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1. The slow emergence of gaze‐ and point‐following: A longitudinal study of infants from 4 to 12 months

   https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13457  

   Tang, Yueyan ; Gonzalez, Marybel Robledo ; Deák, Gedeon O. ( November 2023 , Developmental Science)

   Acquisition of visual attention‐following skills, notably gaze‐ and point‐following, contributes to infants' ability to share attention with caregivers, which in turn contributes to social learning and communication. However, the development of gaze‐ and point‐following in the first 18 months remains controversial, in part because of different testing protocols and standards. To address this, we longitudinally testedN = 43 low‐risk, North American middle‐class infants' tendency to follow gaze direction, pointing gestures, and gaze‐and‐point combinations. Infants were tested monthly from 4 to 12 months of age. To control motivational differences, infants were taught to expect contingent reward videos in the target locations. No‐cue trials were included to estimate spontaneous target fixation rates. A comparison sample (N = 23) was tested at 9 and 12 months to estimate practice effects. Results showed gradual increases in both gaze‐ and point‐following starting around 7 months, and modest month‐to‐month individual stability from 8 to 12 months. However, attention‐following did not exceed chance levels until after 6 months. Infants rarely followed cues to locations behind them, even at 12 months. Infants followed combined gaze‐and‐point cues more than gaze alone, and followed points at intermediate levels (not reliably different from the other cues). The comparison group's results showed that practice effects did not explain the age‐related increase in attention‐following. The results corroborate and extend previous findings that North American middle‐class infants' attention‐following in controlled laboratory settings increases slowly and incrementally between 6 and 12 months of age.

   A longitudinal experimental study documented the emergence and developmental trajectories of North American middle‐class infants' visual attention‐following skills, including gaze‐following, point‐following, and gaze‐and‐point‐following.

   A new paradigm controlled for factors including motivation, attentiveness, and visual‐search baserates. Motor development was ruled out as a predictor or limiter of the emergence of attention‐following.

   Infants did not follow attention reliably until after 6 months, and following increased slowly from 7 to 12 months.

   Infants' individual trajectories showed modest month‐to‐month stability from 8 to 12 months of age.

    

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2. Patches as an expressive medium for exploratory multi‐agent modelling

   https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13087  

   Brady, Corey ( April 2021 , British Journal of Educational Technology)

   This paper outlines the potential gains for Constructionist research and praxis in modelling that might be obtained by recognising the power of the Patch—a humble computational being in the NetLogo modelling environment that has been overshadowed by its more popular fellow agent, the Turtle. To contextualise this opportunity, I describe how Constructionist modelling has thrived by promoting forms of learning that rely on learners’ identifying with agents. I argue that patches are a neglected agent type in this multi‐agent modelling tradition, and that the possibilities for learners to adopt the patch perspective in support of exploratory forms of modelling and aesthetic expression have been under‐researched. Nevertheless, I show there are a variety of powerful ways for learners––both individually and in groups––to identify with patches. I describe ongoing research showing how taking an aesthetic approach to patches has the potential to support individuals and groups in powerful forms of learning with and about multi‐agent modelling.

   What is already known about this topic

   Turtles (movable agents in Logo and Constructionist environments descended from Logo) can be ‘transitional objects’ that provide learners a way to make powerful ideas their own.

   These agents can be powerful ‘objects‐to‐think‐with’ in large part because they encourage learners to identify with them in a form of learning known as ‘syntonic learning’.

   Expressive activities that draw on learners’aestheticinterests can support their learning with and about computational representations.

   Multi‐agent modelling is a powerful extension of Logo‐based learning environments that provides access to powerful ideas about complex systems and their emergent properties.

   In the multi‐agent setting, individual learners and/or groups of learners can identify syntonically with agents to provide entry points for reasoning about complexity.

   What this paper adds

   Patches (non‐movable agents in the NetLogo modelling environment) are under‐represented in the research on multi‐agent modelling, and the potential for learners to adopt the patches’ perspective has been neglected.

   An aesthetically driven approach to patches can ground students’ understanding of their expressive value.

   Participatory activities in which learners play the role of patches (called ‘Stadium Card’ activities) can ground the patch perspective, so that learners can achieve a form of syntonicity and/or collectively adopt the perspective of patches in the aggregate.

   Participatory activities that blend intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives on the patch grid can further enhance learners’ facility with programming for patches and their understanding of patches’ collective expressive power.

   Implications for practice and/or policy

   Balancing the focus between turtles and patches can enrich the modelling toolbox of learners new to agent‐based modelling.

   Patchesdocapture important aspects of individual and collective experience, and so can be good objects‐to‐think‐with, especially when conceptualising phenomena at a larger scale.

   The expressive potential of the patch grid is an important topic for computer science as well (eg, through 2D cellular automata). This is a rich context for learning in itself, which can be made accessible to groups of learners through physical or virtual participatory role‐play.

   Moreover, physical or virtual grids of people‐patches may exhibit novel aggregate computational properties that could in turn become interesting areas for research in computer science.

    

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3. Mother of all bonds: Influences on spatial association across the lifespan in capuchins

   https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13486  

   Godoy, Irene ; Korsten, Peter ; Perry, Susan E. ( February 2024 , Developmental Science)

   In humans, being more socially integrated is associated with better physical and mental health and/or with lower mortality. This link between sociality and health may have ancient roots: sociality also predicts survival or reproduction in other mammals, such as rats, dolphins, and non‐human primates. A key question, therefore, is which factors influence the degree of sociality over the life course. Longitudinal data can provide valuable insight into how environmental variability drives individual differences in sociality and associated outcomes. The first year of life—when long‐lived mammals are the most reliant on others for nourishment and protection—is likely to play an important role in how individuals learn to integrate into groups. Using behavioral, demographic, and pedigree information on 376 wild capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator) across 20 years, we address how changes in group composition influence spatial association. We further try to determine the extent to which early maternal social environments have downstream effects on sociality across the juvenile and (sub)adult stages. We find a positive effect of early maternal spatial association, where female infants whose mothers spent more time around others also later spent more time around others as juveniles and subadults. Our results also highlight the importance of kin availability and other aspects of group composition (e.g., group size) in dynamically influencing spatial association across developmental stages. We bring attention to the importance of—and difficulty in—determining the social versus genetic influences that parents have on offspring phenotypes.

   Having more maternal kin (mother and siblings) is associated with spending more time near others across developmental stages in both male and female capuchins.

   Having more offspring as a subadult or adult female is additionally associated with spending more time near others.

   A mother's average sociality (time near others) is predictive of how social her daughters (but not sons) become as juveniles and subadults (a between‐mother effect).

   Additional variation within sibling sets in this same maternal phenotype is not predictive of how social they become later relative to each other (no within‐mother effect).

    

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4. The impact of sufferers’ wealth status on pain perceptions: Its development and relation to allocation of healthcare resources

   https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13467  

   Shu, Yuhang ; Li, Huisi ; Ma, Shaocong ; Bian, Lin ( December 2023 , Developmental Science)

   Wealth‐based disparities in health care wherein the poor receive undertreatment in painful conditions are a prominent issue that requires immediate attention. Research with adults suggests that these disparities are partly rooted in stereotypes associating poor individuals with pain insensitivity. However, whether and how children consider a sufferer's wealth status in their pain perceptions remains unknown. The present work addressed this question by testing 4‐ to 9‐year‐olds from the US and China. In Study 1 (N = 108, 56 girls, 79% White), US participants saw rich and poor White children experiencing identical injuries and indicated who they thought felt more pain. Although 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds responded at chance, children aged seven and above attributed more pain to the poor than to the rich. Study 2 with a new sample of US children (N = 111, 56 girls, 69% White) extended this effect to judgments of White adults’ pain. Pain judgments also informed children's prosocial behaviors, leading them to provide medical resources to the poor. Studies 3 (N = 118, 59 girls, 100% Asian) and 4 (N = 80, 40 girls, 100% Asian) found that, when evaluating White and Asian people's suffering, Chinese children began to attribute more pain to the poor than to the rich earlier than US children. Thus, unlike US adults, US children and Chinese children recognize the poor's pain from early on. These findings add to our knowledge of group‐based beliefs about pain sensitivity and have broad implications on ways to promote equitable health care.

   Four studies examined whether 4‐ to 9‐year‐old children's pain perceptions were influenced by sufferers’ wealth status.

   US children attributed more pain to White individuals of low wealth status than those of high wealth status by age seven.

   Chinese children demonstrated an earlier tendency to attribute more pain to the poor (versus the rich) compared to US children.

   Children's wealth‐based pain judgments underlied their tendency to provide healthcare resources to people of low wealth status.

    

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5. Examining Distance in UAV Gesture Perception

   https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9981971  

   Jelonek, Karissa ; Fletcher, Paul ; Duncan, Brittany ; Detweiler, Carrick ( October 2022 , 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS))

   Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more common, presenting the need for effective human-robot communication strategies that address the unique nature of unmanned aerial flight. Visual communication via drone flight paths, also called gestures, may prove to be an ideal method. However, the effectiveness of visual communication techniques is dependent on several factors including an observer's position relative to a UAV. Previous work has studied the maximum line-of-sight at which observers can identify a small UAV [1]. However, this work did not consider how changes in distance may affect an observer's ability to perceive the shape of a UAV's motion. In this study, we conduct a series of online surveys to evaluate how changes in line-of-sight distance and gesture size affect observers' ability to identify and distinguish between UAV gestures. We first examine observers' ability to accurately identify gestures when adjusting a gesture's size relative to the size of a UAV. We then measure how observers' ability to identify gestures changes with respect to varying line-of-sight distances. Lastly, we consider how altering the size of a UAV gesture may improve an observer's ability to identify drone gestures from varying distances. Our results show that increasing the gesture size across varying UAV to gesture ratios did not have a significant effect on participant response accuracy. We found that between 17 m and 75 m from the observer, their ability to accurately identify a drone gesture was inversely proportional to the distance between the observer and the drone. Finally, we found that maintaining a gesture's apparent size improves participant response accuracy over changing line-of-sight distances. 

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