Anne Henning

The COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database: an open online repository for plant demography.

Summary 1. Schedules of survival, growth and reproduction are key life-history traits. Data on how these traits vary among species and populations are fundamental to our understanding of the ecological conditions that have shaped plant evolution. Because these demographic schedules determine population

COMADRE - A global data base of animal demography

Summary The open‐data scientific philosophy is being widely adopted and proving to promote considerable progress in ecology and evolution. Open‐data global data bases now exist on animal migration, species distribution, conservation status, etc. However, a gap exists for data on population dynamics spanning the rich diversity of the animal kingdom world‐wide. This information is fundamental to our understanding of the conditions that have shaped variation in animal life histories and their relationships with the environment, as well as the determinants of invasion and extinction. Matrix population models (MPMs) are among the most widely used demographic tools by animal ecologists. MPMs project population dynamics based on the reproduction, survival and development of individuals in a population over their life cycle. The outputs from MPMs have direct biological interpretations, facilitating comparisons among animal species as different as Caenorhabditis elegans, Loxodonta africana and Homo sapiens. Thousands of animal demographic records exist in the form of MPMs, but they are dispersed throughout the literature, rendering comparative analyses difficult. Here, we introduce the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database, an open‐data online repository, which in its version 1.0.0 contains data on 345 species world‐wide, from 402 studies with a total of 1625 population projection matrices. COMADRE also contains ancillary information (e.g. ecoregion, taxonomy, biogeography, etc.) that facilitates interpretation of the numerous demographic metrics that can be derived from its MPMs. We provide R code to some of these examples. Synthesis: We introduce the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database, a resource for animal demography. Its open‐data nature, together with its ancillary information, will facilitate comparative analysis, as will the growing availability of databases focusing on other aspects of the rich animal diversity, and tools to query and combine them. Through future frequent updates of COMADRE, and its integration with other online resources, we encourage animal ecologists to tackle global ecological and evolutionary questions with unprecedented sample size.

The end-state comfort effect in 3- to 8-year-old children in two object manipulation tasks

The aim of the study was to compare 3- to 8-year-old children’s propensity to anticipate a comfortable hand posture at the end of a grasping movement (end-state comfort effect) between two different object manipulation tasks, the bar-transport task, and the overturned-glass task. In the bar-transport task, participants were asked to insert a vertically positioned bar into a small opening of a box. In the overturned-glass task, participants were asked to put an overturned-glass right-side-up on a coaster. Half of the participants experienced action effects (lights) as a consequence of their movements (AE groups), while the other half of the participants did not (No-AE groups). While there was no difference between the AE and No-AE groups, end-state comfort performance differed across age as well as between tasks. Results revealed a significant increase in end-state comfort performance in the bar-transport task from 13% in the 3-year-olds to 94% in the 8-year-olds. Interestingly, the number of children grasping the bar according to end-state comfort doubled from 3 to 4 years and from 4 to 5 years of age. In the overturned-glass task an increase in end-state comfort performance from already 63% in the 3-year-olds to 100% in the 8-year-olds was significant as well. When comparing end-state comfort performance across tasks, results showed that 3- and 4-year-old children were better at manipulating the glass as compared to manipulating the bar, most probably, because children are more familiar with manipulating glasses. Together, these results suggest that preschool years are an important period for the development of motor planning in which the familiarity with the object involved in the task plays a significant role in children’s ability to plan their movements according to end-state comfort.

Emotion understanding: A cross-cultural comparison between Italian and German preschoolers

Italy and Germany belong to the Latin and the Germanic cultural cluster, respectively, and show, e.g., diverse languages, religious practices, rearing styles, and socialization goals. Given potential cultural differences in the developmental goals of independence and interdependence, the present work sought to explore developmental differences between Italian and German 3–6-year-old childrens understanding of emotion assessed by the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC). On average, Italian (n = 114) compared to German (n = 108) preschoolers mastered more TEC components at the ages 3 and 5. On component level, however, the samples only differed on the component Hiding: more Italian compared to German preschoolers understood that expressed and felt emotion may differ. Cultural differences within the Western industrial world thus likely relate to specific components rather than overall competence. Results will be discussed in relation to cultural belonging, controlling for maternal educational level, presence of siblings, and multilingualism.

The Development of Arabic Digit Knowledge in 4- to 7-Year-Old Children

Recent studies indicate that Arabic digit knowledge rather than non-symbolic number knowledge is a key foundation for arithmetic proficiency at the start of a child’s mathematical career. We document the developmental trajectory of 4- to 7-year-olds’ proficiency in accessing magnitude information from Arabic digits in five tasks differing in magnitude manipulation requirements. Results showed that children from 5 years onwards accessed magnitude information implicitly and explicitly, but that 5-year-olds failed to access magnitude information explicitly when numerical magnitude was contrasted with physical magnitude. Performance across tasks revealed a clear developmental trajectory: children traverse from first knowing the cardinal values of number words to recognizing Arabic digits to knowing their cardinal values and, concurrently, their ordinal position. Correlational analyses showed a strong within-child consistency, demonstrating that this pattern is not only reflected in group differences but also in individual performance.

Visual habituation tasks: The role of infant temperament

This longitudinal study investigated the relation between infant temperament and dropout rate in two visual habituation tasks when infants (N=80) were 6 and 12 months of age. At both age points, infant temperament was assessed with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised (IBQ-R) and infants were presented with the same two habituation tasks that were similar in set-up and procedure but different in content. Consistent with previous German work, a two-factor solution was found at each age point indicating Surgency/Extraversion and Negative Affectivity as underlying temperament dimensions. Dropout rates in the habituation tasks ranged from 21% to 68%. Overall, only few IBQ-R subscales, especially Duration of Orienting, had an impact on dropout rate. This suggests that the relatively high dropout rates reported in infant looking time studies are not systematically related to infant temperament. However, findings also suggest that temperament might have an impact on the likelihood of dropout when a habituation task is conducted at the end of a longer test session.

No Interrelation of Motor Planning and Executive Functions across Young Ages.

The present study examined the developmental trajectories of motor planning and executive functioning in children. To this end, we tested 217 participants with three motor tasks, measuring anticipatory planning abilities (i.e., the bar-transport-task, the sword-rotation-task and the grasp-height-task), and three cognitive tasks, measuring executive functions (i.e., the Tower-of-Hanoi-task, the Mosaic-task, and the D2-attention-endurance-task). Children were aged between 3 and 10 years and were separated into age groups by 1-year bins, resulting in a total of eight groups of children and an additional group of adults. Results suggested (1) a positive developmental trajectory for each of the sub-tests, with better task performance as children get older; (2) that the performance in the separate tasks was not correlated across participants in the different age groups; and (3) that there was no relationship between performance in the motor tasks and in the cognitive tasks used in the present study when controlling for age. These results suggest that both, motor planning and executive functions are rather heterogeneous domains of cognitive functioning with fewer interdependencies than often suggested.

Frühkindliche Handlungswahrnehmung und Theory of Mind: Vom Verständnis zielgerichteter Handlungen zum Verständnis mentalistisch gesteuerter Handlungen

Zusammenfassung. Die entwicklungspsychologische Forschung beschaftigt sich zunehmend mit der Bedeutung von fruhkindlicher Handlungswahrnehmung und -kontrolle fur die spatere Entwicklung sozial-kognitiver Fahigkeiten. Dabei ist insbesondere die Frage von Interesse, inwieweit das fruhkindliche Verstandnis auf Zielobjekte gerichteter Handlungen eine mogliche Vorlauferkompetenz einer Theory of Mind sein konnte. In dem vorliegenden Artikel differenzieren wir zwischen nicht-mentalistischem (auf struktureller Handlungsanalyse basierendem) und mentalistischem (auf mentale Konzepte zuruckgreifendem) Handlungsverstandnis und stellen die Hypothese auf, dass das nicht-mentalistische Verstandnis menschlicher Handlungen im Sauglingsalter eine wichtige Vorlauferkompetenz der mentalistischen Interpretation dieser Handlungen durch die Zuschreibung mentaler Zustande wie Intentionen darstellt. Wir untermauern diese Hypothese mit einem Uberblick uber die jungsten Befunde aus langsschnittlichen Untersuchungen, die mit der Ann...

The Relationship between Emotion Comprehension and Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior in 7- to 10-Year-Old Children

The influence of internalizing and externalizing problems on children’s understanding of others’ emotions has mainly been investigated on basic levels of emotion comprehension. So far, studies assessing more sophisticated levels of emotion comprehension reported deficits in the ability to understand others’ emotions in children with severe internalizing or externalizing symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between emotion comprehension and interindividual differences, with a focus on internalizing and externalizing behavior in children aged 7–10 years from the general population. A sample of 135 children was tested for emotion understanding using the Test of Emotion Comprehension. Information on internalizing and externalizing behavior was assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist 4/18. Age, bilingual upbringing, and amount of paternal working hours were significant control variables for emotion comprehension. In contrast to prior research, overall level of emotion understanding was not related to externalizing symptoms and correlated positively with elevated levels of somatic complaints and anxious/depressed symptoms. In addition, and in line with previous work, higher levels of social withdrawal were associated with worse performance in understanding emotions elicited by reminders. The present results implicate not only an altered understanding of emotions among more specific internalizing symptoms, but also that these alterations occur already on a low symptom level in a community based sample.