Motor experiences shape cognitive development in infancy, with the prone position being one such crucial motor experience in the first 6 months of life. Although the motor benefits of the prone position are well-documented, its influence on early cognitive abilities remains insufficiently explored. This study quantified the relationship between prone motor skills and motor-based problem-solving abilities in 48 full-term and preterm infants aged 3-6 months. Prone skills were assessed using the Alberta Infant Motor Scale\'s prone domain. The Assessment of Problem-Solving in Play was utilized to measure motor-based problem-solving by observing how motor actions were used to solve toys. Advanced prone motor skills were correlated with an increase in sophisticated exploration skills and a concurrent decline in lower order exploration skills in all infants, with correlations being stronger in preterm infants. Notably, a 1-point increase in prone skills was associated with a 1.3-point increase in total motor-based problem-solving abilities in all infants. Our findings provide preliminary evidence for the contribution of prone play to cognitive development in infants, prompting considerations for assessment and intervention strategies. Further research is needed to ascertain if the delayed acquisition of prone motor skills is indicative of poor early problem-solving abilities in preterm infants.

BACKGROUND: While negative affect and problem-solving deficits have been consistently linked to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, the latter are often conceptualized and studied as time- and/or context-invariant. Though requiring additional empirical support, theory suggests that discrimination may strengthen the relation between rejection sensitivity and increases in negative affect as well as declines in problem-solving abilities following rejection. The aim of the current study was to test this claim using a social rejection paradigm (i.e., Cyberball) with young adults experiencing past-month suicidal ideation.
METHODS: The sample consisted of 50 participants. Lifetime discrimination and rejection sensitivity were assessed prior to Cyberball. Negative affect and problem-solving abilities were assessed pre- and post-Cyberball. SPSS and the PROCESS macro were used to test relations among variables of interest.
RESULTS: Rejection sensitivity predicted greater problem-solving decrements, but not negative affect, following rejection among individuals who had experienced higher (vs. lower) levels of lifetime discrimination.
CONCLUSIONS: Addressing rejection sensitivity and sources of discrimination within the context of treatment may reduce the impact of social rejection on problem-solving abilities among young adults at risk for suicide.

BACKGROUND: Problem-solving in early and middle childhood is of high relevance for cognitive developmental research and educational support. Previous research on science problem-solving has focussed on the process and strategies of children handling challenging tasks, but less on providing insights into the cognitive network that enables science problem-solving.
OBJECTIVE: In this study, we aimed to investigate whether performance in science problem-solving is mainly determined by domain-specific rule knowledge, by domain-general cognitive abilities or both.
METHODS: In our study, 215 6- to 8-year-old children completed a set of three domain-specific rule knowledge tasks and three corresponding problem-solving tasks that were content-coherent, as well as a vocabulary task, and a reasoning task.
RESULTS: Correlational and regression analyses revealed a negligible impact of domain-specific rule knowledge on corresponding problem-solving tasks. In contrast, the associations between problem-solving performance in different domains and the associations between problem-solving performance and domain-general abilities (vocabulary and reasoning) were comparably strong.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that science problem-solving in primary school children primarily relies on domain-general cognitive abilities. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to cognitive theories and early science education.

The ability to gain information from one situation, acquire new skills and/or perfect existing ones, and subsequently apply them to a new situation is a key element in behavioural flexibility and a hallmark of innovation. A flexible agent is expected to store these skills and apply them to contexts different from that in which learning occurred. Goffin\'s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) are highly innovative parrots renowned for their problem-solving and tool-using skills and are thus excellent candidates to study this phenomenon. We hypothesized that birds allowed to use a tool in a larger variety of contingencies would acquire a broader expertise in handling it, facilitating its transfer to new tasks. In our study, we compared the performance of two groups of captive Goffin\'s cockatoos (N = 13): A test group received more diverse learning and motor experiences on multiple applications of a hook-type tool, while a control group received intensive, total trial-matched, experience with a single application of the same tool. Then, both groups were tested on two novel tasks to determine whether experience with the tool in multiple contexts would facilitate performance during transfer. While both groups transferred to both novel tasks, group differences in performance were apparent, particularly in the second transfer task, where test birds achieved a higher success rate and reached criteria within fewer trials than control birds. These results provide support for the prediction that experiencing a diverse range of contingencies with a tool appears to allow birds to acquire generalizable knowledge and transferrable skills to tackle an untrained problem more efficiently. In contrast, intensive experience with the tool in a single context might have made control birds less flexible and more fixated on previously learned tool-dependent instances.

Low inhibitory control (IC) is sometimes associated with enhanced problem-solving amongst adults, yet for young children high IC is primarily framed as inherently better than low IC. Here, we explore associations between IC and performance on a novel problem-solving task, amongst 102 English 2- and 3-year-olds (Study 1) and 84 Swedish children, seen at 18-months and 4-years (Study 2). Generativity during problem-solving was negatively associated with IC, as measured by prohibition-compliance (Study 1, both ages, Study 2 longitudinally from 18-months). High parent-reported IC was associated with poorer overall problem-solving success, and greater perseveration (Study 1, 3-year-olds only). Benefits of high parent-reported IC on persistence could be accounted for by developmental level. No concurrent association was observed between problem-solving performance and IC as measured with a Delay-of-Gratification task (Study 2, concurrent associations at 4-years). We suggest that, for young children, high IC may confer burden on insight- and analytic-aspects of problem-solving.

This article aims at understanding the challenges of tackling complex policy problems in multilevel governance. In order to better grasp the multilevel regulation of complex policy problems, it is needed to understand how uncertainty and scientific expertise are dealt with. We investigate this via the regulation of pandemics by the EU and the WHO, with the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 as critical case. The analysis of the multilevel practice reveals that the attitude toward uncertainty fundamentally differed between the global (WHO) and the European level. At the global level a classic speaking truth to power approach involved the denial of uncertainty, while at the EU level the assigned role of providing scientific expertise was interpreted as a necessity to openly communicate about uncertainty. While the global approach was heavily criticized, the uncertainty communication at the European level was much appreciated.
Este artículo busca comprender los desafíos de abordar problemas políticos complejos en la gobernanza multinivel. Para comprender mejor la regulación multinivel de los problemas políticos complejos, es necesario comprender cómo se aborda la incertidumbre y la experiencia científica. Investigamos esto a través de la regulación de pandemias por parte de la UE y la OMS, con la pandemia H1N1 de 2009 como un caso crítico. El análisis de las prácticas multinivel revela que la actitud hacia la incertidumbre era fundamentalmente diferente entre el nivel global (OMS) y el nivel europeo. A nivel global un método de “decir la verdad al poder” incluía la negación de la incertidumbre, mientras que a nivel europeo el papel asignado de proporcionar experiencia científica se interpretó como algo necesario para comunicarse abiertamente acerca de la incertidumbre. Aunque la aproximación global fue fuertemente criticada, la comunicación de la incertidumbre a nivel europeo fue muy valorada.
本文致力理解多层次治理中应对复杂政策问题时面临的挑战。为更好地把握复杂政策问题的多层次监管, 需要明白不确定性和科学技术是如何加以处理的。笔者以2009年HINI流感爆发作为案例, 用欧盟和世界卫生组织(WHO)针对流行病的监管规定对此进行了调查。通过对多层次实践的分析显示, 全球(即WHO)和欧盟对不确定性的态度存在根本差异。在全球层面上, WHO用“对权力说真话”这一经典实践来否定不确定性, 而欧盟则运用科学技术, 将其作为公开交流不确定性的必备手段。结果则是, WHO实践受到严厉批评, 而欧盟对不确定性的公开交流受到赞赏。.