A systematic investigation of conceptual colour associations. Associations with colours are a rich source of meaning and there has been considerable interest in understanding the capacity of colour to shape our functioning and behaviour as a result of colour associations. However, abstract conceptual colour associations have not been comprehensively investigated and many of the effects of colour on psychological functioning reported in the literature are therefore reliant on ad hoc rationalisations of conceptual associations with colour (e.g. blue-openness) to explain effects. In the present work we conduct a systematic, cross-cultural, mapping of conceptual colour associations using the full set of hues from the World Colour Survey (WCS). In Experiments 1a and 1b we explored the conceptual associations that English monolingual, Chinese bilingual and Chinese monolingual speaking adults have with each of the 11 Basic English Colour Terms (black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, grey). In Experiment 2 we determined which specific physical WCS colours are associated with which concepts in these three language groups. The findings reveal conceptual colour associations that appear to be 'universal' across all cultures (e.g. white-purity; bluewater/sky related; green-health; purple-regal; pink-'female' traits) as well as culture specific (e.g. red and orange-enthusiastic in Chinese; red-attraction in English). Importantly, the findings provide a crucial constraint on, and resource for, future work that seeks to understand the effect of colour on cognition and behaviour, enabling stronger a priori predictions about universal as well as culturally relative effects of conceptual colour associations on cognition and behaviour to be systematically tested.

Two experiments examined young-old differences in speed of identifying emotion faces and labeling of emotion expressions. In Experiment 1, participants were presented arrays of 9 faces in which all faces were identical (neutral expression) or 1 was different (angry, sad, or happy). Both young and older adults were faster identifying faces as "different" when a discrepant face expressed anger than when it expressed sadness or happiness, and this was true whether the faces were schematics or photographs of real people. In Experiment 2, participants labeled the Experiment 1 schematic and real faces. Older adults were significantly worse than young when labeling angry schematic faces, and angry and sad real faces. Together, this research indicates no age differences in identifying discrepant angry faces from an array, although older adults do have difficulty choosing the correct emotion label for angry faces.

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Biparental Phodopus campbelli and uniparental P. sungorus juvenile litters (2 males, 2 females) both consumed amniotic fluid and placenta during the birth of younger siblings. Three days later, P. campbelli juveniles were most responsive to a displaced younger sibling. Thus, P. campbelli are responsive to pups as juvenile alloparents and as new parents; however, at intervening ages, infanticidal attack (bite) was seen. At 5, 7, 9, 11, or 13 weeks of age, male and female P. campbelli were given a 5-min test with an unrelated, 3-day-old, anesthetized pup. Females attacked more often than males, yet pup-retrieval rates did not differ. Female aggression increased with age and was replaced by retrieval behavior 3 days after parturition. Male attack ceased after a birth, but parental behavior did not increase, remaining below the rate for new fathers tested with their own awake pup. Over repeated testing, behavior in one test did not predict behavior in another. Transitions from caregiving alloparent to infanticidal adult and back to parental care were clear in females, but less discrete with this stimulus paradigm in these highly paternal males.

Age-related differences in stopover ecology of migrant songbirds are poorly understood. We compared body mass, fat scores, and rates of mass gain of adults and immatures of 52 species of birds during autumn migration stopover at Long Point, Ontario, Canada, on the north shore of Lake Erie. Mean body mass of adults was greater than that of immatures in the majority of species with a detectable difference, but the average difference across species was only 1%. Fat scores were also higher for adults in many species, suggesting that mass differences were due to differences in condition rather than body size. Mean rate of mass gain, estimated from changes in body mass of first captures over the course of the day, did not differ significantly between adults and immatures of most species. However, the power to detect differences was low. Averaged across species (n = 117 903 birds), the estimated rate of mass gain for adults was 10% higher than that for immatures, but with 95% confidence limits ranging from 12% lower to 32% higher. The observed differences in body mass could be produced by a small difference in rate of mass gain. Small differences in body mass and rate of mass gain between immatures and adults could indicate that young passerines rapidly develop similar foraging skills to those of adults, or that young birds are not particularly disadvantaged at Long Point either because of good food supply, or because there is little need to accumulate large amounts of fat in the early stages of migration. Diferencias Dadas por la Edad en la Masa Corporal y la Tasa de Aumento de Masa de Aves Paserinas durante Escalas Migratorias Otoñales Resumen. La ecología de las aves canoras migratorias de diferentes edades en sus sitios de descanso es poco conocida. Comparamos la masa corporal, los niveles de grasa y la tasa de aumento de masa de adultos e inmaduros de 52 especies de aves durante escalas migratorias otoñales en la costa norte del Lago Erie, Long Point, Ontario, Canadá. La masa corporal de los adultos fue superior a la de los inmaduros en la mayoría de las especies, pero en promedio esta diferencia fue sólo del 1% para todas las especies. Los niveles de grasa también fueron mayores en adultos de muchas especies, lo que sugiere que las diferencias en masa se debieron a diferencias en la condición física y no al tamaño corporal de las aves. La tasa media de aumento de masa, estimada a partir de cambios en la masa corporal de las primeras capturas en el curso del día, no difirió significativamente entre adultos e inmaduros para la mayoría de las especies, pero el poder de la prueba estadística para detectar diferencias fue bajo. Promediada para todas las especies (n = 117 903 aves), la tasa estimada de aumento de masa para los adultos fue superior en un 10% a la de los inmaduros, pero con intervalos de confianza del 95% fluctuando entre un mínimo de 12% y 32%. Las diferencias observadas en masa corporal pudieron ser producidas por una pequeña diferencia en las tasas de aumento de masa. Las pequeñas diferencias en la masa corporal y la tasa de aumento de masa entre inmaduros y adultos podrían indicar que las aves jóvenes desarrollan habilidades de forrajeo similares a las de los adultos rápidamente o que las aves jóvenes no están particularmente en desventaja en Long Point ya sea porque el alimento es abundante o porque no es necesario acumular grandes cantidades de grasa en las primeras etapas de la migración.