Mapping the development of facial expression recognition

Reading the non‐verbal cues from faces to infer the emotional states of others is central to our daily social interactions from very early in life. Despite the relatively well‐documented ontogeny of facial expression recognition in infancy, our understanding of the development of this critical social skill throughout childhood into adulthood remains limited. To this end, using a psychophysical approach we implemented the QUEST threshold‐seeking algorithm to parametrically manipulate the quantity of signals available in faces normalized for contrast and luminance displaying the six emotional expressions, plus neutral. We thus determined observers' perceptual thresholds for effective discrimination of each emotional expression from 5 years of age up to adulthood. Consistent with previous studies, happiness was most easily recognized with minimum signals (35% on average), whereas fear required the maximum signals (97% on average) across groups. Overall, recognition improved with age for all expressions except happiness and fear, for which all age groups including the youngest remained within the adult range. Uniquely, our findings characterize the recognition trajectories of the six basic emotions into three distinct groupings: expressions that show a steep improvement with age – disgust, neutral, and anger; expressions that show a more gradual improvement with age – sadness, surprise; and those that remain stable from early childhood – happiness and fear, indicating that the coding for these expressions is already mature by 5 years of age. Altogether, our data provide for the first time a fine‐grained mapping of the development of facial expression recognition. This approach significantly increases our understanding of the decoding of emotions across development and offers a novel tool to measure impairments for specific facial expressions in developmental clinical populations.     

Memory consolidation effects on memory stabilization and item integration in older adults

This study examined the differential effects of aging on consolidation processes that strengthen newly acquired memory traces in veridical form (memory stabilization) versus consolidation processes that are responsible for integrating these memory traces into an existing body of knowledge (item integration). Older adults learned 13 nonwords and were tested on their memory for the nonwords, and on whether these nonwords impacted upon processing of similar-sounding English words immediately and 24 hours later. Participants accurately recognized the nonwords immediately, but showed significant decreases in delayed recognition and recall. In comparison, the nonwords impacted upon processing of similar-sounding words only in the delayed test. Together, these findings suggest that memory consolidation processes may be more evident in item integration than memory stabilization processes for new declarative memories in older adults.     

A Survey of Patients’ Experiences with the Cancer Genetic Counseling Process: Recommendations for Cancer Genetics Programs

In order to promote ongoing quality improvement of not only the Penn State Cancer Genetics Program, but also other cancer risk assessment programs throughout the country, we developed, piloted and conducted a survey to explore patient expectations, experiences, and satisfaction with the cancer genetic counseling process. The comprehensive survey was mailed to 340 eligible patients, 156 (45.9%) of whom returned the completed survey within the allotted time. Responses to closed-ended questions were tallied and open-ended questions were content analyzed. Major findings show that: (1) Patients were seeking cancer-related information and support throughout the cancer risk assessment process and were interested in participating in available research studies; (2) The setting in which patients are seen for cancer risk assessment may pose potential emotional ramifications; (3) Misperceptions regarding insurance discrimination and lack of insurance coverage persist; (4) Patients view the genetic counselor as responsible for updating them about new discoveries. Specific recommendations for cancer genetics programs are included.     

Two mutations preventing PDZ-protein interactions of GluR1 have opposite effects on synaptic plasticity

The regulated trafficking of GluR1 contributes significantly to synaptic plasticity, but studies addressing the function of the GluR1 C-terminal PDZ-ligand domain in this process have produced conflicting results. Here, we resolve this conflict by showing that apparently similar C-terminal mutations of the GluR1 PDZ-ligand domain result in opposite physiological phenotypes during activity- and CamKII-induced synaptic plasticity.