Lack of knowledge about iodine has been suggested as a risk factor for iodine deficiency in pregnant women, but no studies have addressed this issue in Portugal. So, the aim of this study was to investigate iodine knowledge among Portuguese pregnant women and its association with iodine status. IoMum, a prospective observational study, included 485 pregnant women recruited at Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de S. João, Porto, between the 10th and 13th gestational weeks. Partial scores for knowledge on iodine importance, on iodine food sources or on iodised salt were obtained through the application of a structured questionnaire. Then, a total iodine knowledge score was calculated and grouped into low, medium and high knowledge categories. Urinary iodine concentration (UIC) was measured in spot urine samples by inductively coupled plasma MS. Of the pregnant women, 54 % correctly recognised iodine as important to neurocognitive development, 32 % were unable to identify any iodine-rich food and 71 % presented lack of knowledge regarding iodised salt. Of the women, 61 % had a medium total score of iodine knowledge. Knowledge on iodine importance during pregnancy was positively associated with iodine supplementation and also with UIC. Nevertheless, median UIC in women who correctly recognised the importance of iodine was below the cut-off for adequacy in pregnancy (150 µg/l). In conclusion, knowledge on iodine importance is positively associated with iodine status. Despite this, recognising iodine importance during pregnancy may not be sufficient to ensure iodine adequacy. Literacy-promoting actions are urgently needed to improve iodine status in pregnancy.

The role of milk and dairy products in supplying iodine to pregnant women is unknown in Portugal. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between milk and dairy product consumption and the iodine status of pregnant women in the IoMum cohort of the Oporto region. Pregnant women were recruited between 10 and 13 weeks of gestation, when they provided a spot urine sample and information on lifestyle and intake of iodine-rich foods. Urinary iodine concentration (UIC) was determined by inductively coupled plasma MS. A total of 468 pregnant women (269 iodine supplement users and 199 non-supplement users) were considered eligible for analysis. Milk (but not yogurt or cheese) intake was positively associated with UIC, in the whole population (P = 0·02) and in the non-supplement users (P = 0·002), but not in the supplement users (P = 0·29). In non-supplement users, adjusted multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that milk consumption <3 times/month was associated with a five times increased risk of having UIC < 50 µg/l when compared with milk consumption ≥2 times/d (OR 5·4; 95 % CI 1·55, 18·78; P = 0·008). The highest UIC was observed in supplement users who reported consuming milk once per d (160 µg/l). Milk, but not yogurt or cheese, was positively associated with iodine status of pregnant women. Despite the observed positive association, daily milk consumption may not be sufficient to ensure adequate iodine intake in this population.

Branigan & Pickering (B&P) advocate the use of syntactic priming to investigate linguistic representations and argue that it overcomes several purported deficiencies of acceptability judgments. While we recognize the merit of drawing attention to a potentially underexplored experimental methodology in language science, we do not believe that the empirical evidence supports B&P's claims about acceptability judgments. We present the relevant evidence.

There has been a consistent pattern of criticism of the reliability of acceptability judgment data in syntax for at least 50 years (e.g., Hill 1961), culminating in several high-profile criticisms within the past ten years (Edelman & Christiansen 2003, Ferreira 2005, Wasow & Arnold 2005, Gibson & Fedorenko 2010, in press). The fundamental claim of these critics is that traditional acceptability judgment collection methods, which tend to be relatively informal compared to methods from experimental psychology, lead to an intolerably high number of false positive results. In this paper we empirically assess this claim by formally testing all 469 (unique, US-English) data points from a popular syntax textbook (Adger 2003) using 440 naïve participants, two judgment tasks (magnitude estimation and yes–no), and three different types of statistical analyses (standard frequentist tests, linear mixed effects models, and Bayes factor analyses). The results suggest that the maximum discrepancy between traditional methods and formal experimental methods is 2%. This suggests that even under the (likely unwarranted) assumption that the discrepant results are all false positives that have found their way into the syntactic literature due to the shortcomings of traditional methods, the minimum replication rate of these 469 data points is 98%. We discuss the implications of these results for questions about the reliability of syntactic data, as well as the practical consequences of these results for the methodological options available to syntacticians.