Relationships between declarative pointing and theory of mind abilities in 3- to 4-year-olds

The current study explored the relationships between declarative pointing and theory of mind abilities in 30 children between 3 and 4 years of age. Measures used to examine theory of mind (ToM) included a parental questionnaire and the Scaling of Theory of Mind Tasks. Results showed a dissociation between expressive and informative pointing, which have been regarded as two subcategories of the declarative function. ToM abilities were significantly related to the production of informative pointing, but not to the production of expressive pointing. This distinction might be explained by special features associated with informative pointing, such as early signs of cooperation abilities. Our results might have key implications for psychologists, as they may help improve evaluation and intervention programs for the development of social skills in preschoolers.     

Development of social perception: a conversation study of 6-, 12- and 36-month-old children

A conversation is made up of visual and auditory signals in a complex flow of events. What is the relative importance of these components for young children's ability to maintain attention on a conversation? In the present set of experiments the visual and auditory signals were disentangled in four filmed events. The visual events were either accompanied by the speech sounds of the conversation or by matched motor sounds and the auditory events by either the natural visual turn taking of the conversation or a matched turn taking of toy trucks. A cornea-reflection technique was used to record the gaze-pattern of subjects while they were looking at the films. Three age groups of typically developing children were studied; 6-month-olds, 1-year-olds and 3-year-olds. The results show that the children are more attracted by the social component of the conversation independent of the kind of sound used. Older children find spoken language more interesting than motor sound. Children look longer at the speaking agent when humans maintain the conversation. The study revealed that children are more attracted to the mouth than to the eyes area. The ability to make more predictive gaze shifts develops gradually over age.     

Application of improved BP neural network based on e-commerce supply chain network data in the forecast of aquatic product export volume

Aiming at the existing problems in the production and export scale prediction of aquaculture, a model of yield prediction based on BP Neural network algorithm is proposed, and a set of algorithms is proposed to optimize BP neural network (BPNN). Based on the traditional BP neural network, it is easy to get into the local optimal problem due to the long training time of the model. By using the simple Johnson algorithm, the dimensionality of the input neuron is reduced, and then the hidden layer neural network is determined by this method. At the same time, the data mining method is used to filter the Data.Particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the parameters. At the same time, based on the domestic e-commerce Sales network data, the results show that the average square root error of the model is less than the traditional BP neural network and the learning efficiency is higher than the traditional BP neural network. The results show that the model has a great advantage in building up a large number of historical data, and it can shorten the modeling time and get good prediction result by combining the sales data of e-commerce. It provides a new feasible method for the export prediction of aquatic products.     

Creativity and involvement in art in different types of synaesthesia

The aim of the present study was to test the relationship between different types of synaesthesia and their involvement in art, creative, and visual abilities. We tested 20 grapheme‐colour, 18 sound‐colour, 19 grapheme‐colour‐and‐sound‐colour, 20 sequence‐space synaesthetes, and the same number of controls matched by age, gender, and education. We assessed the number of artistic professions, involvement in art, and the performance in psychometric tests of divergent and convergent creativity, as well as visual and visuo‐spatial abilities. Results show a higher prevalence of artists among synaesthetes, especially sound‐colour synaesthetes. Sound‐colour synaesthetes also showed a higher involvement in artistic activities overall while sequence‐space synaesthetes showed higher involvement in visual art. Only grapheme‐colour‐and‐sound‐colour synaesthetes showed significantly higher divergent creativity compared to matched controls. Additionally, overall, synaesthetes scored higher in visuo‐spatial abilities (i.e., mental rotation). For synaesthetes and controls, visuo‐spatial abilities correlated with divergent creativity. We discuss that synaesthetes’ higher involvement in art is not necessarily reflected in their basic creative abilities.     

Effects of sleep deprivation on executive functioning,cognitive abilities,metacognitive confidence,and decision making

Performance on many decision‐making tasks is underpinned by metacognitive monitoring, cognitive abilities, and executive functioning. Fatigue‐inducing conditions, such as sleep loss, compromise these factors, leading to decline in decision performance. Using a 40‐hr sleep deprivation protocol, we examined these factors and the resulting decision performance. Thirteen Australian Army male volunteers (aged 20–30 years) were tested at multiple time points on psychomotor vigilance, inhibitory control, task switching, working memory, short‐term memory, fluid intelligence, and decision accuracy and confidence in a medical diagnosis‐making test. Assessment took place in the morning and night over two consecutive days, during which participants were kept awake. Consistent with previous work, cognitive performance declined after a night without sleep. Extending previous findings, self‐regulation and self‐monitoring suffered significantly greater declines immediately after the sleepless night. These results indicate that the known decline in complex decision‐making performance under fatigue‐inducing conditions might be facilitated by metacognitive rather than cognitive mechanisms.     

Screening for eating disorders in primary care: EDE-Q versus SCOFF

OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: The comparative validity of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (22 items) and SCOFF (five items) in screening for cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders was examined in a primary care sample of young adult women (n=257). Diagnoses were confirmed in a sub-group of interviewed participants (n=147). RESULTS: Twenty-five cases, primarily variants of bulimia nervosa (BN) not meeting formal diagnostic criteria, were identified in the interviewed sample. An EDE-Q global score of >or= 2.80 yielded the optimal trade-off between sensitivity (Se) (0.80) and specificity (Sp) (0.80) (positive predictive value (PPV)=0.44), whereas a score of two or more positive responses on the SCOFF was optimal (Se=0.72, Sp=0.73, PPV=0.35). Validity coefficients for both measures varied as a function of participants' age and body weight, although these effects were more pronounced for the SCOFF. CONCLUSIONS: Both measures performed well in terms of their ability to detect cases and to exclude non-cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders in a primary care setting. The EDE-Q performed somewhat better than the SCOFF and was more robust to effects on validity of age and weight. These findings need to be weighed against the advantage of the SCOFF in terms of its brevity.     

中学生自我觉知的日常问题解决能力研究

采用问卷法对907名中学生自我觉知的日常问题解决能力进行研究。结果表明,自我觉知的日常问题解决能力存在显著的领域差异;对不同领域的日常问题,初中生与高中生自我觉知的能力有不同的差异模式,我向思维会导致初中生在某些领域高估其能力水平;性别差异以及独生与非独生子女差异在多项能力评估中显著存在;大多数自我觉知能力与自评健康状况、家庭经济状况、自评外在形象、做家务事的次数及父母管教严格程度有显著的正相关。     

Differential ability antecedents of general and specific dimensions of declarative knowledge: More than g

The purpose of the current study is to test the proposition that the relative contribution of narrow abilities (but not of g) may have been obscured in prior research due to a failure to employ fully multidimensional latent variable analyses. The current study corrects for these deficiencies and examines the relationships between cognitive abilities and domain-specific declarative knowledge. Results show that when observed criterion test scores were individually regressed on abilities, only g was consistently related to the criteria. However, when a latent variable analysis was applied to the same data, both g and narrow ability factors accounted for substantial portions of variance in different latent criterion constructs. Implications are discussed.     

Association of Behavioral Self-Regulation with Concurrent Functional Capacity Among Stroke Rehabilitation Patients

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that the Behavioral Dyscontrol Scale (BDS), a measure of the executive cognitive capacity to use an intention to guide purposeful, goal-directed activity would be strongly associated with concurrent functional status after controlling for age, sex, education, severity of pain, medical comorbidity, depression, and general mental status, in a sample of 246 elderly inpatients receiving rehabilitation services following hospitalization for stroke. Functional status was assessed by rehabilitation nurses' ratings of patients on 11 ADL items and on the Barthel Index. The BDS was the strongest predictor for 11 of the 12 dependent variables. Although it correlated significantly with all outcomes, the MMSE entered only one of the regression models. Of the other covariates, only age and severity of pain made an additional contribution to the prediction of functional ability for more than 1 dependent variable. Consistent with prior results in several other samples, the ability to use intentions to guide purposeful behavior appears to be an important contributor to everyday functioning among older adults.     

成人晚期自我觉知的日常问题解决能力及其与日常认知的关系

本研究采用老年人日常问题解决能力测验,对１８５名被试（５１￣７６岁）予以测定。研究发现：进入成人晚期以后,自我觉知的日常问题解决能力随年龄的增长呈现出一定的下降趋势,但未表现出显著的年龄组间差异,而其个体间差异却日益明显;再有,个体自我觉知的日常问题解决能力与日常认知之间存在较为一致的变化趋势。