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Predators of similar size often compete over prey. In semi-arid ecosystems where water is a limiting resource, prey availability can be affected by water distribution, which further increases resource competition and exacerbate conflict among predators. This can have implications for carnivore dietary competition. Hence, we evaluated the dynamics of food resource competition between African wild dogs and four competing predators (cheetahs, leopards, lions and spotted hyaenas) in different seasons and across areas with different waterhole densities in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. We used the frequency of occurrence of prey items found in predators' scats to analyse diet composition, overlap and prey preference. For most predators, kudu was most frequently consumed and preferred. Low and medium water-dependent prey (medium and small-sized) were mostly consumed by wild dogs, leopards and cheetahs. Wild dog diet overlap was high with all predators, particularly with hyaenas and lions. There were no seasonal differences in the predators diet. The diet overlap of wild dogs with lions was highest in the low waterhole density area, and wild dog diet composition did not differ significantly from the diet of lions and hyaenas. In the low waterhole density area, wild dogs and hyaenas broadened their niche breadth, and predators diet had a higher proportion of low water-dependent prey. A low density of waterholes increased food resource competition. However, high density of waterholes, where there is more prey availability, can increase the aggregation and density of predators, and hence, increase the risks involved in interspecific competition on wild dogs. To reduce food resource competition on wild dogs, we propose to conserve larger-bodied prey that are less dependent on water (e.g. kudu, reedbuck, eland and gemsbok). As the use of water pumping is common practice, we propose maintaining water management heterogeneity where prey which is less dependent on water can also thrive., Competing Interests: None declared., (© 2024 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objectives: Non-normative uncertainty (uncertainty about empirical facts) and normative uncertainty (uncertainty about moral values or beliefs) regarding unsolicited findings (UFs) might play an important role in clinical genetics. Identifying normative uncertainty is of special interest since it might guide towards novel directions for counseling practice. This study aims to gain insight into the role of non-normative and normative uncertainty regarding UFs, as expressed by counselees and counselors., Methods: We performed a secondary qualitative analysis of interviews with counselees (n = 20) and counselors (n = 20) who had been confronted with UFs. Following a deductive approach, we used Han et al.'s existing theoretical framework of uncertainty, in which we additionally incorporated normative uncertainty., Results: Major issues of non-normative uncertainty were practical and personal for counselees, whilst counselors' uncertainty pertained mainly to scientific issues. Normative uncertainty was a major theme throughout the interviews. We encountered the moral conflicts of autonomy vs. beneficence and non-maleficence and of autonomy vs. truthfulness., Conclusion: Non-normative uncertainty regarding UFs highlights the need to gain more insight in their penetrance and clinical utility. This study suggests moral conflicts are a major source of feelings of uncertainty in clinical genetics., Practice Implications: Exploring counselees' non-normative uncertainties and normative conflicts seems a prerequisite to optimize genetic counseling., 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 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In this randomized controlled trial (RCT), the digital socio-emotional competence training Zirkus Empathico was tested in 74 Central European children (5.1 (0.9) years; 34 females) within a longitudinal design (three time points: T1 = pre-training; T2 = immediately following 6-week training, T3 = 3-month follow-up). The pre-registered primary outcome was empathy, secondary outcomes included emotion recognition, prosocial behavior, and behavioral problem reduction; furthermore, children's neural sensitivity to facial expressions quantified with event-related potentials. Compared to controls (N = 38), Zirkus Empathico participants (N = 36) showed increases in empathy (d = 0.28 [-0.17, 0.76]), emotion recognition (d = 0.57 [0.01, 1.06]), prosocial behavior (d = 0.51 [0.05, 0.99]) and reduced behavioral problems (d = 0.54 [0.08, 1.03]). They also showed larger P3 amplitudes to happy vs. angry and neutral facial expressions post-training. Thus, Zirkus Empathico may be a promising digital training for social competence in preschoolers., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The perception of everyday events implies the segmentation into discrete sub-events (i.e. event segmentation). This process is relevant for the prediction of upcoming events and for the recall of recent activities. It is thought to involve dopaminergic networks which are strongly compromised in Parkinson's disease (PD). Indeed, deficits of event segmentation have been previously shown in PD, but underlying neuronal mechanisms remain unknown. We therefore investigated 22 persons with PD and 22 age-matched healthy controls, who performed an event segmentation task with simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG). Both groups had to indicate by button press the beginning of sub-events within three movies showing persons performing everyday activities. The segmentation performance of persons with PD deviated significantly from that of controls. Neurophysiologically, persons with PD expressed reduced theta (4-7 Hz) activity around identified event boundaries compared to healthy controls. Together, these results point to disturbed event processing in PD. According to functions attributed to EEG activities in particular frequency ranges, the PD-related theta reduction could reflect impaired matching of perceptual input with stored event representations and decreased updating processes of event information in working memory and, thus, event boundary identification., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Wildlife is increasingly forced to live in close proximity to humans, resulting in human-wildlife conflict and anthropogenic mortality. Carnivores persisting in human-dominated landscapes respond to anthropogenic threats through fine-scaled spatial and temporal behavioral adjustments. Although crucial for conservation, quantitative information on these adjustments is scarce. Taiwan’s endangered leopard cat occurs in rural human-dominated landscapes with a high anthropogenic mortality risk. To survive, the nocturnal leopard cat needs suitable habitats for foraging and safe refuge for resting during daytime hours when human activity peaks. In this study, we tracked seven VHF-collared leopard cats. To determine habitat selection patterns, we compared land use at nighttime locations and daytime resting sites with random points and fine-scaled vegetation characteristics at daytime resting sites with random points. Leopard cats selected natural habitats for nighttime hunting and avoided manmade and, to a lesser extent, agricultural habitats or used them according to availability. For daytime resting, leopard cats selected natural habitats and, to a lesser extent semi-natural habitats, such as unused land and abandoned orchards. Resting sites were preferentially situated in natural habitats, with little visibility (<2 m), shrubs, reed and stones, away from areas with high levels of human activity. This suggests leopard cats use a proactive strategy to avoid human encounters, which was supported by the reduced temporal overlap with humans and domestic dogs on agricultural land. Resting sites were placed ca. 1 km apart, 12.9 ± 0.3 m (mean ± SE) from the patch’s edges, in patches with a size of 1.21 ± 0.04 ha (mean ± SE). Our results will assist in identifying and preserving suitable resting habitats to support leopard cat conservation.

The perception of everyday events is thought to imply the segmentation into discrete sub-events. Involvement of dopaminergic networks in this process could relate to particular problems of persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) to recall recent activities. In an event segmentation task, persons with PD and healthy controls had to indicate the beginning of sub-events within three movies showing persons performing everyday activities. In a subsequent recognition task, they should judge whether presented pictures of sub-events were part of the watched movies. In a final order memory task, they had to arrange pictures in the sequence in which they had occurred. With respect to the overall segmentation behavior, persons with PD diverged from healthy controls only in the most familiar of the three demonstrated everyday activities. Moreover, persons with PD compared to healthy controls showed generally worse event recognition and committed more errors in the order memory task. These memory deficits were the higher, the more the segmentation moved away from the 'normative' segmentation pattern identified in healthy controls. The findings suggest that dysfunctional structuring of sensory event information contributes to deficient event representations of ongoing everyday activities and recall problems of these recently perceived events in persons with PD., 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 © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) often show particular problems in seemingly simple routines despite relatively preserved cognitive function. We therefore investigated the processing of everyday events on behavioral and neurophysiological levels in a PD and control group. The participants had to indicate via button press whether three sequentially presented sub-events described a previously defined event (e.g., going grocery shopping). Sub-event sequences were either correct or included an event that did not belong to the event (content violation), or events were chronologically wrong (temporal violation). During task execution event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Generally, the PD group showed less accurate performance independently from task conditions, and reaction times to temporal violations were particularly slow compared to the control group. Regarding ERP results, the control group showed a right lateralized N400 effect in response to content violations, which was absent in the PD group indicating altered content event processing. Concerning the reanalysis of content event violations, the expression of late positive components (LPCs) was similar between both groups. Upon temporal violations, both groups also showed a LPC with a tendentially earlier onset in the PD group, resembling positive components indicative of novelty processing. Together, these findings suggest poor event prediction in PD, which may originate from weak event representation or retrieval and possibly relate to prevalent behavioral dysfunctions in everyday life in PD., (© 2022 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Aging has been associated with a motivational shift to positive over negative information (i.e., positivity effect), which is often explained by a limited future time perspective (FTP) within the framework of socioemotional selectivity theory (SST). However, whether a limited FTP functions similarly in younger and older adults, and whether inter-individual differences in socioemotional functioning are similarly associated with preference for positive information (i.e., positivity) is still not clear. We investigated younger (20-35 years, N = 73) and older (60-75 years, N = 56) adults' gaze preferences on pairs of happy, angry, sad, and neutral faces using an eye-tracking system. We additionally assessed several parameters potentially underlying inter-individual differences in emotion processing such as FTP, stress, cognitive functioning, social support, emotion regulation, and well-being. While we found no age-related differences in positivity when the entire trial duration was considered, older adults showed longer fixations on the more positive face in later stages of processing (i.e., positivity shifts ). This allocation of resources toward more positive stimuli might serve an emotion regulatory purpose and seems consistent with the SST. However, our findings suggest that age moderates the relationship between FTP and positivity shifts, such that the relationship between FTP and positivity preferences was negative in older, and positive in younger adults, potentially stemming from an age-related differential meaning of the FTP construct across age. Furthermore, our exploratory analyses showed that along with the age and FTP interaction, lower levels of worry also played a significant role in positivity shifts. We conclude that positivity effects cannot be solely explained by aging, or the associated reduced FTP per se , but is rather determined by a complex interplay of psychosocial and emotional features., (Copyright © 2020 Erbey, Roebbig, Babayan, Kumral, Reinelt, Reiter, Schaare, Uhlig, Nierhaus, Van der Meer, Gaebler and Villringer.)

A previously well man developed acute, marked tender bilateral gynaecomastia two months after confirmed taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus) envenomation. He had had laboratory evidence of thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) including microangiopathic haemolytic anaemia, thrombocytopenia and acute kidney injury. Scrotal ultrasound revealed bilateral testicular atrophy, his serum testosterone was repeatedly low, while his luteinising and follicle stimulating hormone were elevated. It is hypothesised that TMA-related testicular ischaemia was responsible for his primary gonadal failure and dramatic clinical presentation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interests 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 © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Musical expertise promotes both the perception and the processing of music. The aim of the present study was to analyze if musicians compared to non-musicians already have auditory processing advantages at the neural level. 50 musicians and 50 non-musicians worked on a task to determine the individual auditory difference threshold (individual JND threshold). A passive oddball paradigm followed while the EEG activity was recorded. Frequent standard sounds (528 hertz [Hz]) and rare deviant sounds (individual JND threshold, 535 Hz, and 558 Hz) were presented in the oddball paradigm. The mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a were used as indicators of auditory discrimination skills for frequency differences. Musicians had significantly smaller individual JND thresholds than non-musicians, but musicians were not faster than non-musicians. Musicians and non-musicians showed both the MMN and the P3a at the 535 Hz and 558 Hz condition. In the individual JND threshold condition, non-musicians, whose individual JND threshold was at 539.8 Hz (and therefore even above the deviant sound of 535 Hz), predictably showed the MMN and the P3a. Musicians, whose individual JND threshold was at 531.1 Hz (and thus close to the standard sound of 528 Hz), showed no MMN and P3a-although they were behaviorally able to differentiate frequencies individually within their JND threshold range. This may indicate a key role of attention in triggering the MMN during the detection of frequency differences in the individual JND threshold range (see Tervaniemi et al. in Exp Brain 161:1-10, 2005).

Most people lack the opportunity to see non-domesticated animals in the wild. Consequently, people's perception of wild animals is based on what they see on (social) media. The way in which (social) media portrays non-domesticated animals determines our perception of and behaviour to these animals. People like to interact with animals, which is why venues which offer the opportunity to interact with non-domesticated animals are popular wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs). However, these WTAs more often than not profit at the expense of animal welfare, conservation and human safety. Participation in such WTAs should therefore be discouraged. Through (social) media we are regularly exposed to images of non-domesticated animals in close interactions with humans. Exposure to such images seems to blur the line between what is a friendly domesticated animal and what is a potentially dangerous wild animal. Such images may also increase our desire to engage in interactions with non-domesticated animals ourselves and reduce moral concerns about the use of non-domesticated animals for such interactions, thereby promoting WTAs in which tourists can interact with non-domesticated animals. Wild cat species are commonly used in the wildlife tourism industry to interact with tourists. In this study, we determine whether portrayal of wild cat species in interactions with humans promotes WTAs with wild cats. We presented respondents with an image of a wild cat species (lion, cheetah, caracal) in a control setting, walked by a human (WTA), petted by a human (WTA) or in the wild and asked them to answer a fixed set of questions. We found that portraying wild cat species in interactions with humans reduced the fear of wild cats, encouraged people to regard WTAs with wild cats as acceptable and stimulated them to participate in such activities themselves., Competing Interests: One author (SE) is affiliated to an animal welfare organisation (SPOTS) which raises awareness about the detrimental effect of wildlife tourist attractions on animal welfare. This author contributed to the experimental design and writing of the manuscript. The decision to publish was made jointly and all the authors adhere to the PLOS ONE policies and are satisfied that the presented work is an objective, impartial and fair assessment of the subject area.

During information processing, individuals benefit from bimodally presented input, as has been demonstrated for speech perception (i.e., printed letters and speech sounds) or the perception of emotional expressions (i.e., facial expression and voice tuning). While typically developing individuals show this bimodal benefit, school children with dyslexia do not. Currently, it is unknown whether the bimodal processing deficit in dyslexia also occurs for visual-auditory speech processing that is independent of reading and spelling acquisition (i.e., no letter-sound knowledge is required). Here, we tested school children with and without spelling problems on their bimodal perception of video-recorded mouth movements pronouncing syllables. We analyzed the event-related potential Mismatch Response (MMR) to visual-auditory speech information and compared this response to the MMR to monomodal speech information (i.e., auditory-only, visual-only). We found a reduced MMR with later onset to visual-auditory speech information in children with spelling problems compared to children without spelling problems. Moreover, when comparing bimodal and monomodal speech perception, we found that children without spelling problems showed significantly larger responses in the visual-auditory experiment compared to the visual-only response, whereas children with spelling problems did not. Our results suggest that children with dyslexia exhibit general difficulties in bimodal speech perception independently of letter-speech sound knowledge, as apparent in altered bimodal speech perception and lacking benefit from bimodal information. This general deficit in children with dyslexia may underlie the previously reported reduced bimodal benefit for letter-speech sound combinations and similar findings in emotion perception., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: A high-quality reference genome assembly is a valuable tool for the study of non-model organisms. Genomic techniques can provide important insights about past population sizes and local adaptation and can aid in the development of breeding management plans. This information is important for fields such as conservation genetics, where endangered species require critical and immediate attention. However, funding for genomic-based methods can be sparse for conservation projects, as costs for general species management can consume budgets., Findings: Here, we report the generation of high-quality reference genomes for the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) at a low cost (<$3000), thereby facilitating future studies of this endangered canid. We generated assemblies for three individuals using the linked-read 10x Genomics Chromium system. The most continuous assembly had a scaffold and contig N50 of 21 Mb and 83 Kb, respectively, and completely reconstructed 95% of a set of conserved mammalian genes. Additionally, we estimate the heterozygosity and demographic history of African wild dogs, revealing that although they have historically low effective population sizes, heterozygosity remains high., Conclusions: We show that 10x Genomics Chromium data can be used to effectively generate high-quality genomes from Illumina short-read data of intermediate coverage (∼25x-50x). Interestingly, the wild dog shows higher heterozygosity than other species of conservation concern, possibly due to its behavioral ecology. The availability of reference genomes for non-model organisms will facilitate better genetic monitoring of threatened species such as the African wild dog and help conservationists to better understand the ecology and adaptability of those species in a changing environment.

The synchrony effect (i.e. superior performance at optimal, inferior performance at suboptimal times of day) has been broadly studied within the context of circadian rhythms. Whether one chronotype copes better with the synchrony effect than the other received only insufficient empirical attention. We report on an applied experimental study investigating the impact of chronotype on the synchrony effect in a semantic analogy task. To detect an analogy, 36 participants (12 males) aged between 18 and 40 had to decide whether the relation between events of a source pair was mirrored by the relation between events of a target pair (e.g. to cook: to eat = to saddle: to ride). Temporal orientation of the relation within each event pair was varied corresponding either to the chronological or reverse order. Response times (RTs), error rates, as well as the psychophysiological parameters pre-experimental pupil baseline and peak pupil dilation replicate findings of a synchrony effect (shorter RTs and allocation of less cognitive resources at optimal times of day) and show an impact of chronotype (morning types generally outperforming evening types). Most importantly, morning types appeared to cope better with the synchrony effect than evening types: At suboptimal times, morning types solved the analogy detection task more efficient; that is faster with the same accuracy and without the investment of more cognitive resources. They also showed greater alertness and wakefulness indexed by greater pre-experimental pupil baselines. At optimal times of day, morning types have more cognitive resources available to allocate these to the more demanding conditions to outperform evening types. We interpret these findings to suggest that morning types are more able to adapt to unfavourable circumstances (for instance, by avoiding wasteful resource allocation when there are less cognitive resources available). Evening types appear less able to adapt to suboptimal times than morning types, because they have to deal with social jetlag and decreased self-control.

Assessing the numbers and distribution of threatened species is a central challenge in conservation, often made difficult because the species of concern are rare and elusive. For some predators, this may be compounded by their being sparsely distributed over large areas. Such is the case with the cheetah Acinonyx jubatus. The IUCN Red List process solicits comments, is democratic, transparent, widely-used, and has recently assessed the species. Here, we present additional methods to that process and provide quantitative approaches that may afford greater detail and a benchmark against which to compare future assessments. The cheetah poses challenges, but also affords unique opportunities. It is photogenic, allowing the compilation of thousands of crowd-sourced data. It is also persecuted for killing livestock, enabling estimation of local population densities from the numbers persecuted. Documented instances of persecution in areas with known human and livestock density mean that these data can provide an estimate of where the species may or may not occur in areas without observational data. Compilations of extensive telemetry data coupled with nearly 20,000 additional observations from 39 sources show that free-ranging cheetahs were present across approximately 789,700 km 2 of Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe (56%, 22%, 12% and 10% respectively) from 2010 to 2016, with an estimated adult population of 3,577 animals. We identified a further 742,800 km 2 of potential cheetah habitat within the study region with low human and livestock densities, where another ∼3,250 cheetahs may occur. Unlike many previous estimates, we make the data available and provide explicit information on exactly where cheetahs occur, or are unlikely to occur. We stress the value of gathering data from public sources though these data were mostly from well-visited protected areas. There is a contiguous, transboundary population of cheetah in southern Africa, known to be the largest in the world. We suggest that this population is more threatened than believed due to the concentration of about 55% of free-ranging individuals in two ecoregions. This area overlaps with commercial farmland with high persecution risk; adult cheetahs were removed at the rate of 0.3 individuals per 100 km 2 per year. Our population estimate for confirmed cheetah presence areas is 11% lower than the IUCN's current assessment for the same region, lending additional support to the recent call for the up-listing of this species from vulnerable to endangered status., Competing Interests: Stuart Pimm is an Academic Editor for PeerJ.

Our everyday interactions depend on the ability to maintain a feeling of control over our bodily actions, that is, the sense of agency. The intentional binding effect - a perceived temporal shortening between voluntary actions and sensory outcomes - has been shown to implicitly measure agency. We investigated the effect's underlying mechanisms: prediction and retrospective inference. First, long-term and recent action-outcome coupling were compared. Second, brain activity was recorded to uncover the neural correlates of the two mechanisms. Our results show that the recent accumulation of action-outcome coupling, but not that of a long-term accumulation, is correlated with the binding effect of actions and accounts for both mechanisms. Temporal action binding was reflected in both the readiness potential and the auditory evoked potential. The results shed new light on our understanding of the influence that immediate context of an action has on its temporal binding and the neural substrate of human agency., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Intact phonological processing is crucial for successful literacy acquisition. While individuals with difficulties in reading and spelling (i.e., developmental dyslexia) are known to experience deficient phoneme discrimination (i.e., segmental phonology), findings concerning their prosodic processing (i.e., suprasegmental phonology) are controversial. Because there are no behavior-independent studies on the underlying neural correlates of prosodic processing in dyslexia, these controversial findings might be explained by different task demands. To provide an objective behavior-independent picture of segmental and suprasegmental phonological processing in impaired literacy acquisition, we investigated event-related brain potentials during passive listening in typically and poor-spelling German school children. For segmental phonology, we analyzed the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) during vowel length discrimination, capturing automatic auditory deviancy detection in repetitive contexts. For suprasegmental phonology, we analyzed the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) that automatically occurs in response to prosodic boundaries. Our results revealed spelling group differences for the MMN, but not for the CPS, indicating deficient segmental, but intact suprasegmental phonological processing in poor spellers. The present findings point towards a differential role of segmental and suprasegmental phonology in literacy disorders and call for interventions that invigorate impaired literacy by utilizing intact prosody in addition to training deficient phonemic awareness., (Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Establishing and maintaining protected areas (PAs) are key tools for biodiversity conservation. However, this approach is insufficient for many species, particularly those that are wide-ranging and sparse. The cheetah Acinonyx jubatus exemplifies such a species and faces extreme challenges to its survival. Here, we show that the global population is estimated at ∼7,100 individuals and confined to 9% of its historical distributional range. However, the majority of current range (77%) occurs outside of PAs, where the species faces multiple threats. Scenario modeling shows that, where growth rates are suppressed outside PAs, extinction rates increase rapidly as the proportion of population protected declines. Sensitivity analysis shows that growth rates within PAs have to be high if they are to compensate for declines outside. Susceptibility of cheetah to rapid decline is evidenced by recent rapid contraction in range, supporting an uplisting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List threat assessment to endangered. Our results are applicable to other protection-reliant species, which may be subject to systematic underestimation of threat when there is insufficient information outside PAs. Ultimately, conserving many of these species necessitates a paradigm shift in conservation toward a holistic approach that incentivizes protection and promotes sustainable human-wildlife coexistence across large multiple-use landscapes., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Successful communication in everyday life crucially involves the processing of auditory and visual components of speech. Viewing our interlocutor and processing visual components of speech facilitates speech processing by triggering auditory processing. Auditory phoneme processing, analyzed by event-related brain potentials (ERP), has been shown to be associated with impairments in reading and spelling (i.e. developmental dyslexia), but visual aspects of phoneme processing have not been investigated in individuals with such deficits. The present study analyzed the passive visual Mismatch Response (vMMR) in school children with and without developmental dyslexia in response to video-recorded mouth movements pronouncing syllables silently. Our results reveal that both groups of children showed processing of visual speech stimuli, but with different scalp distribution. Children without developmental dyslexia showed a vMMR with typical posterior distribution. In contrast, children with developmental dyslexia showed a vMMR with anterior distribution, which was even more pronounced in children with severe phonological deficits and very low spelling abilities. As anterior scalp distributions are typically reported for auditory speech processing, the anterior vMMR of children with developmental dyslexia might suggest an attempt to anticipate potentially upcoming auditory speech information in order to support phonological processing, which has been shown to be deficient in children with developmental dyslexia., (© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

This study on analogical reasoning evaluates the impact of fluid intelligence on adaptive changes in neural efficiency over the course of an experiment and specifies the underlying cognitive processes. Grade 10 students (N=80) solved unfamiliar geometric analogy tasks of varying difficulty. Neural efficiency was measured by the event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the alpha band, an indicator of cortical activity. Neural efficiency was defined as a low amount of cortical activity accompanying high performance during problem-solving. Students solved the tasks faster and more accurately the higher their FI was. Moreover, while high FI led to greater cortical activity in the first half of the experiment, high FI was associated with a neurally more efficient processing (i.e., better performance but same amount of cortical activity) in the second half of the experiment. Performance in difficult tasks improved over the course of the experiment for all students while neural efficiency increased for students with higher but decreased for students with lower fluid intelligence. Based on analyses of the alpha sub-bands, we argue that high fluid intelligence was associated with a stronger investment of attentional resource in the integration of information and the encoding of relations in this unfamiliar task in the first half of the experiment (lower-2 alpha band). Students with lower fluid intelligence seem to adapt their applied strategies over the course of the experiment (i.e., focusing on task-relevant information; lower-1 alpha band). Thus, the initially lower cortical activity and its increase in students with lower fluid intelligence might reflect the overcoming of mental overload that was present in the first half of the experiment., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This study investigates the representation of the temporal progression of events by means of the causal change in a patient. Subjects were asked to verify the relationship between adjectives denoting a source and resulting feature of a patient. The features were presented either chronologically or inversely to a primed event context given by a verb (to cut: long-short vs. short-long). Effects on response time and on eye movement data show that the relationship between features presented chronologically is verified more easily than that between features presented inversely. Post hoc, however, we found that the effects of temporal order occurred only when subjects read the features more than once. Then, the relationship between the features is matched with the causal change implied by the event context (contextual strategy). When subjects read the features only once, subjects respond to the relationship between the features without taking into account the event context., (Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.)

Previous work on the neural underpinnings of emotional conflict processing has largely focused on designs that instruct participants to ignore a distracter which conflicts with a target. In contrast, this study investigated the noninstructed experience and evaluation of an emotional conflict, where positive or negative cues can be subjectively prioritized. To this end, healthy participants freely watched short film scenes that evoked emotional conflicts while their BOLD responses were measured. Participants' individual ratings of conflict and valence perception during the film scenes were collected immediately afterwards, and the individual ratings were regressed against the BOLD data. Our analyses revealed that (a) amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex were significantly involved in prioritizing positive or negative cues, but not in subjective evaluations of conflict per se, and (b) superior temporal sulcus (STS) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL), which have been implicated in social cognition and emotion control, were involved in both prioritizing positive or negative cues and subjectively evaluating conflict, and may thus constitute "hubs" or "switches" in emotional conflict processing. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses further revealed stronger functional connectivity between IPL and ventral prefrontal-medial parietal areas in prioritizing negative cues, and stronger connectivity between STS and dorsal-rostral prefrontal-medial parietal areas in prioritizing positive cues. In sum, our results suggest that IPL and STS are important in the subjective evaluation of complex conflicts and influence valence prioritization via prefrontal and parietal control centers. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2234-2246, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., (© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Purpose: The diagnosis of cancer, the symptoms of the illness and its treatment have an influence on how patients and their caregivers experience distress. However, data focusing on caregivers and their cancer-related distress in the outpatient setting is sparse. This study aimed to compare cancer-related distress of caregivers and patients and to derive implications for the system of outpatient psycho-oncological care., Methods: One hundred thirty-eight patients and 102 caregivers receiving psycho-oncological counseling completed a standardized interview based on a self-assessment questionnaire (Questionnaire on Stress in Cancer Patients, FBK)., Results: Group comparisons for cancer-related distress revealed one statistically significant difference for the subscale 'Fear' of the FBK, Z = 2.308, p = .021, and d = .44. Caregivers showed higher cancer-related fear (M = 2.76, SD = 1.14) than patients (M = 2.41, SD = 1.29). There were no differences in 'psychosomatic complaints', 'information deficit', 'restrictions in everyday life', 'social strains', or the total score of the FBK., Conclusions: Caregivers seem to experience cancer-related distress equal to or even more severely than patients themselves. Results suggest that there is a need for more low-threshold offers of outpatient psycho-oncological counseling for caregivers.

Scripts that store knowledge of everyday events are fundamentally important for managing daily routines. Content event knowledge (i.e., knowledge about which events belong to a script) and temporal event knowledge (i.e., knowledge about the chronological order of events in a script) constitute qualitatively different forms of knowledge. However, there is limited information about each distinct process and the time course involved in accessing content and temporal event knowledge. Therefore, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to either correctly presented event sequences or event sequences that contained a content or temporal error. We found an N400, which was followed by a posteriorly distributed P600 in response to content errors in event sequences. By contrast, we did not find an N400 but an anteriorly distributed P600 in response to temporal errors in event sequences. Thus, the N400 seems to be elicited as a response to a general mismatch between an event and the established event model. We assume that the expectancy violation of content event knowledge, as indicated by the N400, induces the collapse of the established event model, a process indicated by the posterior P600. The expectancy violation of temporal event knowledge is assumed to induce an attempt to reorganize the event model in working memory, a process indicated by the frontal P600., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Literacy acquisition is highly associated with auditory processing abilities, such as auditory discrimination. The event-related potential Mismatch Response (MMR) is an indicator for cortical auditory discrimination abilities and it has been found to be reduced in individuals with reading and writing impairments and also in infants at risk for these impairments. The goal of the present study was to analyze the relationship between auditory speech discrimination in infancy and writing abilities at school age within subjects, and to determine when auditory speech discrimination differences, relevant for later writing abilities, start to develop. We analyzed the MMR registered in response to natural syllables in German children with and without writing problems at two points during development, that is, at school age and at infancy, namely at age 1 month and 5 months. We observed MMR related auditory discrimination differences between infants with and without later writing problems, starting to develop at age 5 months-an age when infants begin to establish language-specific phoneme representations. At school age, these children with and without writing problems also showed auditory discrimination differences, reflected in the MMR, confirming a relationship between writing and auditory speech processing skills. Thus, writing problems at school age are, at least, partly grounded in auditory discrimination problems developing already during the first months of life., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Currently, health care and medical decision-making at the end of life for older people are often insufficiently patient-centred. In this trial we study the effects of Advance Care Planning (ACP), a formalised process of timely communication about care preferences at the end of life, for frail older people., Methods/design: We will conduct a cluster randomised controlled trial among older people residing in care homes or receiving home care in the Netherlands. The intervention group will receive the ACP program Respecting Choices® in addition to usual care. The control group will receive usual care only. Participants in both groups will fill out questionnaires at baseline and after 12 months. We hypothesize that ACP will lead to better patient activation in medical decision making and quality of life, while reducing the number of medical interventions and thus health care costs. Multivariate analysis will be used to compare differences between the intervention group and the control group at baseline and to compare differences in changes after 12 months following the inclusion., Discussion: Our study can contribute to more understanding of the effects of ACP on patient activation and quality of life in frail older people. Further, we will gain insight in the costs and cost-effectiveness of ACP. This study will facilitate ACP policy for older people in the Netherlands., Trial Registration: Nederlands Trial Register: NTR4454.

In response to stressors, animals can increase the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis, resulting in elevated glucocorticoid concentrations. An increase in glucocorticoids results in an increase in heterophils and a decrease in lymphocytes, which ratio (H/L-ratio) is an indicator of stress in birds. The physiological response to a stressor can depend on individual characteristics, like dominance rank, sex and personality. Although the isolated effects of these characteristics on the response to a stressor have been well studied, little is known about the response in relation to a combination of these characteristics. In this study we investigate the relationship between social stress, dominance rank, sex and exploratory behaviour as a validated operational measure of personality in great tits (Parus major). Great tits show consistent individual differences in behaviour and physiology in response to stressors, and exploratory behaviour can be classified as fast or slow exploring. We group-housed four birds, two fast and two slow explorers, of the same sex that were previously singly housed, in an aviary and compared the H/L-ratio, lymphocyte and heterophil count before and after group housing. After experiencing the social context all birds increased their H/L-ratio and heterophil count. Females showed a stronger increase in H/L-ratio and heterophil count than males, which seemed to be related to a higher number of agonistic interactions compared to males. Dominance rank and exploration type did not affect the H/L-ratio or heterophil count. Contrary to our expectations, all birds increased their lymphocyte count. However, this increase was slower for fast than for slow explorers. Our study suggests that personality and sex related differences, but not dominance rank, are associated with changes in an individual's physiological response due to a social context.

This study investigates cognitive resource allocation dependent on fluid and numerical intelligence in arithmetic/algebraic tasks varying in difficulty. Sixty-six 11th grade students participated in a mathematical verification paradigm, while pupil dilation as a measure of resource allocation was collected. Students with high fluid intelligence solved the tasks faster and more accurately than those with average fluid intelligence, as did students with high compared to average numerical intelligence. However, fluid intelligence sped up response times only in students with average but not high numerical intelligence. Further, high fluid but not numerical intelligence led to greater task-related pupil dilation. We assume that fluid intelligence serves as a domain-general resource that helps to tackle problems for which domain-specific knowledge (numerical intelligence) is missing. The allocation of this resource can be measured by pupil dilation., (Copyright © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Event knowledge includes persons and objects and their roles in the event. This study investigated whether the progression of patients from a source to a resulting feature, such as the progression of hair that is cut from long to short, forms part of event representations. Subjects were presented with an event prime followed by two adjectives and asked to judge whether the adjectives were interrelated. Results showed that the semantic interrelation of two adjectives is recognized faster and more accurately when the adjectives denote source and resulting features of the patient of the primed event ("cutting": long-short). Furthermore, we found that presenting an event-related adjective in combination with an unrelated adjective makes it more difficult to recognize that the two adjectives are not interrelated, but only when the event-related adjective denotes a source feature. We argue that an inference mechanism automatically completes the representation of the event. We conclude that source and resulting features are represented in a goal-directed and chronological way.