The symbolic distance effect in monkeys (Cebus apella)

In making comparative judgments about pairs of stimuli that are linearly ordered, human subjects usually respond faster the greater the separation between-the-items of a test pair—the symbolic distance effect. A similar result has been obtained for associatively related items, such as the alphabet. We report evidence for a distance effect in monkeys tested with pairs of items drawn from a five-item series with which they had considerable previous experience-in a serial learning setting. This finding provides independent evidence that in learning a serial list of items, monkeys acquire knowledge about the ordinal positions of the items. Analysis of the positive results obtained in Experiment 2 and of the failure to find a distance effect in Experiment 1 suggested that in learning a serial list, monkeys construct both an associative chain representation of the series and a spatial representation, with the latter supplying the spatial markers that convey positional information. This dual coding of sequential events, which may be rather general among mammals, probably supports a variety of cognitive competencies.     

Open innovation and within-industry diversification in small and medium enterprises: The case of open source software firms

This paper examines the within-industry diversification of software small and medium enterprises that collaborate with the open source software community (OSS SMEs). In doing so, it offers new insights into the association between open innovation and diversification. We rely on arguments inspired by the literature and evidence collected through interviews with OSS SMEs’ top managers to investigate factors that favor or hinder within-industry diversification. First, in line with the mainstream diversification literature, we focus attention on the role of firm size. Second, in the spirit of the open innovation research, we concentrate on the mechanisms that OSS SMEs put in place to get access to the external resources of the OSS community. Econometric evidence on 100 European OSS SMEs shows that firm size is negatively associated to within-industry diversification, while OSS SMEs that have contributed to a larger number of OSS projects have a more diversified portfolio of software products. Furthermore, we provide preliminary evidence that the practice of authorizing firm programmers to contribute autonomously to OSS projects of their own choice during working hours may be positively associated to within-industry diversification only if OSS SMEs possess adequate internal technological resources.     

The effect of public subsidies on firms’ investment–cash flow sensitivity: Transient or persistent?

This work analyses the effect of public subsidies on firms’ investments and investment–cash flow sensitivity in a longitudinal sample of 288 Italian unlisted non-venture capital backed owner-managed new-technology-based firms (NTBFs), observed over a 15-year period from 1994 to 2008. Seventy five of these firms received one or more public subsidies in the observation period. We use an error correction model (ECM) specification and system generalised method of moment (GMM) techniques that take into account the endogeneity of public subsidies. First, we find that the investments of small NTBFs are sensitive to internal cash flows, while those of large NTBFs are not. Receipt of public subsidies by small NTBFs results in an increased investment rate and a reduced investment–cash flow sensitivity, in the immediately following year. We interpret these results as an indication of the relaxation of financial constraints. Moreover, while the increase in the investment rate does not persist in the long run, the dependence of investments on cash flow remains negligible after receipt of the first public subsidy. These results support the view that public subsidies can help small NTBFs in persistently removing the financial constraints that bind their investment activity.     

The impact of M&A on the R&D process: An empirical analysis of the role of technological- and market-relatedness

Using information on 31 in-depth cases of individual M&A deals, we show that technological and market-relatedness between M&A partners distinctly affects the inputs, outputs, performance and organisational structure of the R&D process. While the findings in the literature on the effect of M&A on R&D are quite mixed, we can sharpen results by analysing data at the level of the R&D process. This comes at the price of a smaller sample and more qualitative data, for which caution in the interpretation is necessary. M&A between partners with ex-ante complementary technologies result in more active R&D performers after the M&A. In sharp contrast, when merged entities are technologically substitutive, they significantly decrease their R&D level after the M&A. Moreover, R&D efficiency increases more prominently when merged entities are technologically complementary than when they are substitutive. These two findings on the R&D level and the performance support the scope economy effect of M&A, on the one hand, and reject the scale economy effect of M&A, on the other. Next, for cases in which partners were active in the same technological fields before the M&A, the reduction of R&D is more prominent, while the R&D efficiency gain is smaller if merged entities were rivals in the product market prior to their merger than if they were non-rival. This suggests that rival firms reap little technology gains from mergers.     

Developing Cultural Competence: Mainstream Teachers and Professional Development

In response to the underachievement of its Latino children, one district implemented Parent Partnership for Achieving Literacy (PAL), a program to build cultural bridges between home and school. Professional development (PD) that helped mainstream teachers develop cultural competence to work effectively with Latino children and their families was central to the PAL Program. This article introduces the PAL program and presents findings from one PD course. This article discusses the elements of PD that are essential to increasing cultural competence in mainstream teachers.     

Neonatal state profiles: reliability and short-term prediction of neurobehavioral status

Observations were made on 40 newborns prior to hospital discharge in which states were scored every 10 sec in two 35-70-min periods separated by 6-48 hours. Newborns' states, particularly sleep states and crying, were fairly reliable across observation sessions. Cluster analyses identified 3 separable state profiles that subsequently differentiated infants on the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale with Kansas Supplements (NBAS-K) at 2 weeks of age. Additionally, state observations and NBAS-K exams showed significant agreement on individual differences in neurologically based measures, such as startles, tremulousness, and lability of state.     

Student politics in Italy: From Utopia to terrorism

Since 1968, the Italian student movement has moved from a stress on a libertarian Utopia to its current emphasis on support for political terrorism. This article presents an analysis of the social and economic crisis in Italy and indicates how the crisis has stimulated this change in the student movement. The crisis affects young people directly and this has deepened its impact in the universities. The student movement has experienced a collapse of representative student institutions, the rise of dogmatism and sectarianism, and the glorification of violence as a means of social change.     

The influence of phonological mechanisms in written spelling of profoundly deaf children

In the present study, the effect of phonological and working memory mechanisms involved in spelling Italian single words was explored in two groups of children matched for grade level: a group of normally hearing children and a group of pre-verbally deaf children, with severe-to-profound hearing loss. Three-syllable and four-syllable familiar words were presented to the two groups for spelling to dictation. Three conditions were used: simple spelling, concurrent articulation, and foot tapping. Verbal digit span was also assessed. Overall, the performance of deaf children tended to be lower compared to hearing children, but not significantly so. Concurrent articulation produced more errors than tapping in both groups. Regression analyses showed that the main predictor in all three tasks was school level, however the proportion of variance explained by this factor was much greater in the dual tasks, in particular in concurrent articulation. Qualitative analyses of errors showed a worse performance of deaf children, with a greater proportion of mixed errors compared to hearing children. They also showed a greater proportion of phonologically plausible errors compared to hearing children, presumably due to their deprived auditory representation, and/or to phonological representations that rely to a large extent on lip reading and kinesthetic and visual perception of articulatory gestures.     

Maternal DHA and the development of attention in infancy and toddlerhood

Infants were followed longitudinally to document the relationship between docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) levels and the development of attention. Erythrocyte (red-blood cell; RBC) phospholipid DHA (percentage of total fatty acids) was measured from infants and mothers at delivery. Infants were assessed in infant-control habituation at 4, 6, and 8 months augmented with psychophysiological measures, and on free-play attention and distractibility paradigms at 12 and 18 months. Infants whose mothers had high DHA at birth showed an accelerated decline in looking over the 1st year and increases in examining during single-object exploration and less distractibility in the 2nd year. These findings are consistent with evidence suggesting a link between DHA and cognitive development in infancy.     

Individual and Developmental Differences in Disengagement of Fixation in Early Infancy

The current study investigated whether individual and developmental differences in look duration are correlated with the latency for infants to disengage fixation from a visual stimulus. Ninety-four infants (52 3-month-olds, 42 4-month-olds) were tested in a procedure that measured ocular reaction time to shift fixation from a central target to a peripheral target under conditions in which the central-target either remained present ("competition" condition) or was removed from the display ("noncompetition" condition). Look duration was correlated with disengagement latency; longer-looking infants were slower than shorter-looking infants to shift fixation to the peripheral target on competition trials, but not noncompetition trials. Results were similar for 3- and 4-month-olds, although 3-month-olds showed slower latencies on all trials. Furthermore, long-looking infants were not consistently slower, but rather showed greater variability in their response latencies under conditions that required disengagement of fixation. The results support the position that developmental and individual differences in look duration are linked to the development of the neural attentional systems that control the ability to disengage, or inhibit, visual fixation.