Learning to Listen: Changes in Children's Brain Activity Following a Listening Comprehension Intervention.

"Are you LISTENING?" may be one of the most frequent questions preschoolers hear from their parents and teachers, but can children be taught to listen carefully-and thus better comprehend language-and if so, what changes occur in their brains? Twenty-seven four- and five-year-old children were taught a language simulation strategy to use while listening to stories: first, they practiced moving graphics on an iPad to correspond to the story actions, and then they practiced imagining the movements. Compared to a control condition, children in the intervention answered comprehension questions more accurately when imagining moving the graphics and on a measure of transfer using a new story without any instruction and with only immovable graphics. Importantly, for children in the intervention, the change in comprehension from the first to the sixth day was strongly correlated with changes in EEG mu and alpha desynchronization, suggesting changes in motor and visual processing following the intervention.

The Effect of Digital Platform Strategies on Firm Value in the Banking Industry.

After digital platforms have become successful in the information technology (IT) industry, incumbents from traditional industries increasingly implement digital platform strategies. However, there is mixed evidence on whether these incumbents benefit from digital platform strategies. To provide systematic insights, we focus on the banking industry.

Milk provisioning in oviparous caecilian amphibians.

Among vertebrates, the yolk is commonly the only form of nutritional investment offered by the female to the embryo. Some species, however, have developed parental care behaviors associated with specialized food provisioning essential for offspring survival, such as the production of lipidic-rich parental milk in mammals. Here, we show that females of the egg-laying caecilian amphibian provide similarly lipid-rich milk to altricial hatchlings during parental care.

Social inequality, social networks, and health: a scoping review of research on health inequalities from a social network perspective.

Background: This review summarises the present state of research on health inequalities using a social network perspective, and it explores the available studies examining the interrelations of social inequality, social networks, and health.

Methods: Using the strategy of a scoping review, as outlined by Arksey and O'Malley (Int J Sci Res Methodol 8:19-32, 2005), our team performed two searches across eight scientific, bibliographic databases including papers published until October 2021. Studies meeting pre-defined eligibility criteria were selected.

Explaining reviewing effort: Existing reviews as potential driver.

Online review systems try to motivate reviewers to invest effort in writing reviews, as their success crucially depends on the helpfulness of such reviews. Underlying cognitive mechanisms, however, might influence future reviewing effort. Accordingly, in this study, we analyze whether existing reviews matter for future textual reviews.

Perceptual Access Reasoning (PAR) in Developing a Representational Theory of Mind.

An important part of children's social and cognitive development is their understanding that people are psychological beings with internal, mental states including desire, intention, perception, and belief. A full understanding of people as psychological beings requires a representational theory of mind (ToM), which is an understanding that mental states can faithfully represent reality, or misrepresent reality. For the last 35 years, researchers have relied on false-belief tasks as the gold standard to test children's understanding that beliefs can misrepresent reality.

Osteology of the Italian endemic spectacled salamanders, Salamandrina spp. (Amphibia, Urodela, Salamandridae): selected skeletal elements for palaeontological investigations.

Salamandrina perspicillata, from Northern and Central Italy, and Salamandrina terdigitata, from Southern Italy, represent a unique case of endemism among the amphibians of Europe. Some efforts were made to study the biology and ecology of these species, but only few studies focused on their comparative osteology. In particular, detailed descriptions of isolated skeletal elements and comparisons with other European urodeles are not available in literature hindering the identification of their fossils that testify for an ancient much broader range.

Cranial shape evolution of extant and fossil crocodile newts and its relation to reproduction and ecology.

The diversity of the vertebrate cranial shape of phylogenetically related taxa allows conclusions on ecology and life history. As pleurodeline newts (the genera Echinotriton, Pleurodeles and Tylototriton) have polymorphic reproductive modes, they are highly suitable for following cranial shape evolution in relation to reproduction and environment. We investigated interspecific differences externally and differences in the cranial shape of pleurodeline newts via two-dimensional geometric morphometrics.

On the taxonomic status of Lygosoma (Keneuxia) dubium Werner, 1909.

The species Lygosoma (Keneuxia) dubium was described by Franz Werner (1909) based on a single specimen from the Royal Natural History Cabinet (Königliches Naturalienkabinett) in Stuttgart, collection number 3651. According to the original description the specimen was collected by "Direktor Mayer" in Yokohama, Japan in 1897. Much later Nakamura Ueno (1963) transferred the species to the Genus Dasia Gray, 1839, without further comments.

Flesh and bone: An integrative approach towards sexual size dimorphism of a terrestrial salamander (genus Salamandrina).

Males and females face different selection pressures due to a sexually biased investment into reproduction. This often results in different morphologies. Sexual size dimorphisms (SSD) can give us important hints on the evolution and biology of a species.

Phylotranscriptomic consolidation of the jawed vertebrate timetree.

Phylogenomics is extremely powerful but introduces new challenges as no agreement exists on "standards" for data selection, curation and tree inference. We use jawed vertebrates (Gnathostomata) as model to address these issues. Despite considerable efforts in resolving their evolutionary history and macroevolution, few studies have included a full phylogenetic diversity of gnathostomes and some relationships remain controversial.

Introspection Plays an Early Role in Children's Explicit Theory of Mind Development.

This study assessed children's (N = 236) ability to introspect the mental states of seeing and knowing relative to their ability to attribute each state to others. Children could introspect seeing 10 months before they could introspect knowing. Two- and 3-year-olds correctly reported their own seeing states, whereas 3- and 4-year-olds correctly reported their own knowing states.

Sexual dimorphism and age of Mediterranean salamanders.

We analysed sexual size dimorphism (SSD) for two Mediterranean species of the "true" salamander clade possessing distinct life histories (Salamandra algira and Mertensiella caucasica) and equilibrated the morphometric approach to individual age by using skeletochronology. For species that have a short breeding season and live at high altitudes, such as Mediterranean amphibians, the fecundity advantage hypothesis predicts female-biased SSD to maximise reproductive success. Our results showed no SSD in either species; however, morphometric data indicated a male-biased dimorphism in limb (arm and leg) dimensions in both species when compared to body size.

Asymmetry in patient-related information disrupts pre-anesthetic patient briefing.

Background: If one party has more or better information than the other, an information asymmetry can be assumed. The aim of the study was to identify the origin of incomplete patient-related preoperative information, which led to disruptions and losses of time during pre-anaesthetic patient briefing. We hypothesized that lower employees' educational level increases the amount of disruptive factors.

Prediction of toddlers' expressive language from maternal sensitivity and toddlers' anger expressions: a developmental perspective.

Despite evidence for the importance of individual differences in expressive language during toddlerhood in predicting later literacy skills, few researchers have examined individual and contextual factors related to language abilities across the toddler years. Furthermore, a gap remains in the literature about the extent to which the relations of negative emotions and parenting to language skills may differ for girls and boys. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the associations among maternal sensitivity, children's observed anger reactivity, and expressive language when children were 18 (T1; n = 247) and 30 (T2; n = 216) months.

Mother-Adolescent Conflict: Stability, Change, and Relations with Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems.

Stability and change in mother-adolescent conflict reactions (CRs) and the prediction of CRs from adolescents' earlier behavior problems (and vice versa) were examined with 131 mothers and their adolescents (63 boys). Dyads engaged in a 6-minute conflict discussion twice, 2 years apart ( age was 13 at Time 1 (T1). Nonverbal expressive and verbal CRs during the conflict discussion were coded.

Regulation of CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ effector responses by Sprouty-1.

TCR-induced NF-AT activation leads to the expression of both activating and inhibitory proteins. Previously, we had identified Egr-2 and Egr-3 as NF-AT-induced transcription factors which promote the inhibition of T cell activation. In this report we identify Sprouty1 as a downstream target of Egr-3.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia, shyness, and effortful control in preschool-age children.

Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and shyness were examined as predictors of effortful control (EC) in a sample of 101 preschool-age children. Resting RSA was calculated from respiration and heart rate data collected during a neutral film; shyness was measured using parents', preschool teachers', and classroom observers' reports; and EC was measured using four laboratory tasks in addition to questionnaire measures. Principal components analysis was used to create composite measures of EC and shyness.

Sperm storage in caecilian amphibians.

Background: Female sperm storage has evolved independently multiple times among vertebrates to control reproduction in response to the environment. In internally fertilising amphibians, female salamanders store sperm in cloacal spermathecae, whereas among anurans sperm storage in oviducts is known only in tailed frogs. Facilitated through extensive field sampling following historical observations we tested for sperm storing structures in the female urogenital tract of fossorial, tropical caecilian amphibians.

The positivity scale.

Five studies document the validity of a new 8-item scale designed to measure positivity, defined as the tendency to view life and experiences with a positive outlook. In the first study (N = 372), the psychometric properties of Positivity Scale (P Scale) were examined in accordance with classical test theory using a large number of college participants. In Study 2, the unidimensionality of the P Scale was corroborated with confirmatory factor analysis in 2 independent samples (N₁ = 322; N₂ = 457).

Interactions between serotonin transporter gene haplotypes and quality of mothers' parenting predict the development of children's noncompliance.

The LPR and STin2 polymorphisms of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) were combined into haplotypes that, together with quality of maternal parenting, were used to predict initial levels and linear change in children's (N = 138) noncompliance and aggression from age 18-54 months. Quality of mothers' parenting behavior was observed when children were 18 months old, and nonparental caregivers' reports of noncompliance and aggression were collected annually from 18 to 54 months of age. Quality of early parenting was negatively related to the slope of noncompliance only for children with the LPR-S/STin2-10 haplotype and to 18-month noncompliance only for children with haplotypes that did not include LPR-S.