Scientific disciplines face concerns about replicability and statistical inference, and these concerns are also relevant in animal cognition research. This paper presents a first attempt to assess how researchers make and publish claims about animal physical cognition, and the statistical inferences they use to support them. We surveyed 116 published experiments from 63 papers on physical cognition, covering 43 different species. The most common tasks in our sample were trap-tube tasks (14 papers), other tool use tasks (13 papers), means-end understanding and string-pulling tasks (11 papers), object choice and object permanence tasks (9 papers) and access tasks (5 papers). This sample is not representative of the full scope of physical cognition research; however, it does provide data on the types of statistical design and publication decisions researchers have adopted. Across the 116 experiments, the median sample size was 7. Depending on the definitions we used, we estimated that between 44% and 59% of our sample of papers made positive claims about animals' physical cognitive abilities, between 24% and 46% made inconclusive claims, and between 10% and 17% made negative claims. Several failures of animals to pass physical cognition tasks were reported. Although our measures had low inter-observer reliability, these findings show that negative results can and have been published in the field. However, publication bias is still present, and consistent with this, we observed a drop in the frequency of -values above .05. This suggests that some non-significant results have not been published. More promisingly, we found that researchers are likely making many correct statistical inferences at the individual-level. The strength of evidence of statistical effects at the group-level was weaker, and its -value distribution was consistent with some effect sizes being overestimated. Studies such as ours can form part of a wider investigation into statistical reliability in comparative cognition. However, future work should focus on developing the validity and reliability of the measurements they use, and we offer some starting points.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.26451/abc.07.03.09.2020 | DOI Listing |
Front Immunol
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Department of Neurosciences, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Pediatric-Onset Multiple Sclerosis (POMS) is characterized by both white and grey matter inflammation, as well as by a higher risk of long-term physical and cognitive disability. The peculiar immunopathogenic mechanisms of POMS suggests that the use of induction therapies, including alemtuzumab (ALTZ), might be a promising approach, at least for postpuberal (> 11 yo) POMS. Although no data on the use of induction therapies in POMS are available from clinical trials currently, case series or case reports on the effect of alemtuzumab (ALTZ) have been recently published.
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January 2025
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Neurorehabilitation Research Group (eNRGy), KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Introduction: Freezing of gait (FOG) is a disabling symptom for people with Parkinson's disease (PwPD). Turning on the spot for one minute in alternating directions (360 turn) while performing a cognitive dual-task (DT) is a fast and sensitive way to provoke FOG. The FOG-index is a widely used wearable sensor-based algorithm to quantify FOG severity during turning.
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January 2025
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Northern Jiangsu People's Hospital, Yangzhou, China.
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Digit Health
January 2025
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
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J Multidiscip Healthc
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Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Padjadjaran, Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Bandung, West Java, 45363, Indonesia.
Purpose: Anemia during pregnancy can lead to physical and cognitive impairments, fatigue, and postpartum depression. Dietary fiber, as a prebiotic, supports gut health by producing short-chain fatty acids, which enhance immunity and aid iron absorption. This study investigates the impact of fiber supplementation on hemoglobin and reticulocyte hemoglobin equivalent (RET-He) levels in anemic pregnant women receiving oral iron therapy.
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