Central–peripheral differences in audiovisual and visuotactile event perception

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - We examined audiovisual and visuotactile integration in the central and peripheral visual field using visual fission and fusion illusions induced by...     

Individual differences in the acquisition of non‐linguistic audio‐visual associations in 5 year olds

Audio‐visual associative learning – at least when linguistic stimuli are employed – is known to rely on core linguistic skills such as phonological awareness. Here we ask whether this would also be the case in a task that does not manipulate linguistic information. Another question of interest is whether executive skills, often found to support learning, may play a larger role in a non‐linguistic audio‐visual associative task compared to a linguistic one. We present a new task that measures learning when having to associate non‐linguistic auditory signals with novel visual shapes. Importantly, our novel task shares with linguistic processes such as reading acquisition the need to associate sounds with arbitrary shapes. Yet, rather than phonemes or syllables, it uses novel environmental sounds – therefore limiting direct reliance on linguistic abilities. Five‐year‐old French‐speaking children (N = 76, 39 girls) were assessed individually in our novel audio‐visual associative task, as well as in a number of other cognitive tasks evaluating linguistic abilities and executive functions. We found phonological awareness and language comprehension to be related to scores in the audio‐visual associative task, while no correlation with executive functions was observed. These results underscore a key relation between foundational language competencies and audio‐visual associative learning, even in the absence of linguistic input in the associative task.     

The effect of face orientation on holistic processing

Holistic processing, a hallmark of face processing, can be measured by the composite face effect: adults have difficulty recognising the top half of a face when it is aligned with a new bottom half, unless holistic processing is disrupted by misaligning the two halves. Like the recognition of facial identity, holistic processing is impaired when faces are inverted. To obtain a more refined measure of the influence of orientation on holistic face processing, we administered the composite face task to adults at each of seven orientations. In both experiment 1 (in which orientations were randomly intermixed) and experiment 2 (in which orientations were blocked), the composite face effect decreased linearly with rotation. We conclude that holistic processing is tuned to upright faces, diminishes as faces deviate from upright, and becomes insignificant once faces reach a sideways orientation. We propose a hierarchical model of face perception in which linear decreases in holistic processing underlie qualitative shifts in other aspects of face perception.     

Sleeper effects

Early experience preserves and refines many capabilities that emerge prenatally. Here we describe another role that it plays -- establishing the neural substrate for capabilities that emerge at a much later point in development. The evidence comes from sleeper effects: permanent deficits when early experience was absent in capabilities that normally emerge long after birth. We provide evidence of sleeper effects for three aspects of vision, based on our research with children who were deprived of early visual input by congenital cataracts: contrast sensitivity for mid and high spatial frequencies, holistic face processing, and the ability to recognize the identity of faces based on small differences in the spacing among facial features.     

Illness representations,coping and psychological adjustment to Parkinson's disease

The present study reports an application of the common sense model (CSM) of illness representations to the prediction of psychological distress in people with Parkinson's disease (PD). The study sought to (i) examine cross-sectional and prospective associations between illness representations, coping and psychological distress, and (ii) test the hypothesis that coping would mediate any relationships between illness representations and psychological distress. Patients with PD (n = 58) completed the Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised, the Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Patients (n = 57) were followed-up at 6 months. Illness representations explained large amounts of variance in time 1 anxiety (R ² = 0.42) and depression (R ² = 0.44) as well as additional variance in time 2 anxiety (ΔR ² = 0.12) and depression (ΔR ² = 0.09) after controlling for baseline scores. In addition, avoidance mediated the effect of emotional representations on time 1 anxiety, and acceptance-resignation mediated the effects of both consequences and emotional representations on time 1 depression. The present study therefore provides partial support for the mediational model outlined in the CSM, as significant mediation effects were found only in the cross-sectional analyses.     

The composite face effect in six-year-old children: Evidence of adult-like holistic face processing

Holistic processing (i.e., gluing facial features together into a gestalt) is a hallmark of adults’ expert face recognition. Children make more errors than adults on a variety of face processing tasks even during adolescence. To determine whether this slow development can be attributed to immature holistic processing of unfamiliar faces, we tested 6-year-old children (n=24) with a classic measure of adults’ holistic processing, the composite face effect: They made same/different judgements about the top halves of face pairs when each top half was combined with a different bottom half, with which it was aligned (so that holistic processing creates the impression of a different face) or misaligned (a manipulation that disrupts holistic processing). Six-year-olds showed an adult-like composite face effect: Like adults, they made 26% more errors on aligned trials than on misaligned trials. These results suggest that the improvements after age 6 in the recognition of the facial identity are not caused by the onset or increasing strength of holistic face processing.     

Preventing children's aggression: Outcomes of an early intervention

Mothers of medically at-risk infants were randomly assigned to a Healthy Start intervention (HV) or a cognitive reframing intervention (HV+). Outcome measures were taken at the conclusion of the intervention (1 year) and at the 3-year follow-up visit. At age 3, children in the HV+ condition (in comparison with those in the HV condition) showed fewer aggression problems (as measured by the Child Behavior Checklist). Maternal emotional unavailability (as measured by combined scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and avoidance items on the Conflict Tactics Scale) at the 1-year visit mediated the effects of the intervention on children's aggression at age 3. Findings suggest that an early, cognitively based intervention may lead to reduced child aggression as a result of increased maternal social-emotional availability within the caregiving relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Gradual improvement in fine-grained sensitivity to triadic gaze after 6 years of age

The current research compared the ability of adults and children to determine where another person is looking in shared visual space (triadic gaze). In Experiment 1, children (6-, 8-, 10-, and 14-year-olds) and adults viewed photographs of a model fixating a series of positions separated by 1.6° along the horizontal plane. The task was to indicate whether the model was looking to the left or right of one of three target positions (midline, 6.4° left, or 6.4° right). By 6 years of age, thresholds were quite small (M=1.94°) but were roughly twice as large as those of adults (M=1.05°). Thresholds decreased to adult-like levels around 10 years of age. All age groups showed the same pattern of higher sensitivity for central targets than peripheral targets and of misjudging gaze toward peripheral targets as farther from midline than it really was. In subsequent experiments, we evaluated possible reasons for the higher thresholds in 6- and 8-year-olds. In Experiment 2, the thresholds of 6-year-olds did not improve when the range of deviations from the target position that the model fixated covered a much wider range. In Experiment 3, 8-year-olds were less sensitive than adults to small shifts in eye position even though the task required only matching faces with the same eye position and not determining where the person was looking. These findings suggest that by 6 years of age, children are quite sensitive to triadic gaze, which may support inferences about others' interests and intentions. Subsequent improvements in sensitivity involve, at least in part, an increase in sensitivity to eye position.