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AbstractThe development of the ability to anticipate—as manifested by preparatory actions and neural activation related to the expectation of an upcoming stimulus—may play a key role in the ontogeny of cognitive skills more broadly. This preregistered study examined anticipatory brain potentials and behavioral responses (reaction time; RT) to anticipated target stimuli in relation to individual differences in the ability to use goals to direct action (as indexed by measures of executive function; EF). A cross‐sectional investigation was conducted in 40 adults (aged 18–25 years) and 40 children (aged 6–8 years) to examine the association of changes in the amplitude of modality‐specific alpha‐range rhythms in the electroencephalogram (EEG) during anticipation of lateralized visual, tactile, or auditory stimuli with inter‐ and intraindividual variation in RT and EF. Children and adults exhibited contralateral anticipatory reductions in the mu rhythm and the visual alpha rhythm for tactile and visual anticipation, respectively, indicating modality and spatially specific attention allocation. Variability in within‐subject anticipatory alpha lateralization (the difference between contralateral and ipsilateral alpha power) was related to single‐trial RT. This relation was more prominent in adults than in children, and was not apparent for auditory stimuli. Multilevel models indicated that interindividual differences in anticipatory mu rhythm lateralization contributed to the significant association with variability in EF, but this was not the case for visual or auditory alpha rhythms. Exploratory microstate analyses were undertaken to cluster global field power (GFP) into a distribution‐free temporal analysis examining developmental differences across samples and in relation to RT and EF. Anticipation is suggested as a developmental bridge construct connecting neuroscience, behavior, and cognition, with anticipatory EEG oscillations being discussed as quantifiable and potentially malleable indicators of stimulus prediction.

Orkney is internationally recognised for its exceptionally well-preserved Neolithic archaeology. The chronology of the Orcadian Neolithic is, however, relatively poorly defined. The authors analysed a large body of radiocarbon and luminescence dates, formally modelled in a Bayesian framework, to address the timescape of Orkney's Late Neolithic. The resultant chronology for the period suggests differences in the trajectory of social change between the 'core' (defined broadly as the World Heritage site) and the 'periphery' beyond. Activity in the core appears to have declined markedly from c. 2800 cal BC, which, the authors suggest, resulted from unsustainable local political tensions and social concerns

AbstractThere is increasing interest in neurobiological methods for investigating the shared representation of action perception and production in early development. We explored the extent and regional specificity of EEG desynchronization in the infant alpha frequency range (6–9 Hz) during action observation and execution in 14‐month‐old infants. Desynchronization during execution was restricted to central electrode sites, while action observation was associated with a broader desynchronization across frontal, central, and parietal regions. The finding of regional specificity in the overlap between EEG responses to action execution and observation suggests that the rhythm seen in the 6–9 Hz range over central sites in infancy shares certain properties with the adult mu rhythm. The magnitude of EEG desynchronization to action perception and production appears to be smaller for infants than for adults and older children, suggesting developmental change in this measure.

Abstract Behavioral reactivity to novel stimuli in the first half‐year of life has been identified as a key aspect of early temperament and a significant precursor of approach and withdrawal tendencies to novelty in later infancy and early childhood. The current study examines the neural signatures of reactivity to novel auditory stimuli in 9‐month‐old infants in relation to prior temperamental reactivity. On the basis of the assessment of behavioral reactivity scores at 4 months of age, infants were classified into groups of high negatively reactive and high positively reactive infants. Along with an unselected control group, these groups of temperamentally different infants were given a three‐stimulus auditory oddball task at 9 months of age which employed frequent standard and infrequent deviant tones as well as a set of complex novel sounds. In comparison to high positively reactive and control infants, high negatively reactive infants displayed increased amplitude of a positive slow wave in the ERP response to deviant tones compared to standard tones. In contrast, high positively reactive infants showed a larger novelty P3 to the complex novel sounds. Results are discussed in terms of optimal levels of novelty for temperamentally different infants.

AbstractThe organization of body representations in the adult brain has been well documented. Little is understood about this aspect of brain organization in human infancy. The current study employed electroencephalography (EEG) with 60‐day‐old infants to test the distribution of brain responses to tactile stimulation of three different body parts: hand, foot, and lip. Analyses focused on a prominent positive response occurring at 150–200 ms in the somatosensory evoked potential at central and parietal electrode sites. The results show differential electrophysiological signatures for touch of these three body parts. Stimulation of the left hand was associated with greater positive amplitude over the lateral central region contralateral to the side stimulated. Left foot stimulation was associated with greater positivity over the midline parietal site. Stimulation of the midline of the upper lip was associated with a strong bilateral response over the central region. These findings provide new insights into the neural representation of the body in infancy and shed light on research and theories about the involvement of somatosensory cortex in infant imitation and social perception.

In this paper we give a direct and personal account of the issues and challenges that occurred in an action research study. The research team consisted of five researchers from two Australian universities. The action research case was carried out in a small financial services company and concerned the development of an information systems strategy. However, the focus of the paper is not on information systems, but on the general methodological issues and problems of action research. The authors hope that readers will benefit from the direct and transparent account of the practical methodological problems encountered in the study.

The practice of science entails more than just repeated cycles of theory construction, hypothesis generation, and empirical investigation. Broader, metatheoretical levels of conceptualization necessarily condition all aspects of the research process, establishing the very meaning and sensibility of science's empirical and theoretical activities. When debate arises at these metatheoretical levels, it is the subject of conceptual analysis, not empirical investigation. In this article, we examine the overarching metatheoretical divide that lies at the heart of many key theoretical debates in science: the divide between a Cartesian-Split-Mechanistic research paradigm and a Process-Relational research paradigm. We instantiate this divide in terms of three prominent domains of inquiry within developmental science: the study of epigenesis (including epigenetics); the study of embodiment, specifically embodied cognition; and the study of baselines for human nature and development. We reveal how core issues and theoretical debates within these domains derive from metatheoretical, not theoretical, points of contention.

AbstractThere is growing interest concerning the ways in which the human body, both one's own and that of others, is represented in the developing human brain. In two experiments with 7‐month‐old infants, we employed advances in infant magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain imaging to address novel questions concerning body representations in early development. Experiment 1 evaluated the spatiotemporal organization of infants' brain responses to being touched. A punctate touch to infants' hands and feet produced significant activation in the hand and foot areas of contralateral primary somatosensory cortex as well as in other parietal and frontal areas. Experiment 2 explored infant brain responses to visually perceiving another person's hand or foot being touched. Results showed significant activation in early visual regions and also in regions thought to be involved in multisensory body and self–other processing. Furthermore, observed touch of the hand and foot activated the infant's own primary somatosensory cortex, although less consistently than felt touch. These findings shed light on aspects of early social cognition, including action imitation, which may build, at least in part, on infant neural representations that map equivalences between the bodies of self and other.