This study aims to bridge a gap in the extant research by examining consumer behavior that is unrelated to, but elicited by, service robots. The results of six studies showed that participants primed ...with robots (vs. humans) were more likely to engage in exploratory consumption behaviors. This effect was mediated through the elicitation of a sense of novelty, affected by the degree of service robots' intelligence and moderated by consumers' subjective knowledge. The study also examines different types of exploratory buying behaviors that have implications for marketers' and retailers’ use of service robots to promote exploratory consumption.
•Consumers consider service robots to be new, different, and interesting.•Consumers primed with robots tend to engage in exploratory consumption behaviors.•This effect is mediated through the elicitation of a sense of novelty.•The effect is moderated by service robots' intelligence and consumer knowledge.
Forty years of research on the rhizosphere priming effect (RPE) has demonstrated the potentially large increase (up to a factor 3) of soil organic matter mineralization induced by plant roots, but ...failed to directly quantify its contribution to the carbon (C) balance. Combining continuous CO2 flux measurements with RPE measurements has thus far been technically challenging. Here, we present an experimental platform of 40 mesocosms (volume = 88L; surface = 0.049 m2), including a 13C-labeled CO2 air-production system with a maximum capacity of 4 m3 min−1 and customizable labeling intensity. For this study, 13C depleted fossil C was used as source of labeled CO2 and the experiment was run for 250 days. Continuous net CO2-exchange measurements allowed us to estimate net ecosystem productivity, gross primary production and ecosystem respiration of the studied plant-soil systems. The RPE was regularly (bi-monthly to monthly) quantified by measuring the accumulation and isotopic composition of CO2 in dark chambers placed over the mesocosms. Our results show a good relationship between night plant-soil respiration (from continuous CO2-exchange measurements) and dark plant-soil respiration (from CO2 accumulation in dark chambers). This result suggests that our estimates of RPE and plant-soil fluxes based on the different methods are comparable. Preliminary results obtained in spring with grasses cultivated under ambient or elevated CO2 indicate that the RPE represents 1.22 ± 0.16% of gross primary production and 4.64 ± 1.12% of ecosystem respiration. The RPE estimates may have an uncertainty linked to the possible deviation in delta 13C between C sources (soil or plant) and released CO2 from these sources. We performed a sensitivity analysis on how the variation in intensity of isotopic labeling (difference in delta 13C between plant and soil) affects the uncertainty of RPE estimates considering 1‰ delta 13C deviation. Estimation of the RPE with an uncertainty lower than 10% of the estimated value requires a labeling intensity higher than 60‰. The developed platform will help to scale up the study of the RPE control on C cycling to the ecosystem level.
•A new platform was designed to couple rhizosphere priming to plant-soil CO2 fluxes.•The platform advantage is to provide priming estimates under semi-natural conditions.•Disadvantages are the cost and multiple controls to limit estimate uncertainty.•Uncertainty lower than 10% of priming value requires a labeling intensity >60‰.
•A novel technique showing how priming and interaction led to linguistic regularity.•Participants learnt artificial languages, then interacted using those languages.•Structural priming occurred in ...two different grammatical constructions.•Interaction resulted in the reduction of unpredictable linguistic variation.
We present a novel experimental technique using artificial language learning to investigate the relationship between structural priming during communicative interaction, and linguistic regularity. We use unpredictable variation as a test-case, because it is a well-established paradigm to study learners’ biases during acquisition, transmission and interaction. We trained participants on artificial languages exhibiting unpredictable variation in word order, and subsequently had them communicate using these artificial languages. We found evidence for structural priming in two different grammatical constructions and across human-human and human-computer interaction. Priming occurred regardless of behavioral convergence: communication led to shared word order use only in human-human interaction, but priming was observed in all conditions. Furthermore, interaction resulted in the reduction of unpredictable variation in all conditions, suggesting a role for communicative interaction in eliminating unpredictable variation. Regularisation was strongest in human-human interaction and in a condition where participants believed they were interacting with a human but were in fact interacting with a computer. We suggest that participants recognize the counter-functional nature of unpredictable variation and thus act to eliminate this variability during communication. Furthermore, reciprocal priming occurring in human-human interaction drove some pairs of participants to converge on maximally regular, highly predictable linguistic systems. Our method offers potential benefits to both the artificial language learning and the structural priming fields, and provides a useful tool to investigate communicative processes that lead to language change and ultimately language design.
Abstract Long-read RNA sequencing is essential to produce accurate and exhaustive annotation of eukaryotic genomes. Despite advancements in throughput and accuracy, achieving reliable end-to-end ...identification of RNA transcripts remains a challenge for long-read sequencing methods. To address this limitation, we develop CapTrap-seq, a cDNA library preparation method, which combines the Cap-trapping strategy with oligo(dT) priming to detect 5’ capped, full-length transcripts. In our study, we evaluate the performance of CapTrap-seq alongside other widely used RNA-seq library preparation protocols in human and mouse tissues, employing both ONT and PacBio sequencing technologies. To explore the quantitative capabilities of CapTrap-seq and its accuracy in reconstructing full-length RNA molecules, we implement a capping strategy for synthetic RNA spike-in sequences that mimics the natural 5’cap formation. Our benchmarks, incorporating the Long-read RNA-seq Genome Annotation Assessment Project (LRGASP) data, demonstrate that CapTrap-seq is a competitive, platform-agnostic RNA library preparation method for generating full-length transcript sequences.
It is now well-established that the microbiome is relevant for many of an organism's properties and that its composition reacts dynamically to various conditions. The microbiome interacts with host ...immunity and can play important roles in the defenses against pathogens. In invertebrates, immune priming, that is, improved survival upon secondary exposure to a previously encountered pathogen, can be dependent upon the presence of the gut microbiome. However, it is currently unknown whether the microbiome changes upon priming treatment. We here addressed this question in a well-established model for immune priming, the red flour beetle
exposed to the entomopathogenic bacterium
(
). After priming treatments, the microbiota composition of beetle larvae was assessed by deep sequencing of the V1-V2 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. We compared the effect of two established routes of priming treatments in this system: injection priming with heat-killed
and oral priming
ingestion of filtered sterilized bacterial spore culture supernatants. For oral priming, we used several strains of
known to vary in their ability to induce priming. Our study revealed changes in microbiome composition following the oral priming treatment with two different strains of
, only one of which (
) is known to lead to improved survival. In contrast, injection priming treatment with the same bacterial strain did not result in microbiome changes. Combined with the previous results indicating that oral priming with
depends on the larval microbiome, this suggests that certain members of the microbiome could be involved in forming an oral priming response in the red flour beetle.
Little is known about the cross-modal integration of unconscious and conscious information. In the current study, we therefore tested whether the spatial meaning of an unconscious visual word, such ...as up, influences the perceived location of a subsequently presented auditory target. Although cross-modal integration of unconscious information is generally rare, unconscious meaning stemming from only 1 particular modality could, in principle, be available for other modalities. Also, on the basis of known influences and dependencies of meaning on sensory information processing, such an unconscious meaning-based effect could impact sensory processing in a different modality. In 3 experiments, this prediction was confirmed. We found that an unconscious spatial word, such as up, facilitated position discrimination of a spatially congruent sound (here, a sound from above) as compared to a spatially incongruent sound (here, from below). This was found even though participants did not recognize the meaning of the primes. The results show that unconscious processing extends to semantic-sensory connections between different modalities.
We study the role of morality in debt repayment, using an experiment with the credit card customers of a large Islamic bank in Indonesia. In our main treatment, clients receive a text message stating ...that “non-repayment of debts by someone who is able to repay is an injustice.” This moral appeal decreases delinquency by 4.4 percentage points from a baseline of 66 percent and reduces default among customers with the highest ex ante credit risk. Additional treatments help benchmark the effects against direct financial incentives and rule out competing explanations, such as reminder effects, priming religion, and provision of new information.
In the human electroencephalogram (EEG), induced oscillatory responses in various frequency bands are regarded as valuable indices to examine the neural mechanisms underlying human memory. While the ...advent of virtual reality (VR) drives the investigation of mnemonic processing under more lifelike settings, the joint application of VR and EEG methods is still in its infancy (e.g., due to technical limitations impeding the signal acquisition). The objective of the present EEG study was twofold. First, we examined whether the investigation of induced oscillations under VR conditions yields equivalent results compared to standard paradigms. Second, we aimed at obtaining further insights into basic memory-related brain mechanisms in VR. To these ends, we relied on a standard implicit memory design, namely repetition priming, for which the to-be-expected effects are well-documented for conventional studies. Congruently, we replicated a suppression of the evoked potential after stimulus onset. Regarding the induced responses, we observed a modulation of induced alphaband in response to a repeated stimulus. Importantly, our results revealed a repetition-related suppression of the high-frequency induced gammaband response (>30 Hz), indicating the sharpening of a cortical object representation fostering behavioral priming effects. Noteworthy, the analysis of the induced gammaband responses required a number of measures to minimize the influence of external and internal sources of artefacts (i.e., the electrical shielding of the technical equipment and the control for miniature eye movements). In conclusion, joint VR–EEG studies with a particular focus on induced oscillatory responses offer a promising advanced understanding of mnemonic processing under lifelike conditions.
We present a new modeling framework for recognition memory and repetition priming based on signal detection theory. We use this framework to specify and test the predictions of 4 models: (a) a ...single-system (SS) model, in which one continuous memory signal drives recognition and priming; (b) a multiple-systems-1 (MS1) model, in which completely independent memory signals (such as explicit and implicit memory) drive recognition and priming; (c) a multiple-systems-2 (MS2) model, in which there are also 2 memory signals, but some degree of dependence is allowed between these 2 signals (and this model subsumes the SS and MS1 models as special cases); and (d) a dual-process signal detection (DPSD1) model, 1 possible extension of a dual-process theory of recognition (Yonelinas, 1994) to priming, in which a signal detection model is augmented by an independent recollection process. The predictions of the models are tested in a continuous-identification-with-recognition paradigm in both normal adults (Experiments 1-3) and amnesic individuals (using data from Conroy, Hopkins, & Squire, 2005). The SS model predicted numerous results in advance. These were not predicted by the MS1 model, though could be accommodated by the more flexible MS2 model. Importantly, measures of overall model fit favored the SS model over the others. These results illustrate a new, formal approach to testing theories of explicit and implicit memory. (Contains 13 footnotes, 9 tables, and 16 figures.)
Sublethal exposure to environmental challenges may enhance ability to cope with chronic or repeated change, a process known as priming. In a previous study, pre‐exposure to seawater enriched with ...pCO2 improved growth and reduced antioxidant capacity of juvenile Pacific geoduck Panopea generosa clams, suggesting that transcriptional shifts may drive phenotypic modifications post‐priming. To this end, juvenile clams were sampled and TagSeq gene expression data were analysed after (i) a 110‐day acclimation under ambient (921 μatm, naïve) and moderately elevated pCO2 (2870 μatm, pre‐exposed); then following (ii) a second 7‐day exposure to three pCO2 treatments (ambient: 754 μatm; moderately elevated: 2750 μatm; severely elevated: 4940 μatm), a 7‐day return to ambient pCO2 and a third 7‐day exposure to two pCO2 treatments (ambient: 967 μatm; moderately elevated: 3030 μatm). Pre‐exposed geoducks frontloaded genes for stress and apoptosis/innate immune response, homeostatic processes, protein degradation and transcriptional modifiers. Pre‐exposed geoducks were also responsive to subsequent encounters, with gene sets enriched for mitochondrial recycling and immune defence under elevated pCO2 and energy metabolism and biosynthesis under ambient recovery. In contrast, gene sets with higher expression in naïve clams were enriched for fatty‐acid degradation and glutathione components, suggesting naïve clams could be depleting endogenous fuels, with unsustainable energetic requirements if changes in carbonate chemistry persist. Collectively, our transcriptomic data indicate that pCO2 priming during post‐larval periods could, via gene expression regulation, enhance robustness in bivalves to environmental change. Such priming approaches may be beneficial for aquaculture, as seafood demand intensifies concurrent with increasing climate change in marine systems.
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