Specific and general information sharing among competing academic researchers

We examine information sharing among academics during the research process and show it is context dependent because of differences in trade-offs. When researchers respond to specific requests for information or materials, potential future reciprocity is weighed against the current loss of competitiveness, while general sharing intermediate results in an open forum is driven by the need for feedback versus potential misappropriation. We formally model these trade-offs and empirically test for differences using a survey of German and UK bio-scientists. Increased competition has a negative impact on sharing in both contexts. But career stage has an effect only on specific sharing with untenured faculty less likely to share. Further, scientists in larger teams are more likely to share specifically, but less likely to share generally. The importance of patents for one's reputation reduces sharing in both contexts, but the effect is greater for general information sharing.     

State-Dependent Memory in Infants

Why do infants remember some things and not others? Human infants frequently cycle through different states such as calm attentiveness, wakeful activity, and crying. Given that cognitive processes do not occur in isolation, such fluctuations in internal state might influence memory processing. In the present experiment, declarative memory in 9-month-old infants (N = 96) was heavily state dependent. Infants exhibited excellent retention of a deferred imitation task after a 15-min delay if their state at encoding was identical to their state at retrieval (e.g., calm). Infants failed to exhibit retention if their state at encoding was different from their state at retrieval (e.g., calm vs. animated). Infant memory processing depends on internal cues.     

Recouping and rethinking the effects of summer vacation on reading achievement

Vacations may have detrimental effects on maths and spelling performance, but the findings for reading are less conclusive. The purpose of this study was to analyse the effects of summer vacation on early literacy skills of young children. Participants included rising first and second‐graders, most of whom were at‐risk, struggling readers. No evidence of summer setback was evident for this sample of children; in fact, gains in reading (or, recoupment of any losses) were more common in children performing at lower levels than for those with higher scores at the end of the school year. Our outcomes are different from those reported by other researchers. We explain this with attention to the content of our comparisons, the grade levels investigated and measures used to assess performance, and discuss implications for future research based on our findings.