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This paper introduces A Library for Innovative Category Exemplars (ALICE) database, a resource that enhances research efficiency in cognitive and developmental studies by providing printable 3D objects representing 30 novel categories. Our research consists of three experiments to validate the novelty and complexity of the objects in ALICE. Experiment 1 assessed the novelty of objects through adult participants' subjective familiarity ratings and agreement on object naming and descriptions. The results confirm the general novelty of the objects. Experiment 2 employed multidimensional scaling (MDS) to analyze perceived similarities between objects, revealing a three-dimensional structure based solely on shape, indicative of their complexity. Experiment 3 used two clustering techniques to categorize objects: k-means clustering for creating nonoverlapping global categories, and hierarchical clustering for allowing global categories that overlap and have a hierarchical structure. Through stability tests, we verified the robustness of each clustering method and observed a moderate to good consensus between them, affirming the strength of our dual approach in effectively and accurately delineating meaningful object categories. By offering easy access to customizable novel stimuli, ALICE provides a practical solution to the challenges of creating novel physical objects for experimental purposes.

The purpose of this study was to examine the responses of a Steller sea lion to two consecutive commands. We conducted this study on one same subject, Hama, as a continuation of Sasaki et al. (2022), which examined whether the Steller sea lion can discriminate human vocal commands. In Sasaki et al. (2022), commands were presented individually to examine the accuracy rate for each command. In the present study, we observed how Hama responded to the rapid presentation of two consecutive commands. The commands were presented in 20 different orders and combinations as 20 command combination patterns using five different commands. The results showed that Hama responded to 12 command combination patterns by performing behaviors corresponding to two consecutive commands. Hama performed the two behaviors in sequence in 8 of the 12 command combination patterns. The responses to the other four command combination patterns were combined single behaviors that combined the behaviors indicated by the two consecutive commands and that were already connected to different single commands. Although the combined single behaviors were not simple combinations of behaviors induced by the two consecutive commands, the combined single behaviors included the common body parts (e.g., fore flippers) or common action types (e.g., rotation) of behaviors induced by each command in the two consecutive commands. These results not only indicate that Hama could understand multiple linguistic information, but also suggest the possibility that Hama spontaneously formed categories based on the learned commands.

Inconsistency in consumer time preferences has been well established and used to explain seemingly short-sighted behaviors (e.g. failures of self-control). However, prior research has conflated time-inconsistent preferences (discount rates that vary over time) with present bias (greater discounting when outcomes are delayed specifically from the present, as opposed to from a future time). This research shows that time-inconsistent preferences are reliably observed only when choices are substantially delayed (e.g. months into the future), which cannot be explained by present bias. This seeming puzzle is explained by a novel cross-period discounting framework, which predicts that consumers are more impatient when choosing between options occurring in different subjective financial periods. As a result, they display inconsistent time preferences and are less willing to wait for an equally delayed outcome specifically when a common delay to both options moves the larger-later option into a subsequent financial period. Six studies and multiple supplementary studies demonstrate that sensitivity to subjective financial periods accounts for time-inconsistent consumer preferences better than current models of time discounting based on present bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will investigate the complexities involved in moderating casteist content on major social media platforms. Focusing on the challenges of categorizing hate speech targeting India's marginalized caste-oppressed minorities, the research aims to delve into the mechanisms utilized by platforms for content moderation. It will critically analyze existing categorization systems, exploring the efficacy and limitations in identifying and addressing casteist comments. By leveraging information sciences concepts like grounded coding and taxonomies, the study will elucidate the complexities of classifying caste-related hate speech within these systems. Moreover, it will highlight the implications of inadequate categorization on content visibility and community impact.

Animacy perception, the ability to discern living from non-living entities, is crucial for survival and social interaction, as it includes recognizing abstract concepts such as movement, purpose, and intentions. This process involves interpreting cues that may suggest the intentions or actions of others. It engages the temporal cortex (TC), particularly the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the adjacent region of the inferior temporal cortex (ITC), as well as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). However, it remains unclear how animacy is dynamically encoded over time in these brain areas and whether its processing is distributed or localized. In this study, we addressed these questions by employing a symbolic categorization task involving animate and inanimate objects using natural movie stimuli. Simultaneously, electrocorticography were conducted in both the TC and dmPFC. Time-frequency analysis revealed region-specific frequency representations throughout the observation of the movies. Spatial searchlight decoding analysis demonstrated that animacy processing is represented in a distributed manner. Regions encoding animacy information were found to be dispersed across the fundus and lip of the STS, as well as in the ITC. Next, we examined whether these dispersed regions form functional networks. Independent component analysis revealed that the spatial distribution of the component with the most significant animacy information corresponded with the dispersed regions identified by the spatial decoding analysis. Furthermore, Granger causality analysis indicated that these regions exhibit frequency-specific directional functional connectivity, with a general trend of causal influence from the ITC to STS across multiple frequency bands. Notably, a prominent feedback flow in the alpha band from the ITC to both the ventral bank and fundus of the STS was identified. These findings suggest a distributed and functionally interconnected neural substrate for animacy processing across the STS and ITC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the ability of listeners to categorize second language (L2) accents with high familiarity and examines how their linguistic background affects their categorization accuracy. The participants were first language (L1) Greek bilingual and multilingual listeners, who completed a task involving the categorization of talkers' origins. After listening to samples of English (the listeners' L2) and Greek-accented English, they assigned each sample to either England or Greece. Both bilingual and multilingual listeners showed accuracy above chance levels. This suggests among other findings that shared knowledge of the target language structure by both the talkers and listeners who speak the same L1 (i.e., Greek) and the use of common interlanguage patterns by the talkers may have aided in the easy identification of Greek-accented English by the listeners. Interestingly, multilinguals did not demonstrate higher accuracy than bilinguals in categorizing accents, indicating that the exposure advantage found in previous research may not apply when familiarity effects are strong. Another important finding was the better identification of Greek-accented English compared to English by the listeners; this provides evidence that listeners were more attuned to the acoustic features characteristic of the former accent. The findings carry theoretical and pedagogical implications for L2 acquisition and crosslinguistic speech perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning requires changing the brain. This typically occurs through experience, study, or instruction. We report an alternate route for humans to acquire visual knowledge, through the direct sculpting of activity patterns in the human brain that mirror those expected to arise through learning. We used neurofeedback from closed-loop real-time functional MRI to create new categories of visual objects in the brain, without the participants' explicit awareness. After neural sculpting, participants exhibited behavioral and neural biases for the learned, but not for the control categories. The ability to sculpt new perceptual distinctions into the human brain offers a noninvasive research paradigm for causal testing of the link between neural representations and behavior. As such, beyond its current application to perception, our work potentially has broad relevance for advancing understanding in other domains of cognition such as decision-making, memory, and motor control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Area TE is required for normal learning of visual categories based on perceptual similarity. To evaluate whether category learning changes neural activity in area TE, we trained two monkeys (both male) implanted with multielectrode arrays to categorize natural images of cats and dogs. Neural activity during a passive viewing task was compared pre- and post-training. After the category training, the accuracy of abstract category decoding improved. Single units became more category selective, the proportion of single units with category selectivity increased, and units sustained their category-specific responses for longer. Visual category learning thus appears to enhance category separability in area TE by driving changes in the stimulus selectivity of individual neurons and by recruiting more units to the active network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent above-normal temperatures, which exacerbated the impacts of precipitation deficits, are recognized as the primary driver of droughts in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), USA. This research aims to enhance drought prediction models by addressing structural changes in non-stationary temperature time series and minimizing drought misclassification through the ES-CBS-SVR model, which integrates ESSVR and CBS-SVR. The research investigates whether this coupling improves prediction accuracy. Furthermore, the model's performance will be tested in a region distinct from those originally used to evaluate its generalizability and effectiveness in forecasting drought conditions. We used a change point detection technique to divide the non-stationary time series into stationary subsets. To minimize the chances of drought mis-categorization, category-based scoring was used in ES-CBS-SVR. In this study, we tested and compared the ES-CBS-SVR and SVR models in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) using data from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS), where the periods 1950–2004 and 2005–2014 were used for training and testing, respectively. The results indicated that ES-CBS-SVR outperformed SVR consistently across of the drought indices used in this study in a higher portion of the UCRB. This is mainly attributed to variable hyperparameters (regularization constant and tube size) used in ES-CBS-SVR to deal with structural changes in the data. Overall, our analysis demonstrated that the ES-CBS-SVR can predict drought more accurately than traditional SVR in a warming climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way that societies assign people to racial categories has far-reaching social, economic, and political consequences. One framework for establishing racial boundaries is based on ancestry, which historically has been leveraged to create rigid racial categories, particularly with respect to being categorized as White. A second framework is based on skin tone, which can vary within families and across the lifespan, and is thus more likely to blur racial boundaries. The persistence of these distinct cultural beliefs about race requires that they be transmitted to each new generation, but there have been few cross-cultural studies on their development during childhood. Participants (5- to 12-year-old children, N = 123) were from the United States, in which the ancestry model has been more prevalent, or from Brazil, in which the skin tone model has been more prevalent. In both countries, 5- to 7-year-olds endorsed the belief that skin tone determines race, for example, by assigning biological siblings with differing skin tones to different racial categories. However, racial concepts diverged among the 10- to 12-year-olds, with children from the United States shifting toward a classification based on ancestry and children in Brazil endorsing a classification based on skin tone even more strongly with age. These differing conceptions were especially evident with reference to White racial categorization: Older children from Brazil persisted in classifying lighter skinned people as White when they had African ancestry, unlike older children from the United States. These findings provide important insights into the developmental and cultural influences on racial classification systems. Public Significance Statement: Psychological research on racial categorization has focused almost exclusively on U.S.-centric views of race. This research indicates that adults in the United States tend to classify people in ways that reflect essentialist, ancestry-based views, such as classifying a child of Black parents as Black, regardless of skin tone. However, sociological investigations of cultures beyond the United States indicate that such views of race are not universal; indeed, less essentialist, skin tone views of race are prevalent in Brazil. The present study examines the developmental origins of these diverging racial classification systems. The present research offers an international perspective that informs our understanding of beliefs about race. This work contributes to broader and more nuanced conversations about racial categorization and its implications, both in psychological research and in society at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across six preregistered studies (N = 1,292; recruited from university subject pools and Prolific Academic), we investigate how face perception along the dimensions of gender/sex and race can vary based on immediate contextual information as well as personal experience. In Studies 1a and 1b, we find that when placing stimuli along a continuum from male to female, cisgender participants sort prototypical gender/sex faces in a bimodal fashion and show less consensus and greater error when placing faces of intermediate gender/sex. We replicate and extend these findings to race in Study 2. In Study 3, we test whether sorting patterns can be influenced by preexisting experiences, and find evidence that transgender/nonbinary participants show less error than cisgender heterosexual participants when sorting intermediary faces. Finally, in Studies 4 and 5, we test whether cisgender participants' judgments of intermediary faces along the continuum are influenced by the specific circumstances under which they are asked to sort. Here, we find that changing the sorting framework to include a third category resulted in less error when placing intermediary faces along the continuum than when participants were provided with only two category labels or two categories and a line at the midpoint, suggesting that new perceptual categories introduced with minimal training can be adopted quickly and successfully in a perceptual task. These data suggest that both long-term life experiences and quick experimental interventions can shape how we think about gender/sex and race. Public Significance Statement: As scientists and as a society, we often describe social dimensions categorically, using terms like male and female, man and woman, or Black, Asian, and White. Yet in reality, these are continuous dimensions wherein people can be intersex, nonbinary, multiracial, or use other terms to describe themselves and others. This work investigates gender/sex and race face perception, with a focus on how less discrete, more intermediate faces are perceived. Across six studies, we find that people are influenced by both well-known labels (e.g., Black, White, man, and woman) as well as personal experience when sorting faces that vary by gender/sex and race. This both reaffirms the importance of category labels in our thinking about social categories and suggests that these categories might be more flexible than previously acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In March 2020, the emergence of COVID-19 as a pandemic prompted large scale, social lockdowns internationally. Participants/Method: Here, we compared the mental health symptoms and social functioning of pre-pandemic college students collected during the Spring 2020 semester to those of a pandemic group collected during the Fall 2020 semester. Results: Results reveal that students assessed during the pandemic reported more severe symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression, yet no difference in anxiety symptoms, relative to students assessed before the pandemic. Furthermore, students assessed during the pandemic conceptualized and categorized their emotions with significantly more neutral emotions and significantly fewer positive emotions, yet no difference in negative emotions, relative to students assessed before the pandemic. Despite these mental health effects, we found no difference between the two groups in self-reported social functioning. Conclusion: Overall, these results suggest young adults' mental health was significantly impacted by the pandemic, with the potential for long lasting effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geopolitical and societal changes are increasingly narrated using the concept of complexity. In a range of policy contexts, from climate to finance and peacekeeping to defence and security, complexity is often prominent. This article explores the contemporary expressions of complexity in defence and security scholarship and policy. To understand the expressions of complexity, we view it as a 'folk theory' – what others have called a category of practice. We illustrate how this folk theory has gained prominence in NATO policy regarding the organizing of future war and warfare as one example of a policy context in which expressions of complexity are produced and promoted. Specifically, we examine NATO's future warfighting concept – multi-domain operations – and explore how the concept offers a way and a new language to make sense of an uncertain future and make it governable from the present. We discuss some consequences of a 'folk theory' becoming the explanation rather than one of many explanations of the future defence and security landscape. As a representative of folk theory, complexity offers a strong performative master narrative for a variety of orientations, yet one whose practical relevance for the organization of security can be questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent studies have focused extensively on the reflexive use of categories and methodologies in research on migrants and refugees, they have paid less attention to individuals whose parents are migrants. Previous studies have noted that the terms second generation migrants and migrant descendants are centered on migration, thereby homogenizing experiences and deepening social exclusion of the people they define. However, we have less understanding of research participants' perceptions of these categories. Additionally, the focus of most research has been on non-white descendants of migrants, which risks aligning scientific discourse with mainstream narratives that problematize some groups while silencing others. This article bridges this gap by examining the perception of research categories among people raised in Germany by Polish parents. It presents interviewees' negotiations of categories in the context of their status as an invisible minority as well as their access to various class resources. Drawing from autobiographical narrative interviews, the study first demonstrates how the positioning of interlocutors as invisible begins at the micro level through everyday interactions with the mainstream society and their families. It then reveals the mechanisms of this process: ascribing identifications, creating an anti-migrant environment, exerting pressure on integration, and limiting resources. It argues that invisibility limits interlocutors' possibilities to negotiate a sense of belonging and express self-identification. Engaging participants in category negotiations and autobiographical narrative interviews, along with considering the class perspective, expands the space for reflecting on identity and helps to align categories with participants' lived experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of tact and match-to-sample instructions on the increase and maintenance of intraverbal responses to subcategorical questions (i.e., naming multiple items in a subcategory of a category). Three Chinese children on the autism spectrum (2 boys, 1 girl, aged 6–8 years old) participated in this study. Results indicated that intraverbal responses to subcategorical questions emerged or increased for most subcategories for all three participants following the completion of instruction without direct training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into healthcare represents a transformative shift, offering opportunities for enhancing patient care, diagnostic accuracy, process optimization and treatment pathways. This research sets out to forge a strategic management decision support framework for leveraging AI within the healthcare sector, aimed at systematically exploring and integrating AI innovations to bolster the patient health outcomes. By creating a comprehensive categorization system, we attempt to navigate the complex array of possible AI applications within the field of healthcare, hence enabling the identification, selection, and advancement of AIdriven initiatives. Through a blend of systematic literature review and expert insights, this study maps possible AI applications across dimensions like 'medical disciplines', 'healthcare processes', 'AI research areas', and 'user groups'. By reflecting the diverse perspectives, this system transcends mere classification and stands as a cornerstone for identifying, selecting, and developing AI-driven medical use cases to guide strategic implementations of AI within clinical settings. This multidimensional system offers a blueprint for healthcare entities to strategically navigate the AI landscape, enabling them to make informed decisions about technology adoption and change management processes, ultimately leading to improved patient care and operational efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inpatient care facilities globally are facing a critical shortage of staff, posing significant challenges to resident well-being and care quality. This issue is further compounded by demographic shifts and increasing care demands. While technological advancements offer promise in alleviating nursing staff burdens, their effective integration remains complex, with nursing staff acceptance playing a pivotal role. This paper describes a systematic approach designed to streamline the process of identifying, categorizing, and prioritizing suitable technologies in inpatient care settings. By taking into account the specific needs and requirements of nursing staff, this approach, validated through a comprehensive case study, aims to facilitate targeted technology adoption, thereby contributing to the successful digitization of this occupational domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the challenges and solutions in the physical characterization of materials at the microscale using robotized systems, with a specific focus on manipulating and characterizing micrometer-sized particles with different and complex 3D shapes and internal sub-micrometer structures. In this paper, the studied particles are Molybdenum diSulfide (MoS2) based materials generated within the contact interface during friction.These particles are being studied because they offer a particularly promising solution for reducing mechanical friction and the associated high energy losses. However, they are distributed randomly within the contact area and possess intricate sub-micrometer structures. Characterization demands precise manipulation techniques in an in-situ Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM) environment. To address these challenges, existing commercial micro and nanomanipulation tools are integrated within a vacuum SEM chamber, and robotics strategies are investigated to enable the whole process from particle preparation, and manipulation setup definition, to effective MoS 2 particle characterization all in-situ SEM. A set of several complementary experimental investigations are done and involve force measurement and deformation estimation studies, leading to the first qualitative results on MoS 2 based particles directly from the friction track. The work contributes to advancements in both microscale manipulation and characterization. It also has implications for lubrication research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans categorize objects not only based on perceptual features (e.g. red, rounded), but also function (e.g. used to transport people). Category membership can be communicated via labelling (e.g. 'apple', 'vehicle'). While it is well established that even preverbal infants rely on labels to learn categories, it remains unclear what is the nature of those categories: whether they simply contain sets of visual features diagnostic of category membership, or whether they additionally contain abstract category markers or symbols (e.g. linguistic in the form of category labels or non-linguistic). To address this question, we first used labelling to teach two novel object categories, each composed of unfamiliar visually unrelated objects, to adults and nine-month-olds. Then, we assessed categorization in an electroencephalography category-oddball task. Both adults and infants displayed stronger neural responses to the infrequent category, which, in the absence of visual features shared by all category members, indicates that the categories they set up contained feature-independent category markers. Well before language production starts, labels help infants to discover categories without relying on perceptual similarities across objects and build category representations with summary elements that may be critical for the development of abstract thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans adopt non-linguistic signals, from smoke signals to Morse code, to communicate. This communicative flexibility emerges early: embedding novel sine-wave tones in a social, communicative exchange permits 6-month-olds to imbue them with communicative status, and to use them in subsequent learning. Here, to specify the mechanism(s) that undergird this capacity, we introduced infants to a novel signal—sine-wave tone sequences—in brief videotaped vignettes with non-human agents, systematically manipulating the socio-communicative cues in each vignette. Next, we asked whether infants interpreted new tone sequences as communicative in a fundamental cognitive task: object categorization. Infants successfully interpreted tones as communicative if they were produced in dialogues with one agent speaking (Study 1) or both agents producing tones (Study 2), or in monologues involving only a single agent (Study 3). What was essential was cross-modal temporal synchrony between an agent's movements and the tones: when this synchrony was disrupted (Study 4), infants failed in the subsequent task. This synchrony, we propose, licensed an inference that the tones, generated by an agent, were candidate communicative signals. Infants' early capacity to use synchrony to identify new communicative signals and recruit them in subsequent learning has implications for theory and for interventions to support infants facing communicative challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examined the relatively unexplored realm of face perception, investigating the activities within human brain face-selective regions during the observation of faces at both subordinate and superordinate levels. We recorded intracranial EEG signals from the ventral temporal cortex in neurosurgical patients implanted with subdural electrodes during viewing of face subcategories (human, mammal, bird, and marine faces) as well as various non-face control stimuli. The results revealed a noteworthy correlation in response patterns across all face-selective areas in the ventral temporal cortex, not only within the same face category but also extending to different face categories. Intriguingly, we observed a systematic decrease in response correlation coupled with an increased response onset time from human face to mammalian face, bird face and marine faces. Our result aligns with the notion that distinctions at the basic level category (e.g., human face versus non-human face) emerges earlier than those at the superordinate level (e.g., animate versus inanimate). This indicates response gradient in the representation of facial images within human face-sensitive regions, transitioning progressively from human faces to non-face stimuli. Our findings provide insights into spatiotemporal dynamic of face representations which varies spatially and at different timescales depending on the face subcategory represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to social-cognitive accounts, the other-race effect in face recognition is driven by our tendency to attend to identity cues when encoding own-race faces (“individuation”) and racial cues when encoding other-race faces (“categorization”). This study employed novel one-back tasks to ensure that participants processed identity (individuation) or racial cues (categorization) when learning faces in an old/new recognition task. Categorization encoding eliminated the other-race effect in recognition sensitivity when list length was short (Experiment 2) but not when list length was long (Experiment 1B). Importantly, this elimination was driven by weaker performance for own-race faces, rather than stronger performance for other-race faces. Individuation encoding failed to reduce the other-race effect, regardless of list length (Experiment 1A and Experiment 2). We compare these findings with previous studies and propose several methodological features (e.g., presentation duration, task difficulty) that might influence the observed impacts of individuation and categorization encoding on the other-race effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposed novel investigation focused on leveraging an innovative diabetic retinopathy (DR) dataset comprising seven severity stages, an approach not previously examined. By capitalizing on this unique resource, this study′s findings set a new benchmark for DR classification, highlighting the transformative potential of incorporating advanced data into AI models. This study developed a Vgg16 transfer learning model and gauged its performance against established algorithms including Vgg‐19, AlexNet, and SqueezeNet. Remarkably, our results achieved accuracy rates of 96.95, 96.75, 96.09, and 92.96, respectively, emphasizing the contribution of our work. We strongly emphasized comprehensive severity rating, yielding perfect and impressive F1‐scores of 1.00 for "mild NPDR" and 97.00 for "no DR signs." The Vgg16‐TL model consistently outperformed other models across all severity levels, reinforcing the value of our discoveries. Our deep learning training process, carefully selecting a learning rate of 1e‐05, allowed continuous refinements in training and validation accuracy. Beyond metrics, our investigation underscores the vital clinical importance of precise DR classification for preventing vision loss. This study conclusively establishes deep learning as a powerful transformative tool for developing effective DR algorithms with the potential to improve patient outcomes and advance ophthalmology standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equivalence‐based instruction (EBI) and transfer of function are effective with neurotypical adults and children; however, only one study to date evaluated their effectiveness with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We used EBI to teach three preschool children with ASD to form three age‐appropriate classes (categories) consisting of three stimuli each. We directly taught two relations between stimuli in each class (e.g., firefighter‐doctor; doctor‐teacher), and the remaining relations between the stimuli (e.g., doctor‐firefighter, teacher‐doctor, doctor‐teacher, teacher‐doctor) emerged. Then, we taught participants to respond as listeners when asked about the function of a stimulus in each category (e.g., point to a state when asked, "Point to a place where people live"). As a result, the respective function transferred among the other stimuli in each category. This study supports the effectiveness of EBI and transfer of function with children with ASD learning age‐appropriate skills in an applied setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central goal of education is to provide students with knowledge they: (a) can successfully apply within the domain of learning and (b) can transfer, as appropriate, to new and different domains. Yet, much research has shown that learners frequently fail to access and use applicable stored knowledge when the circumstances at retrieval differ from those at encoding. Recent laboratory studies have revealed that encoding instances of a concept as members of a relational category considerably attenuates such failures of access. In the present work, we evaluate the efficacy of one such technique (category construction) applied in conjunction with direct instruction in the authentic educational setting of middle-school classrooms. Across two experiments, category construction is evaluated relative to a standard classroom practice of a worksheet with comprehension questions in order to assess how well each promotes mastery and transfer of a target concept. In addition, potential supports to improve learning outcomes are assessed: practice with category construction (Experiment 1) and partial precompletion of the category construction task (Experiment 2). Overall, we find favorable evidence that category construction leads to greater sensitivity to the underlying conceptual structure of targeted concepts and delivers transfer advantages over a worksheet control. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: A key goal of education is not only to support mastery of complex content but also to enable students to access and apply what has been learned to new settings and domains. Results from multiple inclass experiments show that supporting initial learning through category construction can enhance performance relative to a control group on assessments of mastery and transfer. This work highlights a lightweight classroom activity that could be implemented broadly to enhance educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries that lack the resources and/or political will to settle and integrate refugees among citizens pursue refugee encampment. At the heart of encampment is the categorization of populations according to the sedentarist dictates of the nation-state governance framework. As people who are categorized as de-territorialized bodies, refugees are subject to a peculiar form of governance which is sustained by ubiquity of refugee encampment around the world. This is the case whether in the Global South, where encampment has featured in refugee hosting for decades or in the Global North, where growing numbers of refugees in recent years have led to re-introduction of camps epitomized by anchor facilities, among others. This article argues that refugee encampment is underpinned by categorization, which separates refugees from other migrants as well as the displaced from the emplaced. Despite encampment's separation of refugees from citizens in line with the sedentarist inclinations of the nation-state, encampment in protracted situations has morphed into permanent settlements leading to informal and unofficial re-territorialization through refugee activities that challenge the logic of encampment. This and refugees' self-initiated relocation to spaces outside the camps have blurred the line between the displaced and the emplaced, thus demonstrating how refugees mediate the intended outcomes of migration categorizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When learning new categories, do children benefit from the same types of training as adults? We compared the effects of feedback‐based training with observational training in young adults (ages 18–25) and early school aged children (ages 6–7) across two different multimodal category learning tasks: conjunctive rule based and information integration. We used multimodal stimuli that varied across a visual feature (rotation speed of the "planet" stimulus) and an auditory feature (pitch frequency of a pure tone stimulus). We found an interaction between age and training type for the rule‐based category task, such that adults performed better in feedback training than in observational training, whereas training type had no significant effect on children's category learning performance. Overall adults performed better than children in learning both the rule based and information integration category structures. In information integration category learning, feedback versus observational training did not have a significant effect on either adults' or children's category learning. Computational modelling revealed that children defaulted to univariate rules in both tasks. The finding that children do not benefit from feedback training and can learn successfully via observational learning has implications for the design of educational interventions appropriate for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first step in effective management of pressure injuries (PIs) is to assess, categorize and stage correctly. This study aims to examine the agreement regarding the classification and staging of PIs among nurse academicians working on chronic wounds and with different stage of expertise. Three nurse academicians were assigned as assessors according to Benner's stages of clinical competence (Competent, Proficient, and Expert). The assessors independently evaluated PIs photographs (n = 694). The assessors then met for the wounds where there was disagreement, and a Consensus agreement was reached. Kappa Statistics analysed the agreement between two assessors; Fleiss Kappa Statistics analysed the agreement between Competent, Proficient, Expert, and Consensus. Statistically, almost perfect agreement was obtained between Competent, Proficient, Expert, and Consensus assessments, respectively (Ƙ = 0.871; p < 0.001, Ƙ = 0.842; p < 0.001, Ƙ = 0.937; p < 0.001). The highest agreement between the assessors were Unstageable PIs, Deep Tissue PIs, and Stage 3 PIs respectively. The most common disagreements were between Deep Tissue PIs and Stage 1 PIs, and between Deep Tissue PIs and Stage 2 PIs. In the study, it was found that the categorization, and staging of PIs had varying degrees of reliability among the assesors, although at a statistically acceptable level. • Effective management of pressure injuries begins with accurate assessment, categorization/staging. • Photographs alone are insufficent for categorizing/staging pressure injuries; patient information is key for accurate diagnosis. • The study underscores the difficulty of staging pressure injuries and the need for continuous nurse training at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the digital era, social media has become a cornerstone for educational institutions, driving public engagement and enhancing institutional communication. This study utilizes AI-driven image processing and Web-enhanced Deep Learning (DL) techniques to investigate the effectiveness of King Faisal University's (KFU's) social media strategy as a case study, particularly on Twitter. By categorizing images into five primary event management categories and subcategories, this research provides a robust framework for assessing the social media content generated by KFU's administrative units. Seven advanced models were developed, including an innovative integration of Vision Transformers (ViTs) with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, VGG16, and ResNet. The AI-driven ViT-CNN hybrid model achieved perfect classification accuracy (100%), while the "Development and Partnerships" category demonstrated notable accuracy (98.8%), underscoring the model's unparalleled efficacy in strategic content classification. This study offers actionable insights for the optimization of AI-driven digital communication strategies and Web-enhanced data collection processes, aligning them with national development goals and Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, thereby showcasing the transformative power of DL in event-centric management and the broader higher education landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how investors incorporate unrealized gains or losses reported in Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) into their investment judgments. Since unrealized gains or losses can be presented in either OCI or net income—gains from trading securities are included in net income, while those from available-for-sale securities are reported in OCI (ASC 320 and ASC 851)—it raises the question of whether OCI items are perceived as equally significant as net income items. To explore this, we conducted a 2 × 2 experiment with 240 individual investors, manipulating the presentation of unrealized gains or losses in either net income or OCI. Our findings reveal that unrealized gains are valued significantly lower when presented in OCI compared to net income, indicating that investors see OCI-reported gains as less relevant. However, for unrealized losses, the incorporation degree remained consistent across both presentations, reflecting a general aversion to unrealized losses regardless of how they are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the observation that the construction of vague reference in legal texts is intended by the legislator, we examine the intensifier adjective grave linked to linguistic vagueness. The aim is to define the meanings of grave and the role of the noun it qualifies, and to identify Polish equivalents in comparable and parallel legal texts. After mentioning studies on vagueness and vague reference, we analyse definitions that indicate two meanings: 'importance' and 'consequence. The 'cause-consequence' relationship becomes central to the study of the categories of intensifiable nouns and grave meanings. The Polish equivalents prove that it is polysemous and that the place of the N in the logical relation must be taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of dark tourism emerged in the last three decades as tourism became more accessible. It allows forgotten history to be revised and transferred to the public. This study aims to restructure existing categorization regarding dark tourism and address the research gaps in dark tourism studies. We collected studies from international publication databases – Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. We pre-processed the following data for each study: topic, authors’ location of university affiliation, study area, year of publication, top-cited articles, top productive journals in publishing dark tourism studies, keywords, and internality/externality of the author from the study area. With the current paper, we analysed review articles published from 1996 to 2024 (first quarter), applying qualitative methods. Based on these, a new analytical framework was generated. Furthermore, the connections between research topics were also analysed. The results of the analysis highlight specific research gaps in the literature on dark tourism and address poorly visible research fields in international journals, e.g. terrorism-related research, social media links of dark tourism, postcolonial contexts, or commemoration of communist past and heritage. Consequently, certain countries and regions are underrepresented in the literature. This critical review offers new research areas but also gives some directions to the theoretical enrichment of the dark tourism concept.

Abstract Humans adopt non-linguistic signals, from smoke signals to Morse code, to communicate. This communicative flexibility emerges early: embedding novel sine-wave tones in a social, communicative exchange permits 6-month-olds to imbue them with communicative status, and to use them in subsequent learning. Here, to specify the mechanism(s) that undergird this capacity, we introduced infants to a novel signal—sine-wave tone sequences—in brief videotaped vignettes with non-human agents, systematically manipulating the socio-communicative cues in each vignette. Next, we asked whether infants interpreted new tone sequences as communicative in a fundamental cognitive task: object categorization. Infants successfully interpreted tones as communicative if they were produced in dialogues with one agent speaking (Study 1) or both agents producing tones (Study 2), or in monologues involving only a single agent (Study 3). What was essential was cross-modal temporal synchrony between an agent’s movements and the tones: when this synchrony was disrupted (Study 4), infants failed in the subsequent task. This synchrony, we propose, licensed an inference that the tones, generated by an agent, were candidate communicative signals. Infants’ early capacity to use synchrony to identify new communicative signals and recruit them in subsequent learning has implications for theory and for interventions to support infants facing communicative challenges.

Abstract In this study, we examined the relatively unexplored realm of face perception, investigating the activities within human brain face-selective regions during the observation of faces at both subordinate and superordinate levels. We recorded intracranial EEG signals from the ventral temporal cortex in neurosurgical patients implanted with subdural electrodes during viewing of face subcategories (human, mammal, bird, and marine faces) as well as various non-face control stimuli. The results revealed a noteworthy correlation in response patterns across all face-selective areas in the ventral temporal cortex, not only within the same face category but also extending to different face categories. Intriguingly, we observed a systematic decrease in response correlation coupled with an increased response onset time from human face to mammalian face, bird face and marine faces. Our result aligns with the notion that distinctions at the basic level category (e.g., human face versus non-human face) emerges earlier than those at the superordinate level (e.g., animate versus inanimate). This indicates response gradient in the representation of facial images within human face-sensitive regions, transitioning progressively from human faces to non-face stimuli. Our findings provide insights into spatiotemporal dynamic of face representations which varies spatially and at different timescales depending on the face subcategory represented.

The article introduces the matrix of cognitive filters as a research method that makes it possible to model the process of inferring the meaning of lingua-createmes in multimodal online discourse. Multimodal linguistic systems are based on a complex interaction of multimodal components. These components combine with basic cognitive mechanisms in decoding various complex phenomena in digital Internet discourse. The research revealed a classification of key cognitive mechanisms that generate the meaning of creative multimodal elements: banner blindness, evaluative categorization, conceptualization, (de)compression of information, profiling, conceptual metaphor, conceptual metaphthonymy, and conceptual integration. The research material involved 18,000 monomodal verbal and multimodal lingua-createmes selected by continuous sampling from English-language Internet resources, as well as visual and verbal corpora. The method proved effective in modelling the general cognitive resonance of lingua-createmes and predicting cognitive resonance / dissonance (positive or negative) in communication. The practical lingua-cognitive experiment involved 335 English-speaking respondents from eleven countries. They were asked to use the matrix of cognitive filters to perform a step-by-step decoding of several creative multimodal elements. The method proved highly effective for detecting cognitive resonance or mental tension, i.e., positive or negative cognitive dissonance. The method demonstrated good prospects for obtaining additional data on reactions to lingua-creative discursive elements.

This article examines the representation of the FAMILY concept in English and Chinese newspapers. The research material was gathered from ten information sources and included 200 news articles, selected through continuous sampling using the keyword FAMILY / 家庭. The articles were analyzed to identify relevant issues and categorized based on their thematic content. In each article, key content elements—words and phrases that carry significant semantic meaning—were identified and used for cognitive matrix modeling. The findings reveal cognitive asymmetry in how the FAMILY concept is portrayed in English and Chinese media. In English-language media, the concept is centered on fundamental semantic components that form the cognitive core of the FAMILY concept, such as family members and their relationships. The representation also extends to areas like family activities, children, finances, employment, family pets, and legal issues. In contrast, Chinese media emphasizes the government’s role in educating the younger generation on family behavior, fostering a new generation of families that adhere to the country’s ethical norms, traditional cultural values, and moral standards. The central aspect of the FAMILY concept in Chinese media is the significant governmental support and societal focus on family needs and moral education, with family being viewed within the broader context of societal relations. The observed asymmetry is attributed to cultural, economic, social, and political differences. In capital-oriented social systems, the family is seen as an independent unit capable of self-sufficiency without substantial government intervention. This study is particularly relevant for understanding the role of professional discourse in shaping public perceptions of family across different cultures, highlighting how media narratives reflect and influence broader societal values and professional communication practices.

Abstract Categorical learning is important and often challenging in both specialized domains, such as medical image interpretation, and commonplace ones, such as face recognition. Research has shown that comparing items from different categories can enhance the learning of perceptual classifications, particularly when those categories appear highly similar. Here, we developed and tested novel adaptively triggered comparisons (ATCs), in which errors produced during interactive learning dynamically prompted the presentation of active comparison trials. In a facial identity paradigm, undergraduate participants learned to recognize and name varying views of 22 unknown people. In Experiment 1, single-item classification trials were compared to a condition in which ATC trials were generated whenever a participant repeatedly confused two faces. Comparison trials required discrimination between simultaneously presented exemplars from the confused categories. In Experiment 2, an ATC condition was compared to a non-adaptive comparison condition. Participants learned to accuracy and speed criteria, and completed immediate and delayed posttests. ATCs substantially enhanced learning efficiency in both experiments. These studies, using a novel adaptive procedure guided by each learner’s performance, show that adaptively triggered comparisons improve category learning.

Approximately one-third of the world’s 169 million migrant workers come from the Asia and Pacific region, primarily working in temporary, low-wage jobs in the Gulf, where they face human and labor rights issues. In 2003, 12 Asian migrant-origin states formed the Colombo Process to address these labor concerns. This article examines and contrasts two major emigrant-origin states’ – India and Bangladesh –behavior in the Colombo Process, a regional consultative process, and other multilateral migration governance fora, focusing on the social construction of skills. Both countries inherited a colonial legal system of emigration regulation which distinguished emigrants into “high-” and “low-skill” categories, which India continues to reproduce, while Bangladesh aims to reformulate their categorization. This article investigates the how, where, and when of the countries’ emigrant categorization processes by tracing the categories’ origins, their reproduction, and reformulation. This article highlights the significant role migrant-origin states play in the politics of skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human migration is a defining feature of our world, yet the simplistic binary categorization of “legal” versus “illegal” movement often obscures the complexities of cross-border movement. This paper examines the nuanced spectrum of (il)legality along the Ethiopia-Sudan border, focusing on how legal frameworks and social perceptions of (il)legality shape experiences of migrants and people on the move. The study proposes categorizing migration as including sectoral classifications (laborers, tourists) and legality-based situations (overstays, illegal routes). Building upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2021, the paper analyzes the discrepancies between national migration legislation, on-the-ground enforcement practices, and lived realities of migrants and border communities while acknowledging a multifaceted landscape of performances. By exploring this dynamic, the paper contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the concept of (il)legality in migration studies, in particular in the context of the Ethiopia-Sudan border, while providing insights that extend beyond this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue: Triggered by the lived experiences of the authors–one junior career, female, and black; the other senior career, male, and black–we provide a critical, sociological overview of the plight of racial/ethnic minority students in medical education. We analyze the concepts of categorization, othering, and belonging in medical education, which we use to shed light on the psychological and academic consequences of overgeneralizing social categories. Evidence: The ability to categorize people into different social groups is a natural, subconscious phenomenon. Creating social groups is believed to aid people in navigating the world. This permits people to relate to others based on assumed opinions and actions. Race and gender are two primary dimensions of categorization, with race or ethnicity being a particularly salient category. However, over-generalization of social categories can lead the categorizer to think, judge, and treat themselves and members of a perceived group similarly, leading to prejudice and stereotyping. Social categorization also occurs in educational settings across the globe. The consequences of categorization may influence a student's feelings of belonging and academic success. Implications: Our analysis reflects on how to promote equitable opportunities for ethnic minority medical trainees through the lens of those who have experienced and succeeded in an inequitable system. By revisiting the social and psychological constructs that determine and influence the academic progress and success of minority students in medical education, we discovered that more engagement is (still) needed for critical discourse on this topic. We expect such conversations to help generate new insights to improve inclusion and equity in our educational systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present experiments examined whether the temporal distribution of procedural category learning experiences would impact learning outcomes. Participants completed the remote category learning experiments on a smartphone in one of two learning conditions: massed or distributed. Consistent with expectations, distributed learners in both experiments reached higher accuracy levels than massed learners. In Experiment 1 the effect disappeared after accounting for reaction time differences, suggesting that it was driven by attentional mechanisms. In Experiment 2, the spacing advantage was only present for previously studied items during a post-learning test, suggesting a role of consolidation. In both experiments, it seems likely that temporal spacing helped participants discover the optimal information-integration categorization strategy. These results suggest that adult category learning is facilitated by temporal spacing. Future work may further explore the effects of temporal and contextual distinctiveness of learning experiences on category learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible, adaptive behaviour depends on the application of prior learning to novel contexts (transfer). Transfer can take many forms, but the focus of the present study was on "task schemas"—learning strategies that guide the earliest stages of engaging in a novel task. The central aim was to examine the architecture of task schemas and determine whether strategic task components can expedite learning novel tasks that share some structural components with the training tasks. Groups of participants across two experiments were exposed to different training regimes centred around multiple unique tasks that shared some/all/none of the structural task components (the kinds of stimuli, classifications, and/or responses) but none of the surface features (the specific stimuli, classifications, and/or responses) with the test task (a dot-pattern classification task). Initial test performance was improved (to a degree) in all groups relative to a control group whose training did not include any of the structural components relevant to the test task. The strongest evidence of transfer was found in the motoric, perceptual + categorization, and full schema training groups. This observation indicates that training with some (or all) strategic task components expedited learning of a novel task that shared those components. That is, task schemas were found to be componential and were able to expedite learning a novel task where similar (learning) strategies could be applied to specific elements of the test task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive mechanisms underpinning categorization development are still debated, either resulting from knowledge accretion or an increase in cognitive control. To disentangle the respective influence of accumulated factual knowledge and executive functions (inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) on (a) the development of categorization abilities in the food domain and (b) differences in this development by child characteristics (i.e., food neophobia), we conducted two experiments. The first experiment assessed 4−6-year-old children's (n = 122) ability to taxonomically categorize food at the superordinate level of categorization. The second experiment tested 3−6-year-old children's (n = 100) ability to cross-categorize the same food according to two different relationships alternatively (i.e., taxonomic and thematic). Results indicate that accumulated factual knowledge and executive functions mediated both the effect of age and the effect of food neophobia on categorization performance. Notably, the specific executive functions involved may vary depending on the categorization abilities tested, whereas world knowledge was always a prerequisite. Overall, this research highlights the complex interplay between accumulated factual knowledge, executive functions, and child characteristics in shaping the development of categorization abilities. Public Significance Statement: During development, children learn to categorize objects by identifying relevant features that distinguish them from others. Categorization becomes increasingly flexible, allowing children to categorize the same entity into different categories depending on the context. This study investigates the mechanisms underlying this development and reveals that while knowledge is essential for accurate categorization, it is not enough. Children also need sufficiently developed executive functions to effectively apply their knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent innovations in online advertising facilitate the use of a wide variety of data sources to build micro-segments of consumers, and delegate the manufacture of audience segments to machine learning algorithms. Both techniques promise to replace demographic targeting, as part of a post-demographic turn driven by big data technologies. This article empirically investigates this transformation in online advertising. We show that targeting categories are assessed along three criteria: efficiency, communicability, and explainability. The relative importance of these objectives helps explain the lasting role of demographic categories, the development of audience segments specific to each advertiser, and the difficulty in generalizing interest categories associated with big data. These results underline the importance of studying the impact of advanced big data and AI technologies in their organizational and professional contexts of appropriation, and of paying attention to the permanence of the categorizations that make the social world intelligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]