A happy story: Developmental changes in children’s sensitivity to facial expressions of varying intensities

Using 20 levels of intensity, we measured children’s thresholds to discriminate the six basic emotional expressions from neutral and their misidentification rates. Combined with the results of a previous study using the same method (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102 (2009) 503-521), the results indicate that by 5 years of age, children are adult-like, or nearly adult-like, for happy expressions on all measures. Children’s sensitivity to other expressions continues to improve between 5 and 10 years of age (e.g., surprise, disgust, fear) or even after 10 years of age (e.g., anger, sad). The results indicate that there is a slow development of sensitivity to the expression of all basic emotions except happy. This slow development may impact children’s social and cognitive development by limiting their sensitivity to subtle expressions of disapproval or disappointment.     

Psychologie sociale et perception du temps : l'estimation temporelle des stimuli sociaux et émotionnels

Two experiments using a temporal bisection task investigated the influence of the social meaning of stimuli on the estimation of their duration. The results showed that: a) the duration of faces expressing diverse emotional states was overestimated relative to the duration of neutral faces; b) the duration of faces representing elderly people was underestimated relative to the duration of faces representing young people. In both cases, this influence was found to appear at the earliest stage of the estimation process, modulating the rhythm of the estimator's internal clock. In the discussion, we suggest three different perspectives to account for the observed link between social and temporal perception.     

Young infants’ sensitivity to shading stimuli with radial motion1

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine 5‐month‐old infant's sensitivity to a shading cue with radial motion. Our stimuli were radially expanding or contracting circles with vertical or horizontal shadings. We tested infants’ preference for vertical (top‐ and bottom‐lit) and horizontal (left‐ and right‐lit) shadings. The results indicate that infants tested with the vertical shading showed significant preference for the top‐lit shading, whereas infants tested with the horizontal shading did not show any significant preference. The fact that the significant preference was observed only in the vertical shading condition suggests that 5‐month‐old infants might use shading information on the basis of the “light‐from‐above assumption.” We revealed that even 5‐month‐old infants are sensitive to shading information when they are exposed to shading stimuli with radial motion.     

Développement de la reconnaissance des émotions chez l'enfant avec trisomie 21

We proposed a matching task consisting of pairing an emotional sound and a human face and, after that a noise with an animal. Down syndrome children do not differ with other children in emotional recognition abilities of human faces pictures. Results are compared with those of children with mental retardation and typical children matched on developmental age (K ABC, non-verbal scale). Results do not validate Kasari's presumption concerning with emotional recognition deficit in Down children of 4 years of developmental age mental.     

Sex differences in face recognition and influence of facial affect

To study sex differences in the recognition of human faces with different facial expressions, 65 female and 64 male participants learned to associate names with various male and female neutral faces. During the recall phase, participants were then asked to name the same persons depicting different emotional expressions (neutral, happy, angry, and fearful). Females were faster than males at naming male faces, and males were faster than females at naming female faces. All participants were faster at naming neutral or happy female faces than neural or happy male faces. These results suggest that opposite-sex faces require less processing time than same-sex faces, which is consistent with an evolutionary account.     

The neural correlates of orienting to walking direction in 6‐month‐old infants: An ERP study

The ability to detect social signals represents a first step to enter our social world. Behavioral evidence has demonstrated that 6‐month‐old infants are able to orient their attention toward the position indicated by walking direction, showing faster orienting responses toward stimuli cued by the direction of motion than toward uncued stimuli. The present study investigated the neural mechanisms underpinning this attentional priming effect by using a spatial cueing paradigm and recording EEG (Geodesic System 128 channels) from 6‐month‐old infants. Infants were presented with a central point‐light walker followed by a single peripheral target. The target appeared randomly at a position either congruent or incongruent with the walking direction of the cue. We examined infants' target‐locked event‐related potential (ERP) responses and we used cortical source analysis to explore which brain regions gave rise to the ERP responses. The P1 component and saccade latencies toward the peripheral target were modulated by the congruency between the walking direction of the cue and the position of the target. Infants' saccade latencies were faster in response to targets appearing at congruent spatial locations. The P1 component was larger in response to congruent than to incongruent targets and a similar congruency effect was found with cortical source analysis in the parahippocampal gyrus and the anterior fusiform gyrus. Overall, these findings suggest that a type of biological motion like the one of a vertebrate walking on the legs can trigger covert orienting of attention in 6‐month‐old infants, enabling enhancement of neural activity related to visual processing of potentially relevant information as well as a facilitation of oculomotor responses to stimuli appearing at the attended location.     

感知到亲子间面孔相似性对亲子虐待的影响：一个双重调节模型

由于体内受精,父亲面临着父亲身份不确定性的风险,亲子间面孔相似性是辨别父亲身份的一个常用的有效线索,因此,父亲往往依据亲子间面孔相似性程度调整着亲子投资。而中国传统文化强调重男轻女,因此,父子间面孔相似性比父女间面孔相似性对父亲的亲子投资的预测效应更强。本研究采用自我报告的方法测量了212名中学生感知到亲子间面孔相似性、亲子虐待以及人口学变量。结果表明:（1）感知到的亲子间面孔相似性与亲子虐待中的精神虐待存在显著的相关,与身体虐待的相关没有达到显著水平;（2）父母的性别显著地调节着感知到亲子间面孔相似性对精神虐待的预测,具体而言, 父子（女）间面孔相似性显著地预测父亲的精神虐待,而母子（女）间面孔相似性对母亲精神虐待的预测没有达到显著水平;（3）进一步的分析表明,子女的性别显著地调节着感知到父子（女）间面孔相似性对父亲精神虐待的影响,具体而言,父子间面孔相似性显著地预测父亲对儿子的精神虐待,但父女间面孔相似性对父亲对女儿的精神虐待的预测没有达到显著水平。研究结果支持并拓展了父亲身份不确定性假设。     

Two types of serial dependence in visual working memory

Stimulus representations in working memory depend on memory traces of past stimuli both from previous trials and from the current trial. However, it is unclear whether the same or different mechanisms underlie this serial dependence across and within trials. We directly contrasted estimates of bias for pairs of immediately successive stimuli across and within trials. In each trial, participants memorized two consecutive motion direction stimuli (S1 and S2) and after a short delay were cued to report one of them. We found serial dependence across trials: The current S1 was attracted towards the preceding S2 when the latter had been cued for report. In contrast, within the same trial S2 was repulsed from S1. In addition, repulsion within a trial occurred for a broader range of motion direction differences between stimuli than attraction across trials. A second experiment in which 25% of trials did not require a response demonstrated that across‐trial attraction did not depend on whether the previous S2 actually had to be reported. Our findings provide evidence for two types of serial dependence operating across and within trials. They support the notion of different mechanisms integrating or segregating current from similar past memory contents depending on their task relevance.     

Effect of Object and Task Properties on Bimanual Transport

The use of both hands simultaneously when manipulating objects is fairly commonplace, but it is not known what factors encourage people to use two hands as opposed to one during simple tasks such as transport. In particular, we are interested in three possible transport strategies: unimanual transport, handing off between hands, and symmetric bimanual transport. In this study, we investigate the effect of object size, weight, and starting and ending position (configuration) as well as the need to balance the object on the use of these three strategies in a bowl-moving task. We find that configuration and balance have a strong effect on choice of strategy, and size and weight have a weaker effect. Hand-offs are most often used when the task requires moving an object from left to right and vice versa, while the unimanual strategy was frequently used when passing front to back. The bimanual strategy is only weakly affected by configuration. The need to balance an object causes subjects to favor unimanual and bimanual strategies over the hand-off. In addition, an analysis of transport duration and body rotation suggests that strategy choice may be driven by the desire to minimize body rotation.     

Facial affect recognition in college students with psychopathic traits: A comparison using tests matched in discriminating power

Research has provided inconsistent evidence for the relationship between psychopathy and facial affect recognition. We examined whether some of the previous findings could reflect a psychometric artifact in which deficits are more easily detected with very discriminating measures than with less discriminating measures, an issue not addressed in prior psychopathy studies. We developed measures of facial affect recognition matched in discriminating power and administered these measures to 194 college students who had also completed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory. Results indicate that high levels of Coldheartedness were associated with poorer recognition of the specific emotion of disgust. These findings demonstrate that some affective processing deficits associated with psychopathic traits cannot be attributed to psychometric artifacts.