bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Temporal Variations of the Mole Fraction, Carbon, and Hydrogen Isotope Ratios of Atmospheric Methane in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Canada
Authors: Fujita Ryo , Morimoto Shinji , Umezawa Taku , Ishijima Kentaro , Patra Prabir K. , Worthy Douglas E. J. , Goto Daisuke , Aoki Shuji , Nakazawa Takakiyo
Published: April 2018

We have conducted simultaneous measurements of the mole fraction and carbon and hydrogen isotope ratios (δ13C and δD) of atmospheric methane (CH4) at Churchill (58°44′N, 93°49′W) in the northern part of the Hudson Bay Lowlands (HBL), Canada, since 2007. Compared with the measurements at an Arctic baseline monitoring station, Ny‐Ålesund, Svalbard (78°55′N, 11°56′E), CH4 mole fraction is generally higher and δ13C and δD are lower at Churchill due to regional biogenic CH4 emissions. Clear seasonal cycles in the CH4 mole fraction, δ13C, and δD are observable at Churchill, and their seasonal phases in summer are earlier by approximately 2 weeks than those at Ny‐Ålesund. Using the one‐box model analysis, the phase difference is ascribed to the different seasonal influence of CH4 emissions from boreal wetlands on the two sites. Short‐term CH4 variations are also observed at Churchill throughout the year. The analysis of the observed isotopic signatures of atmospheric CH4 confirmed that the short‐term CH4 variations are mainly produced by biogenic CH4 released from the HBL wetlands in summer and by fossil fuel CH4 transported over the Arctic in winter. Forward simulations of an atmospheric chemistry‐transport model, with wetland CH4 fluxes prescribed by a process‐based model, show unrealistically high CH4 mole fractions at Churchill in summer, suggesting that CH4 emissions assigned to the HBL wetlands are overestimated. Our best estimate of the HBL CH4 emissions is 2.7 ± 0.3 Tg CH4 yr−1 as an average of 2007–2013, consistent with recent estimations by inverse modeling studies.
Variability in Rates of Coastal Change Along the Yukon Coast, 1951 to 2015
Authors: Irrgang Anna M. , Lantuit Hugues , Manson Gavin K. , Günther Frank , Grosse Guido , Overduin Pier Paul
Published: April 2018

To better understand the reaction of Arctic coasts to increasing environmental pressure, coastal changes along a 210‐km length of the Yukon Territory coast in north‐west Canada were investigated. Shoreline positions were acquired from aerial and satellite images between 1951 and 2011. Shoreline change rates were calculated for multiple time periods along the entire coast and at six key sites. Additionally, Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) measurements of shoreline positions from seven field sites were used to analyze coastal dynamics from 1991 to 2015 at higher spatial resolution. The whole coast has a consistent, spatially averaged mean rate of shoreline change of 0.7 ± 0.2 m/a with a general trend of decreasing erosion from west to east. Additional data from six key sites shows that the mean shoreline change rate decreased from −1.3 ± 0.8 (1950s–1970s) to −0.5 ± 0.6 m/a (1970s–1990s). This was followed by a significant increase in shoreline change to −1.3 ± 0.3 m/a in the 1990s to 2011. This increase is confirmed by DGPS measurements that indicate increased erosion rates at local rates up to −8.9 m/a since 2006. Ground surveys and observations with remote sensing data indicate that the current rate of shoreline retreat along some parts of the Yukon coast is higher than at any time before in the 64‐year‐long observation record. Enhanced availability of material in turn might favor the buildup of gravel features, which have been growing in extent throughout the last six decades.
Nernst‐Planck‐based Description of Transport, Coulombic Interactions, and Geochemical Reactions in Porous Media: Modeling Approach and Benchmark Experiments
Authors: Rolle Massimo , Sprocati Riccardo , Masi Matteo , Jin Biao , Muniruzzaman Muhammad
Published: April 2018

Transport of multicomponent electrolyte solutions in saturated porous media is affected by the electrostatic interactions between charged species. Such Coulombic interactions couple the displacement of the different ions in the pore water and remarkably impact mass transfer not only under diffusion, but also under advection‐dominated flow regimes. To accurately describe charge effects in flow‐through systems, we propose a multidimensional modeling approach based on the Nernst‐Planck formulation of diffusive/dispersive fluxes. The approach is implemented with a COMSOL‐PhreeqcRM coupling allowing us to solve multicomponent ionic conservative and reactive transport problems, in domains with different dimensionality (1‐D, 2‐D, and 3‐D), and in homogeneous and heterogeneous media. The Nernst‐Planck‐based coupling has been benchmarked with analytical solutions, numerical simulations with another code, and high‐resolution experimental data sets. The latter include flow‐through experiments that have been carried out in this study to explore the effects of electrostatic interactions in fully three‐dimensional setups. The results of the simulations show excellent agreement for all the benchmarks problems, which were selected to illustrate the capabilities and the distinct features of the Nernst‐Planck‐based reactive transport code. The outcomes of this study illustrate the importance of Coulombic interactions during conservative and reactive transport of charged species in porous media and allow the quantification and visualization of the specific contributions to the diffusive/dispersive Nernst‐Planck fluxes, including the Fickian component, the term arising from the activity coefficient gradients, and the contribution due to electromigration.
Normal Stress‐Dependent Frictional Weakening of Large Rock Avalanche Basal Facies: Implications for the Rock Avalanche Volume Effect
Authors: Wang Y. F. , Dong J. J. , Cheng Q. G.
Published: April 2018

To explore the mechanism behind the volume effect of rock avalanches observed in field data, a series of rotary shear tests were conducted at a shearing velocity of 0.87 m/s and varying normal stress levels (from 0.29 to 1.85 MPa) on soil collected from the basal facies of the Yigong rock avalanche in Tibet, China. This experimental study reveals that (1) as normal stress increases, the steady state apparent friction coefficient (μss) of the soil decreases, indicating a normal stress‐dependent feature of μss; (2) the higher the normal stress, the lower the decay rate of μss; (3) water vaporization induced by frictional heating is commonly observed in the tests accompanied by large decreases in μss, and excess pore pressure is generated in the shearing zones of the samples due to vapor accumulation; and (4) with increases in normal stress and decreases in soil permeability, an increasing feature of excess pore pressure is reached. Based on the experimental results, we propose that the coupled effects of water vaporization induced by frictional heating in avalanche basal facies and depth‐dependent permeability of avalanche basal facies should be contributed to the volume effect of rock avalanches.
Interstadial Rise and Younger Dryas Demise of Scotland's Last Ice Fields
Authors: Bromley G. , Putnam A. , Borns H. , Lowell T. , Sandford T. , Barrell D.
Published: April 2018

Establishing the atmospheric expression of abrupt climate change during the last glacial termination is key to understanding driving mechanisms. In this paper, we present a new 14C chronology of glacier behavior during late‐glacial time from the Scottish Highlands, located close to the overturning region of the North Atlantic Ocean. Our results indicate that the last pulse of glaciation culminated between ~12.8 and ~12.6 ka, during the earliest part of the Younger Dryas stadial and as much as a millennium earlier than several recent estimates. Comparison of our results with existing minimum‐limiting 14C data also suggests that the subsequent deglaciation of Scotland was rapid and occurred during full stadial conditions in the North Atlantic. We attribute this pattern of ice recession to enhanced summertime melting, despite severely cool winters, and propose that relatively warm summers are a fundamental characteristic of North Atlantic stadials.
Gene expression profiles and pathway enrichment analysis of human osteosarcoma cells exposed to sorafenib
Authors: Dai Zhehao , Tang Haoyu , Pan Yue , Chen Junquan , Li Yongping , Zhu Jun
Published: April 2018

Sorafenib is an inhibitor of a variety of tyrosine kinase receptors used to treat various cancers including hepatocellular, renal cell and thyroid carcinoma. It has been shown to change various targets associated with osteosarcoma, but the detailed mechanism remains unclear. In order to identify key genes, enriched pathways and important modules during the exposure of human osteosarcoma cells to sorafenib, data for gene expression profiles (GSE53155) were downloaded from the GEO database. In total, 61 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified by the R bioconductor packages. Functional and enrichment analyses of DEGs were performed using the DAVID database. These revealed that DEGs were enriched in biological processes, molecular function and KEGG pathway of inflammatory immune response and angiogenesis. A protein–protein interaction network was constructed by string and visualized in cytoscape, and eight genes were selected as hubs: IL8, CXCL2, PTGS2, FOS, CXCL1, C3, EHMT2 and PGF. Subsequently, only one cluster was identified by mcode, which consisted of six nodes (CXCL1, CXCL2, PTGS2, FOS, C3 and PGF) and nine edges. PGF was the seed gene in this cluster. In conclusion, the results of this data mining and integration should help in revealing new mechanisms and targets of sorafenib in inhibiting osteosarcoma.
mRNA
Turnover
Authors: Mitchell Philip
Published: April 2018

mRNA stability is an important facet of regulated gene expression and RNA surveillance systems. mRNA turnover is intimately coupled to the process of translation; the stability of normal mRNAs broadly correlates with their efficiency of translation, while the mechanisms that initiate nonsense‐mediated decay and no‐go/nonstop decay mRNA quality control systems are closely linked to the events of normal translation termination. The general mechanisms of mRNA turnover are well conserved throughout eukaryotic systems and the enzymes involved are closely related to those that act in mRNA degradation in bacterial systems. Notwithstanding this, metazoan systems have developed more diverse and specialised systems. Notably, mammalian transcripts are subject to regulation through factors involved in ARE‐mediated decay and a set of decapping activities. Capping of transcripts with NAD appears to reflect a widespread quality control mechanism throughout biological systems.

Key Concepts

mRNA stability plays an important role in regulated gene expression.

mRNA surveillance mechanisms act on both aberrant and physiological transcripts.

mRNA turnover mechanisms involve multiple redundant pathways.

mRNA degradation is cotranslational.

The mRNA cap structure is the target of several quality control systems.
Molecular Genetics of Basal Cell Naevus Syndrome
Authors: John Ann M , Schwartz Robert A
Published: April 2018

Basal cell naevus syndrome (BCNS) is an autosomal‐dominant disorder characterised by a triad of basal cell carcinomas, odontogenic keratocysts and cerebral calcifications. Mutations in multiple genes involved in the prooncogenic hedgehog signalling pathway result in aberrant upregulation of this pathway and a propensity for multiple cancers. Recent advances in genetics have promoted the role of mutation analysis, as mutations in specific genes have a prognostic impact. Moreover, specific treatments targeting ligands of the hedgehog signalling pathway allow for more prolonged suppression of tumour development. Resistance development with these treatments may be halted or delayed by combining multiple modalities that target different parts of the hedgehog signalling pathway. Elucidating the genetics of BCNS has facilitated the tailoring of treatment and surveillance.

Key Concepts

Basal cell naevus syndrome is a highly penetrant, autosomal‐dominant disorder that is characterised by a triad of basal cell carcinomas, jaw keratocysts and cerebral calcifications.

Patients suffer from a genetic mutation in PTCH1, PTCH2, SMO and/or SUFU that allows for overactivation of the prooncogenic hedgehog signalling pathway.

Mutations in PTCH2 and SUFU are associated with milder clinical features and lower penetrance.

In particular, loss‐of‐function mutations of SUFU result in the absence of odontogenic keratocysts, development of infundibulocystic keratocysts and higher proclivity for medulloblastomas and meningiomas.

Molecular genetic testing methods include single gene testing, multigene panels and genomic testing, with a high specificity and sensitivity.

Genetic counselling and prenatal testing should be offered to all patients with basal cell naevus syndrome.

Treatment consists of destructive, chemotherapeutic and, more recently, genetic inhibitive modalities.

Genetic inhibitors are primarily cyclopamine derivatives, including vismodegib and sonidegib.

Resistance commonly develops to cyclopamine derivatives; toxic side effects preclude long‐term use.

Combination with other genetic inhibitors, such as azoles and arsenic trioxide, can delay resistance development.
Vertebrate Embryo: An Overview of Heart Development and the Utilisation of Multiple Animal Models in Research
Authors: England Jennifer , Loughna Siobhan
Published: April 2018

Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects which affect almost 1% of the population. Therefore, researchers have spent time getting a deeper understanding of the complex processes of cardiogenesis, from the development of the heart's architecture to the cellular and molecular processes involved. In achieving this, numerous vertebrate animal models, such as mouse, chick, zebrafish and xenopus, have been utilised in understanding the complexity of heart development. However, key differences exist between the human heart and these vertebrate models.

Key Concepts

The early heart tube arises from a population of cells in the visceral mesoderm.

A second population of cells known as the second heart field contribute to the developing heart tube, driving developmental processes.

Heart looping ensures that the venous and arterial poles are correctly positioned and aligned.

Atrial septation divides the primitive atrium into right and left atrial chambers.

Ventricular septation allows for the separation of the left and right ventricles.

Animal models used to study human cardiogenesis and congenital anomalies have developmental differences to humans, which are important in interpreting experimental results.

Animal models have different advantages and limitations as experimental organisms.
Emotion and Memory
Authors: Kensinger Elizabeth A. , Kark Sarah M.
Published: April 2018

People are more likely to remember emotional events as compared to mundane events. Not all aspects of those events are retained, however, and the effects of emotion on memory can vary as a function of the type of emotion evoked by the event and the time course over which memory is tested. In this chapter, we first describe how the arousal and valence of an event can influence the way it is remembered. We discuss how arousal can lead to selective enhancements in memory and how these enhancements can occur relatively automatically. We describe how negative events can be remembered with greater detail and specificity than positive events, and we delineate possible neural mechanisms that may support these effects of valence and arousal. We then discuss the time course over which emotion exerts its effects on memory. We describe how arousal exerts very rapid effects on encoding processes, faster than those elicited by valence. We discuss how emotion modulates the memory search process, increasing the likelihood that past events are retrieved. We explain how emotional arousal can influence the consolidation of information. We conclude by pointing out ongoing debates, including the role of the amygdala in the consolidation process and the effect of emotion on memory accuracy.
Episodic Memory
Authors: Diana Rachel A. , Wang Fang
Published: April 2018

Episodic memory is the cognitive and neural system for long‐term encoding, storage, and retrieval of event representations, which include spatiotemporal context information. Initial encoding into episodic memory relies on the hippocampus and is improved by elaborative processing. Representations in storage are subject to interference, particularly prior to their transformation from hippocampal representations into cortical representations through consolidation. Event representations can be retrieved from unconscious storage, verbalized, and maintained in working memory while in use. Retrieval is accomplished via pattern completion so that the presence of cues matching an encoding event can drive retrieval of associated information. Episodic memory can be measured via recall and recognition paradigms, both of which gauge whether an event or item occurred within a particular context. Episodic memory is necessary for future simulation and autobiographical memory but separate from semantic memory and procedural memory.
Education and Memory
Authors: Putnam Adam L. , Roediger Henry L.
Published: April 2018

How can psychology research be used to improve education? In this chapter we review empirical research on learning and memory that has the potential to enhance classroom education. First we identify several basic principles of memory. Then we explore seven tools for enhancing learning: spaced practice, interleaving, retrieval practice, elaborative interrogation, self‐explanation, mnemonics, and self‐regulated learning. In reviewing each strategy we highlight laboratory research and research conducted in representative educational contexts, along with identifying directions for future research. We end by addressing some potential concerns with applying memory research to educational settings. Throughout we argue that conducting research with an eye toward educational applications not only contributes to educational practice but also enables researchers to explore learning and memory in a more realistic context.
Motivation and Memory
Authors: Dickerson Kathryn C. , Adcock R. Alison
Published: April 2018

In this chapter we explore how motivation affects what we learn and subsequently remember. Our memories are not a perfect record of every event in our lives, meticulously recorded and replayed precisely whenever we desire. They are quite the opposite: Memories are selective, flexible, and change over time. Neurobiologically, how a memory is encoded in our brains and later consolidated is influenced by our motivational state. Here we first review foundational research on motivation and describe how it affects learning and memory. We then describe exciting discoveries emerging within the past decade demonstrating that different motivational states engage distinct neuroanatomical networks, which modulate the shape and form of memory. In the conclusion of this chapter we note opportunities to leverage human motivation and tailor what we learn to help us adapt and grow, with profound implications for education and clinical treatments.
Memory and Attention
Authors: Long Nicole M. , Kuhl Brice A. , Chun Marvin M.
Published: April 2018

Attention and memory have typically been studied as distinct topics in the fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. However, attention powerfully influences what we learn, and the act of remembering can, itself, be viewed as an act of selective, internally oriented attention. Here, we consider the relationship between attention and memory across multiple forms of memory, including episodic memory, implicit memory, and working memory. Moreover, we consider how attention is related not only to behavioral expressions of memory but also to the neural mechanisms that are involved in memory.
Assessing Autobiographical Memory
Authors: Sheldon Signy , Diamond Nicholas B. , Armson Michael J. , Palombo Daniela J. , Selarka Dhawal , Romero Kristoffer , Bacopulos Agnes , Levine Brian
Published: April 2018

Autobiographical memory is notoriously difficult to study in the laboratory because it involves many different cognitive processes and is subject to several “real‐world” factors. It is imperative that we understand the processes involved in autobiographical memory given that these processes are affected in several conditions, such as depression and dementia, and they are critical for a variety of daily life functions. We review established models and assessments of autobiographical memory as well as recent advances in the tools and approaches used to investigate autobiographical memory. We note the implications of these new assessment methods for our understanding of the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms of autobiographical memory as well as related clinical conditions.
Foundations of Vision
Authors: Tong Frank
Published: April 2018

The ease with which we can perceive and recognize things from a brief glance belies the staggering complexity of human vision. Here, I will describe the computational challenges faced by the visual system and current understanding of its neurocomputational workings. Psychophysical investigations, informed by introspection, have provided critical windows into the nature of vision. Theories of information processing such as signal detection theory and Bayesian inference provide conceptual frameworks for understanding perception and its limits. The functional architecture of the visual system is reviewed to clarify how information is transformed across successive stages of the visual pathway. With this knowledge in hand, we will consider the neural mechanisms that underlie the perception of basic features and complex objects, and the role of attentional feedback in optimizing perceptual processing. This review highlights recent advances, including biologically inspired models of deep learning, that establish our growing understanding of the neural computations that mediate visual perception, attentional selection, recognition, and inference.
Taste
Authors: Bartoshuk Linda M.
Published: April 2018

This chapter examines how taste and flavor help us survive. Omnivores (like humans) face a dilemma; we must select healthy foods and avoid poisons. An early belief in the innate ability to eat a healthy diet (“wisdom of the body”) gave way to our current understanding that taste is the true nutritional sense. A few simple substances (salt, glucose) necessary to solve immediate nutritional problems (sodium deficiency, low blood glucose) produce hard‐wired liking. Most poisons are bitter and we are hard‐wired to dislike them. Food flavor is a combination of taste and retronasal olfaction (odor volatiles perceived from the mouth). Retronasal olfactory stimuli are liked or disliked primarily through association with positive (e.g., calories) or negative (e.g., nausea) biological states. Unfortunately, hard‐wired and acquired liking can lead to nutritional disorders. Taste evolved to help us survive, but can also lead to overeating with attendant health risks.
The Neural Basis of Haptic Perception
Authors: Goodman James M. , Bensmaia Sliman J.
Published: April 2018

When we interact with an object, neural signals from the skin, joints, and muscles convey information about the shape, size, weight, and texture of the object. If the object is moving across the hand, information about its direction and speed is also available. In this chapter, we discuss the sensory signals the hands send the brain about our interactions with objects and review what is known about how different areas of the brain interpret these signals. Focusing on the senses of touch and proprioception, we examine how different sensory features are encoded in spatiotemporal patterns of neuronal activation and discuss the perceptual, motor, and affective roles these signals play in everyday life.
Music Perception
Authors: Russo Frank A. , Ammirante Paolo
Published: April 2018

This chapter reviews research on music perception. The review has been divided into four major sections. The first section considers research on pitch perception. The second section considers research on perception of timbre, perception of consonance, the generation of melodic expectancies, and the representation of tonal hierarchies. The third section considers research on rhythm and the representation of longer excerpts of music. The final section evaluates those aspects of music that appear to be universal as well as the possible origins of music.
Color Vision
Authors: Webster Michael A.
Published: April 2018

Advances in our understanding of color vision are proceeding on many fronts. These include analyses of the interplay of light and materials in natural scenes, to the genetic, neural, and cognitive processes underlying color sensitivity and percepts. The basic model for color vision, where the light spectrum is first sampled by receptors and then represented in opponent mechanisms, remains a cornerstone of color theory. However, the ways in which these processes are manifest and operate are surprisingly varied and still poorly understood. New developments continue to reveal that color vision involves highly flexible coding schemes that support sophisticated perceptual inferences. Characterizing these processes is providing fundamental insights not only into our experience of color, but into perception and neural coding generally.
Perceptual Rhythms
Authors: VanRullen Rufin
Published: April 2018

It is increasingly evident that brain function involves oscillatory activity in various frequency bands. This realization encouraged psychologists to consider that perception and cognition may operate periodically, as a succession of cycles mirroring the underlying oscillatory cycles. This idea, related to the age‐old notion of discrete perception, has resurfaced in recent years, fueled by advances in neuroscientific techniques. Contrary to earlier views of discrete perception as a unitary sampling rhythm affecting all perceptual and cognitive functions, contemporary evidence points not to one but several rhythms of perception that may depend on the sensory modality, the task, the stimulus, the brain region(s) involved, or the state of the subject. In the visual domain for example, a sensory alpha rhythm (∼10 Hz) may coexist with at least one more rhythm performing attentional sampling around 7 Hz. How these multiple periodic functions coordinate with each other and how internal sampling rhythms coordinate with overt sampling behavior are key questions for the future.
Multisensory Perception
Authors: Spence Charles
Published: April 2018

There has been a huge growth of interest in the topic of multisensory perception over the past half century. The majority of this research has focused on the spatial senses of vision, audition, and touch. Multisensory interactions would appear to be the norm, not the exception. Cross‐modal interactions (which include examples of multisensory integration) are influenced by stimulus timing. Interactions between the senses tend to be maximal when the component stimuli fall within the temporal window of integration that is approximately centered on simultaneity. Spatial coincidence between component stimuli modulates multisensory integration only under conditions of target location uncertainty and/or when space is somehow relevant to the participant's task. Bayesian decision theory has largely replaced previous accounts of why the senses interact in quite the way that they do, and can explain why one sense often dominates over the others. The study of interactions between the senses is now a core component of research into perception both in humans and increasingly in other species as well.
Perception and Interactive Technology
Authors: Scheller Meike , Petrini Karin , Proulx Michael J.
Published: April 2018

“What does it mean, to see?” was the question that David Marr used to motivate his computation approach to understandingVision(Marr, 1982). Marr's answer, building on Aristotle, was that “vision is the process of discovering from images what is present in the world, and where it is” (p. 3). Although we humans might have a preference for visual perception, we are endowed with other senses that provide us with a rich experience (Chapter 14, this volume). Therefore the broader question might be: What does it mean, to perceive? Although this might be seen as a philosophical question of sorts, it gets to the important issue of how we define perceptual experience scientifically so that we may study it. The importance of defining it is crucial for research applications: If we aim to restore a sense such as vision in blindness or hearing in deafness, what does it mean to see or to hear such that we will know when restoration has been successful? This chapter reviews the interaction between multisensory perception and interactive technological approaches to sensory rehabilitation.
Perceptual Learning
Authors: Green C. Shawn , Banai Karen , Lu Zhong‐Lin , Bavelier Daphne
Published: April 2018

Perceptual learning refers to a long‐term change in the ability to extract perceptual information from the environment that arises via experience or practice. In this chapter, we first explore many examples of perceptual learning in relatively simple as well as in more complex tasks. Furthermore, we do so across sensory modalities (vision, audition, touch, taste, smell) with the goal of highlighting the commonalities seen in perceptual learning across systems that are typically considered separately. We then consider the most substantial issues in the domain, including the question of learning specificity (i.e., when do improvements on one task transfer to new unpracticed tasks?), the conditions under which learning occurs, the neural basis of perceptual learning, computational models of perceptual learning, and potential real‐world applications of perceptual learning. We conclude with future directions; although the field has clearly made tremendous progress over the past century or more, there remain critical gaps in our knowledge that preclude our ability to fully harness perceptual learning to make a real‐world impact.
Dynamic Sensory‐Motor Adaptation to Earth Gravity
Authors: Lackner James R. , DiZio Paul
Published: April 2018

Gravity is such a constant environmental influence on spatial orientation and movement that the active CNS adaptations to it are easily underestimated, and they are best revealed when the background force conditions are altered. This chapter reviews illusions and movement errors that occur in hypo‐ and hypergravity environments as well as in a rotating artificial gravity environment where additional novel dynamic Coriolis forces are present. The phenomena reviewed reveal the importance of tactile cues from contact forces on the body surface and proprioceptive cues from muscle spindle and tendon receptor loading that are usually perceptually inaccessible, in addition to the vestibular cues that traditionally receive consideration. The role of these touch, pressure, and kinesthetic cues in visual and auditory localization, body schema, motor coordination, and learning of simple reaching movements to complex postural balancing are discussed.
Word Processing
Authors: Cai Zhenguang G. , Vigliocco Gabriella
Published: April 2018

This chapter reviews theories and empirical research on how humans retrieve meaning from speech or text. We first review research concerning how word meanings are represented. Here theories are divided between embodiment accounts proposing that word meanings are grounded in sensorimotor systems, and distributional semantics accounts proposing that meanings can be viewed as inter‐word distributional relations. We argue that these two approaches deal with different aspects of word meanings and should be integrated. For meaning retrieval, we discuss previous research showing that both meaning dominance and prior context determine the access and retrieval of meanings. We also discuss how the selected and unselected meanings may be later suppressed and re‐instantiated. Finally, we propose that prior, concurrent, or subsequent contexts—situated in the framework of inferential/predictive language processing—play different roles in word processing. Prior context constitutes the prior knowledge that sets the stage for word recognition and meaning retrieval, concurrent context constrains the recognition of the word/meaning, and subsequent context updates lexico‐semantic knowledge against recent experience. We propose that future research should investigate words in their natural habitat of contextualized and multimodal language communication.
Discourse and Dialogue
Authors: Brennan Susan E. , Kuhlen Anna K. , Charoy Jeanne
Published: April 2018

Language use is inherently social; discourse and dialogue unfold in social contexts. This chapter presents an introduction to the cognitive science of discourse and dialogue, from an interdisciplinary perspective that includes experimental psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, artificial intelligence, human–machine interaction, and neuroscience. Two dominant experimental traditions, language‐as‐product and language‐as‐action, are discussed, and some classic issues, findings, and theories in discourse processing are presented. Topics surveyed include information packaging, referential communication, achieving joint meanings in dialogue, models of discourse and dialogue structure, audience design and partner‐specific processing, and the neural bases of discourse and dialogue. Evidence from experiments and examples from communicative contexts are presented that shed light on how people plan, interpret, and coordinate language within dialogue. The research presented here holds implications for writing for better comprehension, improving robustness in human interaction with spoken dialogue systems, and understanding the neural processing of language during communication.
Reading
Authors: Carreiras Manuel , Armstrong Blair C. , Duñabeitia Jon Andoni
Published: April 2018

Communication via written words is one of humanity's greatest inventions and plays a critical role in modern society. This chapter outlines the key cognitive, neural, and computational aspects of the reading system. In so doing, it shows how reading takes advantage of domain‐general processing abilities and bootstraps written communication from other neurocomputational systems, including vision and spoken language processing. It also explains how failure in different parts of the reading system can lead to reading disorders such as dyslexia. Furthermore, emerging trends reveal exciting new directions for reading research, including advancing the understanding of how the brain changes as a function of learning to read, how the brain adapts to process different languages, and how to formalize our understanding of reading in more biologically plausible models. This chapter thus outlines how an interdisciplinary perspective to understanding reading has and will continue to advance our understanding of reading in ways that are critical for both fundamental and applied aims.
Bilingualism
Authors: Kroll Judith F. , Navarro‐Torres Christian A.
Published: April 2018

Bilingualism is a tool that provides cognitive and language scientists with a means to investigate the interactions between language and cognition that would otherwise be impenetrable in the minds and brains of monolingual speakers. In this chapter we review the highlights of the recent research on the consequences of bilingualism for language processing, for cognition, and for the neural processes that support them. Contrary to the view that monolinguals are the norm and bilinguals the exception, the new research takes the bilingual, not as a more complex language user, but as a model for the plasticity of the systems associated with language development and language use. We describe three models of bilingual processing that provide an historical framework for research on this topic. We then review the evidence for the parallel activation of the bilingual's two languages and its consequences for language, cognition, and the brain.
Creativity
Authors: Chrysikou Evangelia G.
Published: April 2018

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of some key background issues and recent trends in the experimental and cognitive neuroscience study of creativity. Despite its status as a hallmark of higher order thinking, research on creativity has not progressed with the same rigor as the study of other aspects of human cognition. Among the challenges for creativity researchers are concerns with the operational definition and measurement of this seemingly elusive ability. Research on the neurocognitive bases of creative thinking suggests that creativity is highly multifaceted and requires intricate interhemispheric interactions among a widely distributed network of brain regions. Recent theoretical and methodological perspectives highlight the importance of moving away from approaching creativity as a unitary construct, synonymous to the abstract concept of divergent thinking. Instead, they focus on specific cognitive and neural processes underlying creative thought, which may rely on trade‐offs between spontaneous and regulatory brain networks.
Language Acquisition
Authors: Lidz Jeffrey , Perkins Laurel
Published: April 2018

Language acquisition provides a new window into the rich structure of the human language faculty and explains how it develops in interaction with its environment and the rest of human cognition. This chapter discusses how children learn the phonology of their language and solve the problem of word segmentation. It explains how children learn the grammatical categories of words in their language as well as some semantic and syntactic properties associated with those categories. The chapter discusses a strategy called semantic bootstrapping that could help children learn the grammatical categories of some words based on the types of meanings those words have. It considers the acquisition of constraints on pronoun interpretation and on quantifier scope. Learning which words belong to which grammatical categories is another problem that children need to solve when learning their lexicon.
Development of Episodic Memory: Processes and Implications
Authors: Coughlin Christine , Leckey Sarah , Ghetti Simona
Published: April 2018

This chapter provides an account of the development of episodic memory. The contributions of binding and control processes to gains within each developmental period (infancy, childhood, and adolescence) are discussed. Structural and functional changes within the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex are also highlighted, providing an overview of age‐related changes in critical neural areas. Finally, the functional consequences of the protracted developmental trajectory of episodic memory are discussed, with special consideration given to the influence of episodic memory on future event imagination and learning.
Development of Mathematical Reasoning
Authors: Iuculano Teresa , Menon Vinod
Published: April 2018

Mathematical cognition provides a foundation for the development of skills critical for success in the 21st century. The use of mathematics to categorize, visualize, and manipulate information now extends to virtually all domains of human activity, making the necessity for basic mathematical skills more pressing than ever. This chapter summarizes current knowledge about the developmental and neurocognitive basis of mathematical reasoning. We review central cognitive theories and summarize emerging findings on the perceptual and cognitive building blocks of numerical cognition, the functional brain circuits associated with them, and the multiple memory and cognitive‐control systems that play a critical role in scaffolding children's mathematical skill development. We highlight neurodevelopmental models and functional brain circuits that go beyond individual regions involved in number processing and demonstrate that brain systems and circuits engaged by the developing brain are not the same as those engaged in adult brains sculpted by years of learning.
Emotion Development from an Experimental and Individual Differences Lens
Authors: Pérez‐Edgar Koraly , Hastings Paul
Published: April 2018

This chapter reviews the historical and empirical forces that have shaped the study of emotional development within the broader field of developmental psychology. Our central argument is that a broader methodological base is needed in order to best capture complex patterns of affect across context and time. In particular, the use of both naturalistic observations and experimental methods allows us to capture and explain patterns of development that are both possible and probable. In addition, the systematic inclusion of individual differences will move us away from the difficult task of trying to capture the elusive “average child.” This strategy may improve our understanding of emotion development and advance our overarching goal of improving the robustness of our science.
Attitudes
Authors: Bengal Steven T. , Gretton Jeremy D. , Wegener Duane T.
Published: April 2018

Attitudes are evaluations of objects in one's intrapsychic or social environment. These evaluations play a key role in perception, thinking, and behavior. As such, attitudes are directly relevant to virtually any realm in which human behavior plays a key role. In this chapter, we discuss the thriving research literature on attitudes and attitude change, linking current theories and questions to the history of related work that extends back to the early 1900s. In so doing, we also link current and previous research questions to the cognitive, metacognitive, affective, and neuroscientific questions that have contributed to the field's current understanding of attitude‐related phenomena.
Implicit Social Cognition
Authors: Hahn Adam , Gawronski Bertram
Published: April 2018

This chapter provides an overview of theories, methods, key findings, and controversies in research on implicit social cognition. We start by introducing the conceptual origins of implicit social cognition, definitions of the term “implicit,” and the most important measurement instruments. We further review research on dissociations between implicit and explicit measures, the prediction of behavior, and factors that cause systematic variation on implicit measures (formation and change of mental representations, context effects). In the last part of the chapter, we discuss common questions and ongoing controversies in implicit social cognition and provide an outlook on future research. Together, this chapter provides an overview of the current status of research on implicit social cognition.
Bayesian Methods in Cognitive Modeling
Authors: Lee Michael D.
Published: April 2018

Bayesian statistical methods provide a flexible and principled framework for relating cognitive models to behavioral data. They allow for cognitive models to be formalized, evaluated, and applied, supporting inferences about parameters, the testing of models, and making predictions about data. This chapter argues that Bayesian methods are most useful for cognitive modeling in allowing more ambitious accounts of cognition to be considered, including models that include hierarchical, latent‐mixture, or common‐cause structures. These theoretical possibilities, and the practical mechanics of using Bayesian methods implemented as graphical models, are demonstrated by means of an extended case study involving psychophysical models of the perception of duration for auditory and visual stimuli. The case study demonstrates a number of general features of the Bayesian approach—representing uncertainty, being sensitive to model complexity, dealing with contaminants, allowing for individual differences, making predictions and generalizations, and so on—while emphasizing the role of informative prior distributions to capture theoretical assumptions about cognitive variables and the complementary roles of parameter inference and model testing in answering research questions.
Statistical Inference
Authors: Morey Richard D.
Published: April 2018

Statistical inference has grown to be an indispensable tool for scientists seeking to make sense of data. This chapter describes three approaches for a large majority of statistical inferences drawn in the scientific literature which includes: frequentist approaches, likelihood approaches, and Bayesian approaches. Typical approaches to frequentist hypothesis testing use a principle of evidence involving decision error rates. The sampling distribution of a test statistic assuming that the null hypothesis is true will depend on known factors. The Bayesian approach to statistical inference is concerned with drawing rational inference from a sample, where rational is defined by an application of Bayes' theorem to formalized beliefs about a parameter or other unknown quantity. The likelihood approach in statistical inference is characterized by a particular viewpoint: The evidence in the data regarding parameters can be found in the likelihood function L. The likelihood function is the probability mass or density function viewed as a function of unknown parameters for fixed, observed data.
Elementary Signal Detection and Threshold Theory
Authors: Kellen David , Klauer Karl Christoph
Published: April 2018

Signal detection and threshold model classes are important measurement tools that disentangle the contribution of different factors such as discriminability and response/guessing‐bias based on observed categorical responses. This chapter provides an introduction to both model classes by discussing their theoretical foundations and different measures that can be derived from them. Measures and tests are exemplified with previously published data from the fields of perception and memory.
Methods in Psychophysics
Authors: Wichmann Felix A. , Jäkel Frank
Published: April 2018

Typically researchers in psychology are interested in substantive issues about the mind—how we see, hear, categorize, or reason about the world. To answer the multitude of yet unanswered substantive questions about the mind, one typically conducts experiments to collect data, analyzes the data obtained, and then interprets them in the context of current theories and models. Here we look at some of the aspects of the first two steps, the collection and analysis of behavioral data from psychophysical experiments. We concentrate on the various experimental designs for experiments of thethresholdorjust noticeable difference(JND) type. Subsequent to data acquistion, we suggest to use Bayesian inference to estimate the psychometric function of a beta‐binomial model as the default data analysis if there is a single independent variable. For multidimensional data and exploratory data analyses, we briefly introduce multidimensional psychometric function estimation techniques, making use of regularization techniques from machine learning. We conclude our chapter with a discussion of the timeliness of the two commandments of psychophysics:Know thy stimulusby Wilson Geisler andThou shalt not be lazy (when gathering data), which we attribute to Karl Dallenbach.
Response Times and Decision‐Making
Authors: Donkin Christopher , Brown Scott D.
Published: April 2018

Response times have been very informative for the understanding of mental processes, for many years. The most useful analyses of response times have been those based on cognitive theories of decision making, known as evidence accumulation models. We review the history of decision‐making models, and the empirical phenomena that have guided their development. We focus particularly on the common elements of the models, as they represent theoretical agreement about the most fundamental elements of decision‐making theory. We also review the practical usage of evidence accumulation models as data‐analysis tools, with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of this popular approach. While popular, model‐based analysis of response time data can be challenging, and so we review developments that make those analyses easier, and also discuss common approaches to the most common problems in plotting, parameter estimation, and model selection.