What do animals hear? While it remains challenging to adequately assess sensory perception in animal models, it is important to determine perceptual abilities in model systems to understand how physiological processes and plasticity relate to perception, learning, and cognition. Here we discuss hearing in rodents, reviewing previous and recent behavioral experiments querying acoustic perception in rats and mice, and examining the relation between behavioral data and electrophysiological recordings from the central auditory system. We focus on measurements of critical bands, which are psychoacoustic phenomena that seem to have a neural basis in the functional organization of the cochlea and the inferior colliculus. We then discuss how behavioral training, brain stimulation, and neuropathology impact auditory processing and perception.
This study investigated the relationship between cognitive abilities and age differences in information search and the moderating role of task self-relevance by measuring the decision-making processes of participants in both high and low self-relevance decision-making tasks. The sample included 57 young and 65 older adults. They viewed five-alternative × five-attribute decision matrices that required them to open, with a mouse click, the information cells that interested them. Processing speed, verbal fluency, working memory, and vocabulary were measured as cognitive abilities. The dependent variables were search engagement (including time-related engagement and frequency-related engagement) and search pattern (calculated based on alternative-based or attribute-based search). The results from structured equation modeling showed that age negatively predicted these cognitive abilities (processing speed, verbal fluency, working memory, and vocabulary) and positively predicted information search engagement. Processing speed mediated the effect of age on study time per cell under tasks with both high and low self-relevance. Verbal fluency, meanwhile, mediated the total search time and checking time per cell when the task was highly self-related but not when the task had low self-relevance. These results suggest that self-relevance can moderate the mediation effect of verbal fluency on the relationship between age and information search time; this means that older adults whose verbal fluency was limited require relatively more time to search information to make an informed decision. However, this effect is only sufficient when the decision-making task is highly self-related and provokes more engagement motivation toward it.
The return of migrant workers is an important trend in labor mobility in China. The location of the return determines the direction of the flow and affects the choice of settlement. Based on first-hand data from a field survey, statistical analysis and binary logistic analysis methods are used to analyze the location characteristics and influencing factors of the return flow. The study found that (1) returning to the county is the basic spatial feature of the return of migrant workers. Most workers return to villages and counties outside the township. Before returning, most worked in other cities and counties. Counties and small towns near the village have become the main sites for migrant workers' return to employment. Although the general trend of rural-urban migration has not changed, the intensity has declined to a certain extent. (2) The main reason for return is to take care of the family, followed by old age, difficulty finding a job, low wages and high costs, poor health, etc. In addition, hometown employment conditions have an impact. The push from other places and the local pull work together on migrant workers, eventually producing a return pattern. (3) Most return flow has occurred in the last 5 years, and it has been intensifying. Return flow and outflow are the two basic forms of labor mobility. Under normal circumstances, migrant workers choose to return when they cannot obtain a higher income or cannot find a job. It is foreseeable that as the county-level economy continues to develop, the trend of return will continue to strengthen. (4) Factors such as years of education, skills, working years, number of work sites, family generation, distance from the city, and relative position in the village reached significance in the regression model for the choice to return to the county. Only the family generation coefficient was negative, and the other coefficients were positive. Employment and income and taking care of the family are the main mechanisms influencing migrant workers' return location selection.
Background The anchoring effect refers to the tendency that an individual’s numerical judgment would assimilate to an anchor (a numerical value) that appears before that judgment. This study investigated whether the anchoring effect exists in the emotion judgment of younger and older adults and observed the age-related characteristics. This could not only broaden the explanation of the anchoring effect but also link this classic judgment bias with daily emotion judgment to refresh our understanding of older adults’ ability in emotional perspective taking. Method Participants (older adults: n = 64, age range: 60–74, 27 males; younger adults: n = 68, age range: 18–34, 34 males) read a brief emotional story and compared the protagonist’s emotion intensity to a given numerical anchor (lower or higher than the anchor) and then estimated the protagonist’s possible emotion intensity in that story. The task was divided into two cases according to anchor relevance (anchors are relevant or irrelevant relative to the judgment target). Results The results showed that the estimates were higher under high-anchor than low-anchor conditions, suggesting the robust anchoring effect. Further, the anchoring effect was greater for anchor-relevant than anchor-irrelevant tasks and for negative rather than positive emotions. No age differences were found. Discussion and conclusions The results indicated that the anchoring effect is robust and stable for younger and older adults, even though the anchor information seemed irrelevant. Finally, perceiving others’ negative emotions is a crucial but rather difficult aspect of empathy, which could be a challenge and requires more caution for accurate interpretation.
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