Standard models of adolescent risk taking posit that the cognitive abilities of adolescents and adults are equivalent, and that increases in risk taking that occur during adolescence are the result of socio emotional differences in impulsivity, sensation seeking, and lack of self-control. Fuzzy-trace theory incorporates these socio emotional differences. However, it predicts that there are also cognitive differences between adolescents and adults, specifically that there are developmental increases in gist-based intuition that reflects understanding. Gist understanding, as opposed to verbatim-based analysis, (...) generally has been hypothesized to have a protective effect on risk taking in adolescence. Gist understanding is also an essential element of informed consent regarding risks in medical decision- making. Evidence thus supports the argument that adolescents’ status as mature minors should be treated as an exception rather than a presumption, because accuracy in verbatim analysis is not mature gist understanding. Use of the exception should be accompanied by medical experts’ input on the bottom-line gist of risks involved in treatment. (shrink)

A comparative fMRI study by Peeters et al. (2009) provided evidence that a specific sector of left inferior parietal lobule is devoted to tool use in humans, but not in monkeys. We propose that this area represents the neural substrate of the human capacity to understand tool use by using causal reasoning.

_Seeing the World through Children’s Eyes_ brings an overarching emphasis on ‘seeing’ to early years research and provides an opportunity to see and hear from leading researchers in the field concerning how they work with visual methodologies in their early years research.

En raison de ses élargissements successifs, l’Union européenne compte désormais près d’un demi-milliard de citoyens, 27 États membres, 3 alphabets et 23 langues officielles dont certaines ont une diffusion mondiale. Mais ce n’est que la partie émergée de l’iceberg : quelques 60 autres langues font également partie de son patrimoine commun, parlées qu’elles sont dans certaines régions ou par des groupes spécifiques. Par ailleurs, les migrants ont apporté un large éventail de langues : on estime qu’au moins 175 nationalités sont (...) présentes sur le territoire de l’Union. Cette diversité est le fondement même de l’identité européenne, qui, à l’heure de la mondialisation, en fait sa force : le multilinguisme est un facteur majeur de compétitivité pour l’économie européenne, et la traduction sous toutes ses formes – notamment littéraire – constitue le support essentiel d’une Europe de la diversité.With its successive enlargements, the European Union now has almost half a billion citizens, 27 Member States, 3 alphabets and 23 official languages, some of which are spoken all over the world. But this is only the visible part of the iceberg: some 60 other languages, spoken in certain regions or by particular groups, are also part of its common heritage. To these are added a wide range of other languages introduced by migrants: it is estimated that at least 175 nationalities are represented within the EU. This diversity is the very foundation of European identity and, in our age of globalisation, also what makes its strength: multilingualism is an important factor of competitiveness for the European economy, and translation of every kind, literary included, is a mainstay of European diversity. (shrink)

Cohen Kadosh & Walsh (CK&W) discuss the limitations of the behavioral, imaging, and single-cell studies related to number representation in human parietal cortex. The limitations of the imaging studies are grossly underestimated, particularly those using adaptation paradigms, and the problem of establishing a link between single-cell studies and imaging is not even addressed. Monkey functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), however, provides a solution to these problems.

Single-cell studies of monkey posterior parietal cortex (PPC) have revealed the extensive neuronal representations of three-dimensional subject motion and three-dimensional layout of the environment. I propose that navigational planning integrates this PPC information, including gravity signals, with horizontal-plane based information provided by the hippocampal formation, modified in primates by expansion of the ventral stream.