Three-month-olds' visual preference for faces and its underlying visual processing mechanisms

This study was aimed at investigating the face preference phenomenon and its underlying mechanisms at 3 months of age. Using an eye-tracker apparatus, Experiment 1 demonstrated that 3-month-olds prefer natural face images to unnatural ones, replicating and extending previous evidence obtained with schematic facelike stimuli. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the general mechanisms that induce face preference in newborns could not explain the same phenomenon at 3 months of age, when infants are attracted by perceptual cues more specific to faces. This suggests that signs of a process of cognitive specialization are already present in 3-month-olds' visual behavior toward faces.     

Bidirectional semantic priming in the attentional blink

The time course of semantic priming between two associated words was tracked using rapid serial visual presentation of two synchronized streams of stimuli appearing at about 20 items/sec, each stream including a target word. The two words were semantically related or unrelated and were separated by stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 0–213 msec. Accuracy in reporting the first target (T1) versus the second target (T2) has been shown to interact dramatically with SOA over this range. The materials were in English in Experiment1 and Italian in Experiment2. T1 was semantically primed only at short SOAs, whereas T2 was primed at all SOAs (Experiment 1) or at all SOAs except the shortest one (Experiment2). The results indicate a strong competition between target words early in processing, with T2 often becoming the first word identified at short SOAs, thus priming T1.     

Why specific developmental disorders are not specific: On-line and developmental effects in autism and dyslexia

In this paper we will suggest that impairments in domain-specific functions may have wide-ranging developmental effects which mimic domain-general impairments. This may explain why ‘pure’ cases of developmental disorders are rare. The understanding of autism and dyslexia has been advanced by theories postulating failure of a specific mechanism against a background of unimpaired general processing. Impairment in the mechanisms underlying ‘theory of mind’ in autism, and ‘phonology’ in dyslexia, predict and explain the pattern of poor and good performance on a range of experimental and real-life tasks. However, existing accounts deal largely with the on-line effects of modular deficits, and can be criticised as not truly developmental. Here we attempt to trace developmental or down-stream effects of specific impairments in mentalising and phonological processing. We argue that these modules act as vital gatekeepers in development. Important in this process is the interaction of cognition with socio-cultural environment, an effect well-illustrated by cross-language differences in dyslexia. We claim that consideration of these developmental effects makes clear why postulating specific impairments may be sufficient for explaining more general deficits.     

Assessment battery for communication (ABaCo): normative data

The Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo) was introduced to evaluate pragmatic abilities in patients with cerebral lesions. The battery is organized into five evaluation scales focusing on separate components of pragmatic competence. In the present study, we present normative data for individuals 15-75?years of age (N = 300). The sample was stratified by age, sex, and years of education, according to Italian National Institute of Statistics indications in order to be representative of the general national population. Since performance on the ABaCo decreases with age and lower years of education, the norms were stratified for both age and education. The ABaCo is a valuable tool in clinical practice; the normative data provided here will enable clinicians to determine different kinds and specific levels of communicative impairments more precisely.     

Preferential orienting to faces in 4‐month‐olds: analysis of temporal–nasal visual field differences

A two‐process theory of the development of face processing predicted that newborns’ preferential orienting to face‐like patterns would be stronger in the temporal visual field than in the nasal. This prediction was confirmed in a previous study. While it is known that the newborn tendency to orient to face‐like patterns declines around 6 weeks of age, it is not known whether this is due to inhibition by cortical pathways or to the conflicting biases of cortical and subcortical pathways. In the present experiment we repeated the newborn study but with 4‐month‐olds and obtained results which were partially consistent with both the inhibition and the conflicting pathways accounts. We conclude that disappearance of the newborn tendency to orient to face‐like patterns is probably due to multiple factors.