The shifting shelf task: a new, non-verbal measure for attentional set shifting

Attentional set shifting is a core ingredient of cognition, allowing for fast adaptation to changes in the environment. How this skill compares between humans and other primates is not well known. We examined performance of 3- to 5-year-old children and chimpanzees on a new attentional set shifting task. We presented participants with two shelves holding the same set of four boxes. To choose the correct box on each shelf, one has to switch attention depending on which shelf one is currently presented with. Experiment 1 (forty-six 3- to 5-year olds, predominantly European White) established content validity, showing that the majority of errors were specific switching mistakes indicating failure to shift attention. Experiment 2 (one hundred and seventy-eight 3- to 6-year olds, predominantly European White) showed that older children made fewer mistakes, but if mistakes were made, a larger proportion were switching mistakes rather than 'random' errors. Experiment 3 (52 chimpanzees) established suitability of the task for non-human great apes and showed that chimpanzees' performance was comparable to the performance of 3- and 4-year olds, but worse than 5-year olds. These results suggest that chimpanzees and young children share attentional set shifting capacities, but that there are unique changes in the human lineage from 5 years of age.

Association of celiac disease with eosophageal eosinophilia and eosinophilic eosophagitis

BACKGROUND

Aim of the study was to evaluate the association between celiac disease and eosinophilic oesophagitis/oesophageal eosinophilia in children.

METHODS

A total of 278 patients with celiac disease (mean age: 7.12 ± 4.64 years, M/F: 0.77) were involved in the study. The patients were evaluated retrospectively in terms of clinical, endoscopic and histopathological findings. The association between celiac disease and eosinophilic oesophagitis/oesophageal eosinophilia was determined.

RESULTS

According to Marsh classification system 6 (2.1%) of the patients were graded type 3A, 10 (3.5%) were type 3B, 262 (94.4%) were type 3C. The histopathological examination of oesophageal biopsy specimens of the patients revealed <15 eosinophils per high power field in only 4 (1.4%) patients. Two of these patients were positive for HLA DQ8, one was DQ2, and the other one was both DQ8 and DQ2. Tissue transglutaminase IgA level was above 300 U/mL in these patients. None of them had elevated serum total IgE levels, peripheral eosinophilia and history of atopic diseases. The gastrointestinal symptoms resolved and tissue transglutaminase IgA level of the patients were declined after 3 months of gluten-free diet.

CONCLUSION

Although an association between celiac disease and eosinophilic oesophagitis/oesophageal eosinophilia have been postulated in recent years, no exact relationship was established in this study. This is the first study reporting the performance of follow-up GI endoscopy with biopsies revealing the resolution of oesophageal eosinophilia.

What happened? Do preschool children and capuchin monkeys spontaneously use visual traces to locate a reward?

The ability to infer unseen causes from evidence is argued to emerge early in development and to be uniquely human. We explored whether preschoolers and capuchin monkeys could locate a reward based on the physical traces left following a hidden event. Preschoolers and capuchin monkeys were presented with two cups covered with foil. Behind a barrier, an experimenter (E) punctured the foil coverings one at a time, revealing the cups with one cover broken after the first event and both covers broken after the second. One event involved hiding a reward, the other event was performed with a stick (order counterbalanced). Preschoolers and, with additional experience, monkeys could connect the traces to the objects used in the puncturing events to find the reward. Reversing the order of events perturbed the performance of 3-year olds and capuchins, while 4-year-old children performed above chance when the order of events was reversed from the first trial. Capuchins performed significantly better on the ripped foil task than they did on an arbitrary test in which the covers were not ripped but rather replaced with a differently patterned cover. We conclude that by 4 years of age children spontaneously reason backwards from evidence to deduce its cause.

Inferring Unseen Causes: Developmental and Evolutionary Origins

Human adults can infer unseen causes because they represent the events around them in terms of their underlying causal mechanisms. It has been argued that young preschoolers can also make causal inferences from an early age, but whether or not non-human apes can go beyond associative learning when exploiting causality is controversial. However, much of the developmental research to date has focused on fully-perceivable causal relations or highlighted the existence of a causal relationship verbally and these were found to scaffold young children's abilities. We examined inferences about unseen causes in children and chimpanzees in the absence of linguistic cues. Children (N = 129, aged 3-6 years) and zoo-living chimpanzees (N = 11, aged 7-41 years) were presented with an event in which a reward was dropped through an opaque forked-tube into one of two cups. An auditory cue signaled which of the cups contained the reward. In the causal condition, the cue followed the dropping event, making it plausible that the sound was caused by the reward falling into the cup; and in the arbitrary condition, the cue preceded the dropping event, making the relation arbitrary. By 4-years of age, children performed better in the causal condition than the arbitrary one, suggesting that they engaged in reasoning. A follow-up experiment ruled out a simpler associative learning explanation. Chimpanzees and 3-year-olds performed at chance in both conditions. These groups' performance did not improve in a simplified version of the task involving shaken boxes; however, the use of causal language helped 3-year-olds. The failure of chimpanzees could reflect limitations in reasoning about unseen causes or a more general difficulty with auditory discrimination learning.

A rare cause of pancreatic insufficiency; Johanson Blizzard Syndrome

Johanson-Blizzard Syndrome (JBS) was first described by Johanson and Blizzard. It exhibits autosomal recessive inheritance and is characterized by mutation in the UBR1 gene on the long arm of Chromosome 15. The phenotypic features as well as diarrhoea that occurs due to the exocrine pancreatic insufficiency constitute the main clinical symptoms. This article discusses Johanson-Blizzard Syndrome due to the case followed-up by us with the symptoms of deafness and diarrhoea as well as typical facial appearance.