major depressive disorder (Patient Health Questionnaire - 9 > 9) in these students was 69.57 and 26.40% respectively. Independent correlates of depression were found to be: total Oldenburg Burnout Inventory score (aOR: 1.18; 95% CI: 1.11, 1.25; p value

Abstract Background Depression is a debilitating mental health condition which affects an estimated 350 million people worldwide annually. Nurses are twice as likely to suffer from depression than professionals in other professions. This leads to a considerable loss of efficiency and productivity. We sought to determine the prevalence and predictors of depression among nurses in Cameroon. Methods Cross-sectional analysis carried out over 6 months (January – June 2018) using nurses from public and private healthcare institutions sampled consecutively in the two English-speaking regions (North west and South west regions) of Cameroon. The nurses were handed a structured, printed, self-administered questionnaire to fill and hand in at their earliest convenience. Depression and burnout were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire – 9 and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory respectively. Results A total of 143 nurses were recruited (mean age: 29.75 ± 6.55 years; age range: 20–55 years, 32.87% male). The overall prevalence of depression was 62.24%. Independent predictors of depression after multivariable analysis were: Number of night shifts a week (adjusted odds ratio: 1.58; p value: 0.045, 95% CI; 1.01, 2.48) and Total Oldenburg Burnout Inventory score (adjusted odds ratio: 1.21, p value: 0.001; 95% CI; 1.08, 1.35). Recreational drug use was also found to perfectly predict the outcome – depression. Conclusion Depression is highly prevalent among nurses in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. Accurate predictors could prove vital for early detection and management of affected individuals. Predictors presented herein require further investigation via multicentric nationwide studies, to obtain more generalizable results.

Twenty-five years ago, a book “Z badań nad kompetencją komunikacyjną dziecka”, edited by Barbara Bokus and Maciej Haman, was issued containing, among else, the first Polish review of the studies on the development of Theory of Mind. During these 25 years, the area developed extensively and a new “state-of-the-arts” paper is necessary. The current paper does not pretend to the role of a complete review, instead it focusses on two live issues in the Theory of Mind (ToM) research progress: early (before the age of four years) competences in false-belief understanding, which leads to the question of continuity versus discontinuity (e.g., “Two-system theory”) between early and later ToM abilities, and neuroimaging studies of Theory-of-Mind, which may also contribute to the continuity debate.

Abstract Objectives Burnout syndrome is common amongst medical personnel. The objective of this study was to identify determinants of burnout syndrome among nurses in the north west and south west regions of Cameroon. Results A cross-sectional analysis during the months of January–June 2018 was carried out recruiting nurses consecutively after consent from state-owned and private hospitals in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. Burnout was assessed using the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI). Univariable regression analysis used to identify determinants of burnout syndrome among 143 nurses (mean age 29.75 ± 6.55 years) showed that being in a personal relationship (Beta = 2.25) significantly explained 3.8% of the variation in burnout (R2 = 3.8, F (1, 125) = 4.89, p = 0.029).

Abstract Objectives Burnout syndrome defined as a state of emotional exhaustion and disengagement; which could reduce optimal healthcare delivery, is relatively common amongst healthcare trainees. We sought to assess the determinants of burnout syndrome amongst nursing students in Cameroon. A cross-sectional study which included 447 nursing students recruited after written informed consent by convenience sampling, was carried out from January to April 2018. A printed self-administered questionnaire assessing burnout using the OLdenburg Burnout Inventory was used. Multivariable linear regression was used to identify independent determinants of burnout syndrome. Results Most (81.17%) of the students were female with the average for disengagement items being 17.10 ± 3.09 (minimum = 8, maximum = 26) and 20.94 ± 3.04 (minimum = 13, maximum = 31) for exhaustion items. After multivariable linear regression analysis, satisfaction with results (RC: − 1.42, 95% CI − 2.52, − 0.32, p value: 0.012) and regret of choice of nursing studies (RC: 2.13, 95% CI 0.58, 3.68, p value = 0.007) were found to be independent predictors of burnout in these students. Early identification of these determinants is required to prevent progression to burnout.

Literate subjects from Western cultures form spatial-numerical associations (SNA) in left-to-right direction, which follows their reading habits. In preliterate children, sources of SNA directionality are more disputable. One possibility is that SNA follows children's early knowledge about text orientation. It could also reflect ipsilateral/contralateral tendencies in manual task execution. Furthermore, SNA's characteristics could differ depending on the evaluation method used. In this study, we test SNA in preliterate preschoolers using object counting, finger counting, and numerosity arrangement tasks. We examined the relations of SNA to children's directional reading knowledge and their manual response tendencies. Left-to-right SNA was pronounced for object counting, disappeared for the numerosity task, and was reversed for finger counting. In all tasks, left-to-right SNA dominated in children who responded contralaterally with their hand. Reading knowledge was partially related to numerosity-based SNA, but not to other SNAs. Based on these findings, we discuss developmental characteristics of different forms of number-space associations.

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to interpret others' behaviors in terms of mental states, has been extensively studied through the False-Belief Task (FBT). However, limited research exists regarding the distinction between different phases of FBT, suggesting that they are subserved by separate neural mechanisms. Further inquiry into this matter seems crucial for deepening our knowledge of the neurocognitive basis of mental-state processing. Therefore, we employed fMRI to examine neural responses and functional connectivity within the core network for ToM across phases of the FBT, which was administered to sixty-one healthy adults during scanning. The region-of-interest analysis revealed heightened responses of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during and increased activation of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during the outcome phase. Negative connectivity between these regions was observed during belief-formation. Unlike the TPJ, mPFC responded similarly to conditions that require belief reasoning and to control conditions that do not entail tracking mental states. Our results indicate a functional dissociation within the core network for ToM. While the TPJ is possibly engaged in coding beliefs, the mPFC shows no such specificity. These findings advance our understanding of the unique roles of the TPJ and mPFC in mental-state processing., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.)

We investigate the accuracy and reliability of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence model developed by OpenAI, in providing nutritional information for dietary planning and weight management. The results have a reasonable level of accuracy, with energy values having the highest level of conformity: 97% of the artificial intelligence values fall within a 40% difference from United States Department of Agriculture data. Additionally, ChatGPT displayed consistency in its provision of nutritional data, as indicated by relatively low coefficient of variation values for each nutrient. The artificial intelligence model also proved efficient in generating a daily meal plan within a specified caloric limit, with all the meals falling within a 30% bound of the United States Department of Agriculture's caloric values. These findings suggest that ChatGPT can provide reasonably accurate and consistent nutritional information. Further research is recommended to assess the model's performance across a broader range of foods and meals.., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Previous studies have suggested that parents may support the development of theory of mind (ToM) in their child by talking about mental states (mental state talk; MST). However, MST has not been sufficiently explored in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study investigated ToM and availability of parental MST in deaf children with CIs (n = 39, Mage = 62.92, SD = 15.23) in comparison with their peers with typical hearing (TH; n = 52, Mage = 52.48, SD = 1.07). MST was measured during shared storybook reading. Parents' narratives were coded for cognitive, emotional, literal, and non-mental references. ToM was measured with a parental questionnaire. Children with CIs had lower ToM scores than their peers with TH, and their parents used more literal references during shared storybook reading. There were no significant differences in the frequencies of cognitive and emotional references between groups. Parental emotional references contributed positively to children's ToM scores when controlling for the child's age and receptive grammar only in the CI group. These results indicated some distinctive features in parents of deaf children with CIs' MST and highlighted the role of MST in the development of ToM abilities in this group., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The role of grammar in numerical development, and particularly the role of grammatical number inflection, has already been well-documented in toddlerhood. It is unclear, however, whether the influence of grammatical language structure further extends to more complex later stages of numerical development. Here, we addressed this question by exploiting differences between Polish, which has a complex grammatical number paradigm, leading to a partially inconsistent mapping between numerical quantities and grammatical number, and German, which has a comparatively easy verbal paradigm: 151 Polish-speaking and 123 German-speaking kindergarten children were tested using a symbolic numerical comparison task. Additionally, counting skills (Give-a-Number and count-list), and mapping between non-symbolic (dot sets) and symbolic representations of numbers, as well as working memory (Corsi blocks and Digit span) were assessed. Based on the Give-a-Number and mapping tasks, the children were divided into subset-knowers, CP-knowers-non-mappers, and CP-knowers-mappers. Linguistic background was related to performance in several ways: Polish-speaking children expectedly progressed to the CP-knowers stage later than German children, despite comparable non-numerical capabilities, and even after this stage was achieved, they fared worse in the numerical comparison task. There were also meaningful differences in spatial-numerical mapping between the Polish and German groups. Our findings are in line with the theory that grammatical number paradigms influence. the development of representations and processing of numbers, not only at the stage of acquiring the meaning of the first number-words but at later stages as well, when dealing with symbolic numbers., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In numerical cognition research, the operational momentum (OM) phenomenon (tendency to overestimate the results of addition and/or binding addition to the right side and underestimating subtraction and/or binding it to the left side) can help illuminate the most basic representations and processes of mental arithmetic and their development. This study is the first to demonstrate OM in symbolic arithmetic in preschoolers. It was modeled on Haman and Lipowska's (2021) non-symbolic arithmetic task, using Arabic numerals instead of visual sets. Seventy-seven children (4-7 years old) who know Arabic numerals and counting principles (CP), but without prior school math education, solved addition and subtraction problems presented as videos with one as the second operand. In principle, such problems may be difficult when involving a non-symbolic approximate number processing system, whereas in symbolic format they can be solved based solely on the successor/predecessor functions and knowledge of numerical orders, without reference to representation of numerical magnitudes. Nevertheless, participants made systematic errors, in particular, overestimating results of addition in line with the typical OM tendency. Moreover, subtraction and addition induced longer response times when primed with left- and right-directed movement, respectively, which corresponds to the reversed spatial form of OM. These results largely replicate those of non-symbolic task and show that children at early stages of mastering symbolic arithmetic may rely on numerical magnitude processing and spatial-numerical associations rather than newly-mastered CP and the concept of an exact number., (© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The number-line estimation task has become one of the most important methods in numerical cognition research. Originally applied as a direct measure of spatial number representation, it became also informative regarding various other aspects of number processing and associated strategies. However, most of this work and associated conclusions concerns processing numbers in a symbolic format, by school children and older subjects. Symbolic number system is formally taught and trained at school, and its basic mathematical properties (e.g., equidistance, ordinality) can easily be transferred into a spatial format of an oriented number line. This triggers the question on basic characteristics of number line estimation before children get fully familiar with the symbolic number system, i.e., when they mostly rely on approximate system for non-symbolic quantities. In our three studies, we examine therefore how preschool children (3-5-years old) estimate position of non-symbolic quantities on a line, and how this estimation is related to the developing symbolic number knowledge and cultural (left-to-right) directionality. The children were tested with the Give-a-number task, then they performed a computerized number-line task. In Experiment 1, lines bounded with sets of 1 and 20 elements going left-to-right or right-to-left were used. Even in the least numerically competent group, the linear model better fit the estimates than the logarithmic or cyclic power models. The line direction was irrelevant. In Experiment 2, a 1-9 left-to-right oriented line was used. Advantage of linear model was found at group level, and variance of estimates correlated with tested numerosities. In Experiment 3, a position-to-number procedure again revealed the advantage of the linear model, although the strategy of selecting an option more similar to the closer end of the line was prevalent. The precision of estimation increased with the mastery of counting principles in all three experiments. These results contradict the hypothesis of the log-to-linear shift in development of basic numerical representation, rather supporting the linear model with scalar variance. However, the important question remains whether the number-line task captures the nature of the basic numerical representation, or rather the strategies of mapping that representation to an external space., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Haman and Patro.)

Mentalizing is the key socio-cognitive ability. Its heterogeneous structure may result from a variety of forms of mental state inference, which may be based on lower-level processing of cues encoded in the observable behavior of others, or rather involve higher-level computations aimed at understanding another person's perspective. Here we aimed to investigate the representational content of the brain regions engaged in mentalizing. To this end, 61 healthy adults took part in an fMRI study. We explored ROI activity patterns associated with five well-recognized ToM tasks that induce either decoding of mental states from motion kinematics or belief-reasoning. By using multivariate representational similarity analysis, we examined whether these examples of lower- and higher-level forms of social inference induced common or distinct patterns of brain activity. Distinct patterns of brain activity related to decoding of mental states from motion kinematics and belief-reasoning were found in lTPJp and the left IFG, but not the rTPJp. This may indicate that rTPJp supports a general mechanism for the representation of mental states. The divergent patterns of activation in lTPJp and frontal areas likely reflect differences in the degree of involvement of cognitive functions which support the basic mentalizing processes engaged by the two task groups.

This study analyzes the use of Twitter by Colombian political elites during the Covid-19 pandemic, employing qualitative and quantitative methods and techniques. We collected Twitter data on the Colombian president, the mayor of Bogota, and all the members of the Congress of Colombia. We then analyzed qualitatively the content of the most popular tweets sent by President Iván Duque, Mayor Claudia López, and Gustavo Petro, the leader of the opposition. We also analyzed the growth in the number of their followers during the pandemic. We found that the most popular tweets from Colombian opposition politicians were often related to criticism of the government. López also informed her constituency about the state of the capital. President Duque's most popular tweets were primarily informative. During the pandemic, all three politicians gained a significant number of Twitter followers., (© 2022 Policy Studies Organization.)

Background: Radiology does not routinely solicit feedback on radiology reports. The aim of the study is to report the feasibility and initial results of a multi-institutional quality improvement project implementing patient and provider feedback for radiology reports., Methods: A HIPAA-compliant, institutional review board-waived quality improvement effort at two institutions obtaining patient and provider feedback for radiology reports was implemented from January 2018 to May 2020., Intervention: A two-question survey (quantitative review and open text box feedback) was embedded into the electronic health records for patients and providers. Text-based feedback was evaluated, and patterns of feedback were categorized: thoroughness of reports, error in reports, timeliness of reports, access to reports, desire for patient summary, and desire for key images. We performed the χ 2 test for categorical variables. P < .05 was considered significant., Results: Of 367 responses, patients provided 219 of 367 (60%), and providers provided 148 of 367 (40%) of the feedback. A higher proportion of patients reported satisfaction with reports (76% versus 65%, P = .023) and provided more feedback compared with providers (71% versus 50%, P < .0001). Both patients and providers commented on the thoroughness of reports (12% of patients versus 9% of providers) and errors in reports (8% of patients and 9% of providers). Patients disproportionately commented on timeliness of reports (11%) and access to the reports (6%) compared with providers (3% each). In addition, 7% of patients expressed a desire for patient summaries., Conclusion: Report-specific patient and provider feedback demonstrate the feasibility of embedding surveys into electronic medical records. Up to 9% of the feedback addressed an error in reports., (Copyright © 2021 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Theory of mind (ToM) is crucial for social interactions. Previous research has indicated that deaf and hard-of-hearing children born into hearing families (DoH) are at risk of delayed ToM development. However, it is unclear whether this is the case for DoH children who receive cochlear implants (CIs) before and around the second year of life. The present study aimed to investigate false belief understanding (FBU) in DoH children with CIs. The relationships between false belief task (FBT) performance, sentence comprehension, age at implantation, duration of CI use, and Speech Recognition Threshold were explored. A total of 94 children with typical levels of hearing (TH) and 45 DoH children (age range: 3-8), who received their first CI between 6 and 27 months of age, were tested on the FBT and a sentence comprehension test. Results showed that 4- and 5-year-old children with CIs performed significantly worse than their peers with TH on the FBT; 6- to 8-year-old children with CIs performed similarly to age-matched children with TH. Age at implantation and duration of CI use were correlated with sentence comprehension but not with the FBT. The results indicated that FBU was delayed until the age of 6 years in most of children with CIs., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Operational momentum was originally defined as a bias toward underestimating outcomes of subtraction and overestimating outcomes of addition. It was suggested that these estimation biases are due to leftward attentional shift along the mental number-line (spatially organized internal representation of number) in subtraction and rightward shift in addition. This assumes the use of "recycled" mechanisms of spatial attention, including "representational momentum" - a tendency to overestimate future position of a moving object, which compensates for the moving object's shift during preparation of a reaction. We tested a strong version of this assumption directly, priming two-digit addition and subtraction problems with leftward and rightward motion of varied velocity, as velocity of the tracked object was found to be a factor in determining representational momentum effect size. Operands were subsequently moving across the computer screen, and the participants' task was to validate an outcome proposed at the end of the event, which was either too low, correct, or too high. We found improved accuracy in detecting too-high outcomes of addition, as well as complex patterns of interactions involving arithmetic operation, outcome option, speed, and direction of motion, in the analysis of reaction times. These results significantly extend previous evidence for the involvement of spatial attention in mental arithmetic, showing movement of the external attention focus as a factor directing internal attention in processing numerical information. As a whole, however, the results are incompatible with expectations derived from the strong analogy between operational and representational momenta. We suggest that the full model may be more complex than simply "moving attention along the mental number-line" as a direct counterpart of attention directed at a moving object., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Haman, Młodzianowski and Gołȩbiowski.)

People tend to underestimate subtraction and overestimate addition outcomes and to associate subtraction with the left side and addition with the right side. These two phenomena are collectively labeled 'operational momentum' (OM) and thought to have their origins in the same mechanism of 'moving attention along the mental number line'. OM in arithmetic has never been tested in children at the preschool age, which is critical for numerical development. In this study, 3-5 years old were tested with non-symbolic addition and subtraction tasks. Their level of understanding of counting principles (CP) was assessed using the give-a-number task. When the second operand's cardinality was 5 or 6 (Experiment 1), the child's reaction time was shorter in addition/subtraction tasks after cuing attention appropriately to the right/left. Adding/subtracting one element (Experiment 2) revealed a more complex developmental pattern. Before acquiring CP, the children showed generalized overestimation bias. Underestimation in addition and overestimation in subtraction emerged only after mastering CP. No clear spatial-directional OM pattern was found, however, the response time to rightward/leftward cues in addition/subtraction again depended on stage of mastering CP. Although the results support the hypothesis about engagement of spatial attention in early numerical processing, they point to at least partial independence of the spatial-directional and magnitude OM. This undermines the canonical version of the number line-based hypothesis. Mapping numerical magnitudes to space may be a complex process that undergoes reorganization during the period of acquisition of symbolic representations of numbers. Some hypotheses concerning the role of spatial-numerical associations in numerical development are proposed., (© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The article examines how many leaders used Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic, in what way, and the impact they had on the public. In the context of Twitter, the impact on the public refers to the growth in followers as it signifies the increased interest of the public about information. 50,872 tweets were collected from 143 state leaders and an original dataset was created containing information on the growth of followers. Ordinary least squares regression models were used for the analysis. It was found that 64.8% of UN member states had a leader that tweeted about COVID-19. Furthermore, a significant increase in the number of followers during the pandemic compared to months prior was noted. Since March, the pandemic has been a dominant topic on Twitter. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the highest percentage increase in gaining Twitter followers was experienced by politicians who frequently tweeted and those who had a lower ratio of the number of followers to internet users. The research implies that citizens are interested in being informed about emergencies through social networks, and government officials should use them., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2020 The Author.)

The theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute mental states to others and is extremely important for social functioning. It has been widely examined in both behavioral and neuroimaging research, usually with the use of the many versions of the false-belief (FB) task. However, there is still not enough evidence from studies on the neurodevelopmental mechanisms of ToM mostly because of methodological limitations: lack of selectivity, mismatch of experimental and control tasks, and focusing on participants older than 6 years old. In the current study, we attempted to develop a computerized tool for ToM assessment suitable for both behavioral and neuriomaging testing in preschoolers. We designed a version of the classic change-of-location task with custom visuals and three fine-tuned conditions: FB, true-belief, and no-belief (NB). The usability of the task for further application in neurodevelopmental research was tested with three methods: first, behaviorally, with the use of a touch screen on a group of 75 children, followed by a functional MRI (fMRI) study on 13 adults, and a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study on 19 preschool children. In line with our expectations, on the behavioral level, our task elicited the all-or-none performance in preschoolers. There was also a progression of performance with age in the FB condition. On the neural level, we observed the activation of structures involved in the ToM brain network in response to our task in both adults and children. The results therefore suggest that our task can be a useful tool for studying ToM development and its neural underpinnings., (Copyright © 2020 Wysocka, Golec, Haman, Wolak, Kochański and Pluta.)

Intensionality (or opacity) is a core property of mental representations and sometimes understanding opacity is claimed to be a part of children's theory of mind (evidenced with the false belief task). Children, however, pass the false belief task and the intensionality tasks at different ages (typically 4 vs. 5;1-6;11 years). According to two dominant interpretations, the two tests either require different conceptual resources or vary only in their executive or linguistic load. In two experiments, involving 120 children aged 3-6 (Experiment 1) and 75 children aged 4-6 (Experiment 2), we tested two variants of the executive load hypothesis: The differential linguistic complexity of the two tests, and the dual-name problem of the intensionality task. The former was addressed by standardizing and minimizing the linguistic demands of both tasks (contrasted with the typical narrative intensionality task), and the latter by introducing the dual-name problem into the false belief task as well, so that it was present in both tasks. We found that (1) two structurally different intensionality tasks shared more variance with each other than with the structurally similar false belief task, and that (2) introducing a dual label problem into the false belief task did not reduce the developmental gap. Our results speak against interpreting the difference between the time children pass the two tests entirely in terms of performative issues, and support the conceptual enrichment hypothesis. We discuss the theoretical relevance of these results, suggesting that they are best explained by fine-grained increments within the concept of belief, rather than a radical conceptual change. We conclude that understanding opacity of minds - which emerges between age 5 and 6 - is an important step toward a more advanced form of ToM., (Copyright © 2020 Gut, Haman, Gorbaniuk and Chylińska.)

Multiple visual attention mechanisms are active already in infancy, most notably one supporting orienting towards stimuli and another, maintaining appropriate levels of alertness, when exploring the environment. They are thought to depend on separate brain networks, but their effects are difficult to isolate in existing behavioural paradigms. Better understanding of the contribution of each network to individual differences in visual orienting may help to explain their role in attention development. Here, we tested whether alerting and spatial cues differentially modulate pupil dilation in 8-month-old infants in a visual orienting paradigm. We found differential effects in the time course of these responses depending on the cue type. Moreover, using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) we identified two main components of pupillary response, which may reflect the alerting and orienting network activity. In a regression analysis, these components together explained nearly 40 % of variance in saccadic latencies in the spatial cueing condition of the task. These results likely demonstrate that both networks work together in 8-month-old infants and that their activity can be indexed with pupil dilation combined with PCA, but not with raw changes in pupil diameter., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare they have no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Numerical categories such as parity, i.e., being odd or even, have frequently been shown to influence how particular numbers are processed. Mathematically, number parity is defined categorically. So far, cognitive, and psychological accounts have followed the mathematical definition and defined parity as a categorical psychological representation as well. In this manuscript, we wish to test the alternative account that cognitively, parity is represented in a more gradual manner such that some numbers are represented as "more odd" or "more even" than other odd or even numbers, respectively. Specifically, parity processing might be influenced by more specific properties such as whether a number is a prime, a square number, a power of 2, part of a multiplication table, divisible by 4 or by 5, and many others. We suggest that these properties can influence the psychologically represented parity of a number, making it more or less prototypical for odd- or evenness. In the present study, we tested the influence of these numerical properties in a bimanual parity judgment task with auditorily presented two-digit numbers. Additionally, we further investigated the interaction of these numerical properties with linguistic factors in three language groups (English, German, and Polish). Results show significant effects on reaction times of the congruity of parity status between decade and unit digits, even if numerical magnitude and word frequency are controlled. We also observed other effects of the above specific numerical properties, such as multiplication attributes, which facilitated or interfered with the speed of parity judgment. Based on these effects of specific numerical properties we proposed and elaborated a parity continuum account. However, our cross-lingual study also suggests that parity representation and/or access seem to depend on the linguistic properties of the respective language or education and culture. Overall, the results suggest that the "perceived" parity is not the same as objective parity, and some numbers are more prototypical exemplars of their categories.

The investigation of the ability to perceive, recognize, and judge upon social intentions, such as communicative intentions, on the basis of body motion is a growing research area. Cross-cultural differences in ability to perceive and interpret biological motion, however, have been poorly investigated so far. Progress in this domain strongly depends on the availability of suitable stimulus material. In the present method paper, we describe the multilingual CID-5, an extension of the CID-5 database, allowing for the investigation of how non-conventional communicative gestures are classified and identified by speakers of different languages. The CID-5 database contains 14 communicative interactions and 7 non-communicative actions performed by couples of agents and presented as point-light displays. For each action, the database provides movie files with the point-light animation, text files with the 3-D spatial coordinates of the point-lights, and five different response alternatives. In the multilingual CID-5 the alternatives were translated into seven languages (Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Polish). Preliminary data collected to assess the recognizability of the actions in the different languages suggest that, for most of the action stimuli, information presented in point-light displays is sufficient for the distinctive classification of the action as communicative vs. individual, as well as for identification of the specific communicative gesture performed by the actor in all the available languages.

Rationale: Current treatments for schizophrenia have modest, if any, efficacy on cognitive dysfunction, creating a need for novel therapies. Their development requires predictive animal models. The N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) hypothesis of schizophrenia indicates the use of NMDA antagonists, like subchronic phencyclidine (scPCP) to model cognitive dysfunction in adult animals., Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the scPCP model by (1) reviewing published findings of scPCP-induced neurochemical changes and effects on cognitive tasks in adult rats and (2) comparing findings from a multi-site study to determine scPCP effects on standard and touchscreen cognitive tasks., Methods: Across four research sites, the effects of scPCP (typically 5 mg/kg twice daily for 7 days, followed by at least 7-day washout) in adult male Lister Hooded rats were studied on novel object recognition (NOR) with 1-h delay, acquisition and reversal learning in Morris water maze and touchscreen-based visual discrimination., Results: Literature findings showed that scPCP impaired attentional set-shifting (ASST) and NOR in several labs and induced a variety of neurochemical changes across different labs. In the multi-site study, scPCP impaired NOR, but not acquisition or reversal learning in touchscreen or water maze. Yet, this treatment regimen induced locomotor hypersensitivity to acute PCP until 13-week post-cessation., Conclusions: The multi-site study confirmed that scPCP impaired NOR and ASST only and demonstrated the reproducibility and usefulness of the touchscreen approach. Our recommendation, prior to testing novel therapeutics in the scPCP model, is to be aware that further work is required to understand the neurochemical changes and specificity of the cognitive deficits.

Background: Patients with schizophrenia are deficient in multiple aspects of social cognition, including biological motion perception. In the present study we investigated the ability to read social information from point-light stimuli in schizophrenia., Methodology/principal Findings: Participants with paranoid schizophrenia and healthy controls were presented with a biological motion task depicting point-light actions of two agents either engaged in a communicative interaction, or acting independently of each other. For each stimulus, participants were asked to decide whether the two agents were communicating vs. acting independently of each other (task A), and to select the correct action description among five response alternatives (task B). Participants were also presented with a mental rotation task to assess their visuospatial abilities, and with a facial emotion recognition task tapping social cognition. Results revealed that participants with schizophrenia performed overall worse than controls both in discriminating communicative from non-communicative actions (task A) and in selecting which of the 5 response alternatives best described the observed actions (task B). Interestingly, the impaired performance of schizophrenic participants was mainly due to misclassification of non-communicative stimuli as communicative actions. Correlation analysis revealed that visuospatial abilities predicted performance in task A but not in task B, while facial emotion recognition abilities was correlated with performance in both task A and task B., Conclusions/significance: These findings are consistent with theories of "overmentalizing" (excessive attribution of intentionality) in schizophrenia, and suggest that processing social information from biological motion does rely on social cognition abilities.

The last years of research on numerical development have provided evidence that spatial-numerical associations (SNA) can be formed independent of formal school training. However, most of these studies used various experimental paradigms that referred to slightly different aspects of number and space processing. This poses a question of whether all SNAs described in the developmental literature can be interpreted as a unitary construct, or whether they are rather examples of different, but related phenomena. Our review aims to provide a starting point for a systematic classification of SNA measures used from infancy to late preschool years, and their underlying representations. We propose to distinguish among four basic SNA categories: (i) cross-dimensional magnitude processing, (ii) associations between spatial and numerical intervals, (iii) associations between cardinalities and spatial directions, (iv) associations between ordinalities and spatial directions. Such systematization allows for identifying similarities and differences between processes and representations that underlie the described measures, and also for assessing the adequacy of using different SNA tasks at different developmental stages.

Number-to-space mapping and its directionality are compelling topics in the study of numerical cognition. Usually, literacy and math education are thought to shape a left-to-right number line. We challenged this claim by analyzing performance of preliterate precounting preschoolers in a spatial-numerical task. In our experiment, children exhibited a spatial-numerical congruity (SNC) effect during a nonsymbolic numerosity comparison (quicker reaction times to smaller sets presented on the left side of the screen and to larger ones presented on the right side). These findings suggest that left-to-right number ordering may also have some sources that are independent of reading and math education. We argue that the current explanations of the spatial-numerical link need to be reconsidered., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Rationale: We previously reported that the NR2B subunit-selective N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist Ro 63-1908 produced a marked deficit in response control in the five-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT)., Objectives: The present studies were designed to investigate this further by studying the NR2B NMDA antagonists, ifenprodil, traxoprodil (CP101,606), Ro 25-6981 as well as Ro 63-1908 in this test., Methods: Following training in the 5-CSRTT, separate groups of rats were either tested under (1) standard test conditions [5 s inter-trial interval (ITI), 0.5 s stimulus duration, 100 trials], (2) high (3 s ITI) and low (10 s ITI) event rate of stimulus presentation and (3) a 250-trial protocol in aged 2-year-old rats. In a final study, the effects of traxoprodil were investigated in an operant delayed match to position (DMTP) task, a test of working memory, and compared to dizocilpine and Ro 63-1908., Results: Similar to Ro 63-1908, both traxoprodil (1-10 mg/kg) and Ro 25-6981 (3--30 mg/kg) increased premature responding but also increased response speed with no error trade-off. Conversely, ifenprodil (1--10 mg/kg) slowed response speed and increased omissions with no effect on premature responding. Tested under a variable ITI, Ro 63--1908 (1 mg/kg) increased premature responding at all ITIs, but this change was proportional to controls. At short ITI (3 s), Ro 63-1908 reliably improved performance both in terms of response speed and accuracy (percent correct). In a 250-trial protocol in aged rats, both Ro 63-1908 (0.1-0.3 mg/kg) and, particularly, traxoprodil (1--3 mg/kg) improved performance-increasing response speed and increasing the number of rewards earned during test. Finally, traxoprodil (1--10 mg/kg) improved accuracy and increased response speed in the DMTP task., Conclusions: The present studies support the view that selective NR2B NMDA antagonists promote impulsive-type responding in the 5-CSRTT; however, under certain test conditions, drugs of this class-notably traxoprodil-may also improve task performance.

In the present series of studies, we have investigated the effects of antagonists selective for the 5-HT(2A), 5-HT(2B) and 5-HT(2C) receptors on motor and 'impulsive'-type behaviours elicited by the non-competitive N-methyl- d-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist dizocilpine. The selective 5-HT(2A) receptor antagonist M100,907 (0.5 mg/kg) attenuated the hyperlocomotion and stereotypy produced by dizocilpine (0.1-0.3 mg/kg). The selective 5-HT(2B) receptor antagonist SB215,505 (3 mg/kg) and the selective 5-HT(2C) receptor antagonist SB242,084 (0.5 mg/kg) had no effect against either measure, except that SB242,084 produced a small potentiation of the hyperactivity response. Dizocilpine (0.03 mg/kg) increased premature responding in rats performing the 5-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT), and increased response frequency consequently reducing the mean inter-response time (IRT) and efficiency of responding in a DRL24 task. M100,907 (0.5 mg/kg) attenuated each of these effects, as well as the increased premature responding produced by the NMDA NR2B selective antagonist Ro 63-1908 (1 mg/kg) in the 5-CSRTT. In contrast SB242,084 (0.5 mg/kg) did not attenuate the dizocilpine-induced premature responding or increased responding in the DRL24 task. Rather, SB242,084 (0.05-0.5 mg/kg) produced qualitatively similar effects to dizocilpine, increasing premature responding and reducing IRT. The results suggest that 5-HT(2A) receptor antagonists may normalise certain 'impulsive' behaviours produced by NMDA receptor hypofunction. The 5-HT(2C) receptor antagonist SB242,084 failed to exert equivalent effects, rather a trend toward exacerbation of the behavioural changes produced by dizocilpine was apparent.

In humans, nicotine has been demonstrated to improve both normal and disordered attention, suggesting potential clinical utility for nicotinic ligands. However, attempts to replicate these findings in the rodent have met with some difficulty, thus hampering the search for specific receptor mechanisms underlying these effects. In the present studies, we sought to characterize the effects of nicotine and subtype-selective ligands in a group of aged rats, which show consistent deficits in sustained attention over prolonged sessions of responding in the five-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT). Following the establishment of a replicable performance improvement with nicotine (0.4 mg/kg), we assessed the effects of both SIB 1765F (1-5 mg/kg) and AR-R17779 (20 mg/kg), agonist ligands with selective affinities for the alpha(4)beta(2) and alpha(7) receptor sites, respectively. We then attempted to block this effect of nicotine using the high affinity, competitive nicotinic antagonist DHbetaE (3 mg/kg). Finally, in an attempt to determine whether the psychostimulant profile of nicotinic agonists could be dissociated from their effects on attention, we compared the (R)- and (S)-enantiomers of SIB 1765F in the 5-CSRTT, and in their ability to increase locomotor activity. Reversal of a within-session decline in performance speed and accuracy by nicotine was mimicked by SIB 1765F, but not by AR-R17779, whereas DHbetaE antagonized all of the performance changes induced by nicotine. Finally, the (S)- but not the (R)-enantiomer increased locomotor activity and improved performance in the 5-CSRTT. These results support a critical involvement for the alpha(4)beta(2) nicotinic receptor in mediating the attention-enhancing properties of nicotine.

A new rapid serologic enzyme immunoassay for antibodies to hepatitis C virus (HCV) is described. The assay combines synthetic peptide and recombinant antigens representing putative structural and non structural HCV gene products with paramagnetic microparticle assay (MP assay) technology. Assay readout is based upon an enzymatically generated fluorescent product which is quantified with a novel semi-automated washer/reader instrument system. Assay sensitivity and specificity was determined to be greater than the first generation HCV C-100 EIA using a non-A, non-B hepatitis disease panel, an HCV performance panel, an HCV seroconversion panel, dilutions of HCV reactive sera, and random volunteer blood donor specimens.