Development of children’s ability to detect kinship through facial resemblance

Facial features appear to be a prominent kinship cue for ascribing relatedness among human individuals. Although there is evidence that adults can detect kinship in unrelated and unfamiliar individual’s faces, it remains to be seen whether people already possess the ability when they are young. To further understand the development of this skill, we explored children’s ability to detect parent-offspring resemblance in unrelated and unfamiliar faces. To this end, we tested approximately 140 children, aged 5–11, in two photo-matching tasks. We used a procedure that asked them to match one neonate’s face to one of three adults’ faces (Task 1), or to match one adult’s face to one of three neonate’s faces (Task 2). Our findings reveal asymmetrical performance, depending on the tasks assigned (performance of Task 2 is stronger than for Task 1), and on the sex of individuals who made up the parent-offspring pair (male parents are better matched with neonates than female parents, and boys are better matched than girls). The picture that emerges from our study is, on one hand, that the ability to detect kinship is already present at the age of five but continues to improve as one gets older, and on the other, that perception of parent-offspring facial resemblance varies according to the appraisers’ characteristics.     

Selective attention to facial identity and emotion in children

Three age groups of participants (6–8 years, 9–11 years, adults) performed two tasks: A face recognition task and a Garner task. In the face recognition task, the participants were presented with 20 faces and then had to recognize them among 20 new faces. In the Garner tasks, the participants had to sort, as fast as possible, the photographs of two persons expressing two emotions by taking into account only one of the two dimensions (identity or emotion). When the sorting task was on one dimension, the other dimension was varied either in a correlated, a constant or an orthogonal way in distinct subsessions. The results indicated an increase in face recognition abilities. They also showed an interference of identity in the emotion-sorting task that was similar in the three age groups. Nevertheless, an interference of emotion in the identity-sorting task was significant only for the children and was more important for the youngest group. These observations suggest that the development in face recognition ability rests on the development of the ability to attend selectively to identity, without paying attention to emotional facial expression.     

Attentional selection during preparation of eye movements

Two experiments were conducted to examine the relationship between visual attention and saccade programming. Participants had to saccade to a letter string and detect a letter change presented briefly before the saccade onset. Hit probability (i.e., correct detection of a letter change in different positions) was taken as a measure of visual attention focus. The first experiment shows that hit probability depends on the actual landing position. These findings argue for a spatial coupling between saccade programming and the orienting of attention. Also, an unfamiliar letter cluster at the beginning captures attention and prevails over the influence of the saccade in preparation. Experiment 2, in which the letter change occurred at different times during the saccade latency, shows that attention shifts and focuses on the saccade target at the expense of the other parts of the stimulus when the motor program is ready to be executed. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Neurocognitive Complications of HIV Disease

Neurocognitive complications are the most common sequelae of HIV infection if the full spectrum of HIV disease—from initial seroconversion to death from advanced AIDS—is considered. Though resembling subcortical neurological disorders from a neuropsychological standpoint, the presentation is variable, and almost any pattern can be seen. Although neuropsychological impairment is often subtle, it can affect day-to-day life and is associated with earlier mortality. It is not clear if milder forms of neurocognitive disturbance necessarily presage advanced dementia, and current data suggest a two-factor model: a subacute relapsing-remitting condition that can occur at any stage of HIV disease and a progressive, more fulminant dementia. The pathological substrates of these conditions are not well characterized, although recent data support the notion that synaptodendritic damage underlies the neuropsychological impairment, and may precede the neuronal loss and other pathological features more characteristic of HIV encephalitis. Some reversibility of neurocognitive disturbance has been reported with zidovudine therapy, though the data are not consistent. New regimens involving protease inhibitors need to be evaluated in terms of benefit to the central nervous system because many drugs of this class do not penetrate the blood-brain barrier efficiently. Finally, studies utilizing experimental treatments that may affect the putative mechanisms of neural injury are in progress.     

The influence of brief episodes of aerobic exercise activity,soothing music-nature scenes condition,and suggestion on coping with test-taking anxiety

This study examines the influence of aerobic exercise activity, soothing musicnature scenes condition, and suggestion on coping with test-taking anxiety. Sixty test anxious subjects were randomly assigned to four treatment groups consisting of 15-min episodes of exercise or soothing music-nature scenes condition with or without verbal suggestion that the treatment task in which they were engaged would be helpful to them. A videotaped intelligence test used to stimulate test-taking anxiety was given to the subjects after the soothing music-nature scenes condition or exercise tasks. The Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (MAACL) was used to appraise anxiety during the laboratory procedures. Results indicate that exercise, soothing music-nature scenes condition, and suggestion play a role in reducing anxiety. While relaxation activity proved to be superior to exercise in reducing anxiety immediately following the treatment episode, these differences disappear following exposure to a stressful IQ test and exercise (as well as suggestion) had a better stress inoculation effect than soothing music-nature scenes condition or no suggestion.     

Classroom Interactions,Dyadic Teacher–Child Relationships,and Self–Regulation in Socially Disadvantaged Young Children

This study examined the quality of the classroom climate and dyadic teacher–child relationships as predictors of self–regulation in a sample of socially disadvantaged preschool children (N?=?206; 52 % boys). Children’s self–regulation was observed in preschool at the beginning and at the end of the school year. At the middle of the preschool year, classroom observations of interactions were conducted by trained observers and teachers rated the quality of dyadic teacher–child relationships. Results from multilevel analyses revealed that teacher–child closeness predicted improvements in observed self–regulation skills. Children showed larger gains in self–regulation when they experienced closer teacher–child relationships. Moreover, a moderating effect between classroom instructional quality and observed self–regulation was found such that children with low initial self–regulation skills benefit the most from classrooms with higher classroom quality. Findings have implications for understanding the role of classroom social processes on the development of self–regulation.     

Affective matching of odors and facial expressions in infants: shifting patterns between 3 and 7 months

Recognition of emotional facial expressions is a crucial skill for adaptive behavior. Past research suggests that at 5 to 7 months of age, infants look longer to an unfamiliar dynamic angry/happy face which emotionally matches a vocal expression. This suggests that they can match stimulations of distinct modalities on their emotional content. In the present study, olfaction–vision matching abilities were assessed across different age groups (3, 5 and 7 months) using dynamic expressive faces (happy vs. disgusted) and distinct hedonic odor contexts (pleasant, unpleasant and control) in a visual‐preference paradigm. At all ages the infants were biased toward the disgust faces. This visual bias reversed into a bias for smiling faces in the context of the pleasant odor context in the 3‐month‐old infants. In infants aged 5 and 7 months, no effect of the odor context appeared in the present conditions. This study highlights the role of the olfactory context in the modulation of visual behavior toward expressive faces in infants. The influence of olfaction took the form of a contingency effect in 3‐month‐old infants, but later evolved to vanish or to take another form that could not be evidenced in the present study.     

Maternal odor shapes rapid face categorization in the infant brain

To successfully interact with a rich and ambiguous visual environment, the human brain learns to differentiate visual stimuli and to produce the same response to subsets of these stimuli despite their physical difference. Although this visual categorization function is traditionally investigated from a unisensory perspective, its early development is inherently constrained by multisensory inputs. In particular, an early‐maturing sensory system such as olfaction is ideally suited to support the immature visual system in infancy by providing stability and familiarity to a rapidly changing visual environment. Here, we test the hypothesis that rapid visual categorization of salient visual signals for the young infant brain, human faces, is shaped by another highly relevant human‐related input from the olfactory system, the mother's body odor. We observe that a right‐hemispheric neural signature of single‐glance face categorization from natural images is significantly enhanced in the maternal versus a control odor context in individual 4‐month‐old infant brains. A lack of difference between odor conditions for the common brain response elicited by both face and non‐face images rules out a mere enhancement of arousal or visual attention in the maternal odor context. These observations show that face‐selective neural activity in infancy is mediated by the presence of a (maternal) body odor, providing strong support for multisensory inputs driving category acquisition in the developing human brain and having important implications for our understanding of human perceptual development.     

Social motivation and the use of distal,but not local,featural cues are related to ranging behavior in free-range chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus)

Animal Cognition - Animals can navigate an environment relying on different sources of information, such as geometrical or featural cues. The favoring of one type of information over another...     

To belong or not to belong: Protecting minority engagement in the face of discrimination

School belonging is pivotal in enabling sustained task engagement, yet minorities' belonging is contingent on the intergroup context. From a social identity approach, discrimination experiences elicit identity threat, undermining school belonging. Conversely, a positive diversity climate may shield belonging through protecting minority identities. This study addresses minority school belonging and task engagement from the interplay of identity threat and protection in diverse classrooms. We hypothesise that a positive diversity climate can buffer minority disengagement in response to discrimination by protecting school belonging. Drawing on Turkish and Moroccan minority samples (N = 1050) in 274 diverse classrooms in 52 Belgian secondary schools, we test multilevel models with school belonging as mediating process connecting minorities' engagement to the interplay of discrimination experiences with perceived diversity climate. Minority youth who experienced discrimination from teachers reported less school belonging, which in turn predicted lower task engagement. Conversely, minority perceptions of a positive diversity climate predicted more belonging. Moreover, perceived diversity climate buffered minority engagement against personal experiences of discrimination through protecting school belonging. Whereas discrimination experiences undermined minority school belonging and task engagement, minority perceptions of a positive diversity climate protected belonging and engagement against discrimination.