Genital asymmetry is relatively common and widespread throughout the animal kingdom. The functional significance of genital asymmetry is however, poorly understood for most species. Male praying mantids of the genus Ciulfina are remarkable in possessing complex and directionally asymmetric genital phallomeres in some species, and chirally dimorphic/antisymmetric genitalia in others. Here we explore the chiral dimorphism in male genitalia of Ciulfina baldersoni which appear to exhibit genital antisymmetry. We test whether genital orientation influences mating success, copulation duration and the attachment duration of spermatophores. Additionally we investigate genital interactions between male and females using x-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Lastly we assess whether genital asymmetry is associated with non-genital morphological asymmetry of a range of traits. Our results highlight the complex functional morphology of genitalia in this praying mantis species and yet demonstrate no functional difference between dextral and sinistral morphs other than the direction of attachment with both morphs enjoying equal levels of mating success. Chiral morphs also did not strongly associate with any other forms of asymmetry. We therefore conclude that genital chirality in Ciulfina baldersoni is a likely case of antisymmetry with no functional significance to genital orientation, and is likely to be selectively neutral.
PD participants may have subtle emotion recognition deficits that are not ameliorated by the addition of contextual cues, similar to those found in everyday scenarios. Consistent with previous literature, the results suggest that PD participants may have underlying emotion recognition deficits, which may impact their social functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record
Objective: Accumulating evidence suggests that retrieval practice (testing during learning) enhances memory in clinical populations. However, no study to date has examined the efficacy of retrieval practice in stroke survivors, despite the negative impact of poststroke memory difficulties. We investigated whether retrieval practice enhances memory for names in stroke survivors and healthy controls. Method: Using a within-and between-subjects design, 20 stroke survivors and 20 healthy controls completed an experimental paradigm that required them to learn 18 name-face pairs divided across 3 learning conditions (spaced restudy, retrieval practice, massed study). A mixed analysis of variance compared participants' name recall across conditions after 30 min and 7 days. Results: There was a main effect of learning condition (p Ͻ .001, p 2 ϭ .67) and a significant Time ϫ Condition interaction (p Ͻ .001, p 2 ϭ .25). Post hoc comparisons revealed that retrieval practice was the superior learning condition in both groups after 30 min. After 7 days, there was no significant difference between the retrieval practice and spaced restudy conditions in stroke survivors (p ϭ .08, d ϭ 0.41), although retrieval practice remained superior to massed study (p ϭ .001, d ϭ 0.88). Conclusions: Retrieval practice is a promising memory technique that significantly enhanced stroke survivors' memory for names. Given similar performance in the retrieval practice and spaced restudy conditions after 7 days, stroke survivors may benefit from multiple presentations of information during learning, rather than 1 prolonged exposure. Future studies should investigate whether additional retrieval opportunities might prolong the beneficial effect of testing during learning.
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