Human melody singing by bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrula) gives hints about a cognitive note sequence processing

We studied human melody perception and production in a songbird in the light of current concepts from the cognitive neuroscience of music. Bullfinches are the species best known for learning melodies from human teachers. The study is based on the historical data of 15 bullfinches, raised by 3 different human tutors and studied later by Jürgen Nicolai (JN) in the period 1967–1975. These hand-raised bullfinches learned human folk melodies (sequences of 20–50 notes) accurately. The tutoring was interactive and variable, starting before fledging and JN continued it later throughout the birds’ lives. All 15 bullfinches learned to sing alternately melody modules with JN (alternate singing). We focus on the aspects of note sequencing and timing studying song variability when singing the learned melody alone and the accuracy of listening-singing interactions during alternatively singing with JN by analyzing song recordings of 5 different males. The following results were obtained as follows: (1) Sequencing: The note sequence variability when singing alone suggests that the bullfinches retrieve the note sequence from the memory as different sets of note groups (=modules), as chunks (sensu Miller in Psychol Rev 63:81–87, 1956). (2) Auditory–motor interactions, the coupling of listening and singing the human melody: Alternate singing provides insights into the bird’s brain melody processing from listening to the actually whistled part of the human melody by JN to the bird’s own accurately singing the consecutive parts. We document how variable and correctly bullfinches and JN alternated in their singing the note sequences. Alternate singing demonstrates that melody-singing bullfinches did not only follow attentively the just whistled note contribution of the human by auditory feedback, but also could synchronously anticipate singing the consecutive part of the learned melody. These data suggest that both listening and singing may depend on a single learned human melody representation (=coupling between perception and production).     

Analogue Mental Transformations in 3‐Year‐Olds: Introducing a New Mental Rotation Paradigm Suitable for Young Children

Until now, a successful application of the mental rotation paradigm was restricted to children 5 years or older. By contrast, recent findings suggest that even infants can perform mental rotation. Unlike the methods used in infant studies (looking time), our new research paradigm allows for the measurement and interpretation of reaction times. Kindergartners (aged 3–6 years) were presented with a stimulus configuration on a touchscreen and asked to bring a rotated stimulus into an upright position using the shortest path. Mean reaction time (RT) increased linearly with angular disparity. The ensuing linear trend was significant not only for the entire sample but also for the youngest age group analysed separately. To exclude the possibility that linearity was due to movement planning, 3‐year‐olds had to manually rotate a stimulus about the same trajectory without the need for a corresponding mental transformation in a second experiment. Here, no linear trend was observed. These results are interpreted as evidence for an analogue mental transformation in 3‐year‐olds, equal to the transformation processes in older children's and adults' mental rotation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eighteen‐month‐olds’ memory for short movies of simple stories

This study investigated twenty four 18‐month‐olds’ memory for dynamic visual stimuli. During the first visit participants saw one of two brief movies (30 seconds) with a simple storyline displayed in four iterations. After 2 weeks, memory was tested in the visual paired comparison paradigm in which the familiar and the novel movie were contrasted simultaneously and displayed in two iterations for a total of 60 seconds. Eye‐tracking revealed that participants fixated the familiar movie significantly more than the novel movie, thus indicating memory for the familiar movie. Furthermore, time‐dependent analysis of the data revealed that individual differences in the looking‐patterns for the first and second iteration of the movies were related to individual differences in productive vocabulary. We suggest that infants’ vocabulary may be indicative of their ability to understand and remember the storyline of the movies, thereby affecting their subsequent memory.     

Comparing Correlates of Civic Engagement Between Immigrant and Majority Youth in Belgium,Germany, and Turkey

Drawing on data from a large-scale international project, this research examined predictors of civic engagement between immigrant (n = 599) and majority youth (n = 1,027) in Belgium, Germany, and Turkey. In all three countries immigrants were found to be more civically engaged than their majority peers. Further, based on the assumptions of the civic voluntarism model, civic engagement was predicted by resources, social experiences, and psychological engagement (i.e., internal political efficacy). The results showed that predictors differed by ethnic background. Although internal political efficacy beliefs were only found to be a significant predictor of civic engagement among majority youth, involvement in social networks was found to be a more meaningful predictor among immigrant youth. These results are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.     

Text–Picture Integration: How Delayed Testing Moderates Recognition of Pictorial Information in Multimedia Learning

When learning with multimedia, text and pictures are assumed to be integrated with each other. Arndt, Schüler, and Scheiter (Learning & Instruction, 35, 62–72, 2015) confirmed the process of text picture integration for sentence recognition, not, however, for picture recognition. The current paper investigates the underlying reasons for the latter finding. Two experiments are reported, where subjects memorized text–picture stimuli that differed in the specificity of information contained in either sentences or pictures. In a subsequent picture recognition test, subjects showed no integration effect after a 30‐minute delay (Experiments 1 and 2), but only after a 1‐week delay (Experiment 2). Furthermore, eye‐tracking data showed that participants sufficiently processed the pictures during learning (Experiment 1). This data pattern speaks in favor of the assumption that after a short delay participants had available a short‐lived pictorial surface representation, which masked the integration effect for pictorial recognition.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.