Early maturity of face recognition: No childhood development of holistic processing, novel face encoding, or face-space

Historically, it was believed the perceptual mechanisms involved in individuating faces developed only very slowly over the course of childhood, and that adult levels of expertise were not reached until well into adolescence. Over the last 10 years, there has been some erosion of this view by demonstrations that all adult-like behavioural properties are qualitatively present in young children and infants. Determining the age of maturity, however, requires quantitative comparison across age groups, a task made difficult by the need to disentangle development in face perception from development in all the other cognitive factors that affect task performance. Here, we argue that full quantitative maturity is reached early, by 5-7 years at the latest and possibly earlier. This is based on a comprehensive literature review of results in the 5-years-to-adult age range, with particular focus on the results of the few previous studies that are methodologically suitable for quantitative comparison of face effects across age, plus three new experiments testing development of holistic/configural processing (faces versus objects, disproportionate inversion effect), ability to encode novel faces (assessed via implicit memory) and face-space (own-age bias).     

Aspects of Repetition in Bonobo–Human Conversation: Creating Cohesion in a Conversation Between Species

Ape language research has primarily focused on specific isolated language features. In contrast, in research into human language, traditions such as conversational analysis and discourse analysis propose to study language as actual discourse. Consequently, repetitions are seen as accomplishing various discursive and pragmatic functions in human conversations, while in apes, repetitions are seen as rote imitations and as proof that apes do not exhibit language. Tools from discourse analysis are applied in this study to a conversation between a language-competent bonobo, Pan paniscus and a human. The hypothesis is that the bonobo may exhibit even larger linguistic competency in ordinary conversation than in controlled experimental settings. Despite her limited productive means, the bonobo Panbanisha competently engages in co-constructing the conversational turns. She uses shared knowledge and repetitions to achieve compliance with a request. This reveals a knowledge about socio-linguistic interactions which goes beyond the pure informational content of words. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Transfer of location-specific control to untrained locations

Recent research highlights a seemingly flexible and automatic form of cognitive control that is triggered by potent contextual cues, as exemplified by the location-specific proportion congruence effect--reduced compatibility effects in locations associated with a high as compared to low likelihood of conflict. We investigated just how flexible location-specific control is by examining whether novel locations effectively cue control for congruency-unbiased stimuli. In two experiments, biased (mostly compatible or mostly incompatible) training stimuli appeared in distinct locations. During a final block, unbiased (50% compatible) stimuli appeared in novel untrained locations spatially linked to biased locations. The flanker compatibly effect was reduced for unbiased stimuli in novel locations linked to a mostly incompatible compared to a mostly compatible location, indicating transfer. Transfer was observed when stimuli appeared along a linear function (Experiment 1) or in rings of a bullseye (Experiment 2). The novel transfer effects imply that location-specific control is more flexible than previously reported and further counter the complex stimulus–response learning account of location-specific proportion congruence effects. We propose that the representation and retrieval of control settings in untrained locations may depend on environmental support and the presentation of stimuli in novel locations that fall within the same categories of space as trained locations.     

Components of task switching: A closer look at task switching and cue switching

Research using the diffusion model to decompose task-switching effects has contributed to a better understanding of the processes underlying the observed effect in the explicit task cueing paradigm: Previous findings could be reconciled with multiple component models of task switching or with an account on compound-cue retrieval/repetition priming. In the present study, we used two cues for each task in order to decompose task-switch and cue-switch effects. Response time data support previous findings that comparable parts of the switching effect can be attributed to cue-switching and task-switching. A diffusion model analysis of the data confirmed that non-decision time is increased and drift rates are decreased in unpredicted task-switches. Importantly, it was shown that non-decision time was selectively increased in task-switching trials but not in cue-switching trials. Results of the present study specifically support the notion of additional processes in task-switches and can be reconciled with broader multiple component accounts.     

Repetition priming across distinct contexts: Effects of lexical status,word frequency,and retrieval test

Previous studies have shown an interference of task-irrelevant numerical information with the spatial parameters of visuomotor behaviour. These findings lend support to the notion that number and space share a common metric with respect to action. Here I argue that the demonstration of the structural similarity between scales for number and space would be a more stringent test for the shared metrics than a mere fact of interference. The present study investigated the scale of number mapping onto space in a manual estimation task. The physical size of target stimuli and the magnitudes of task-irrelevant numbers were parametrically manipulated in the context of the Titchener illusion. The results revealed different scaling schemas for number and space. Whereas estimates in response to changes in stimulus physical size showed a gradual increase, the effect of number was categorical with the largest number (9) showing greater manual estimate than the other numbers (1, 3, and 7). Possible interpretations that are not necessarily incompatible with the hypothesis of shared metrics with respect to action are proposed. However, the present findings suggest that a meticulous scale analysis is required in order to determine the nature of number–space interaction.     

Trial after trial: General processing consequences as a function of repetition and change in multidimensional sound

While there are pointers relating to the consequences of repetition, a general framework regarding the cognitive implications of processing multidimensional stimuli as a function of previous stimulus history is currently lacking. Three experiments using sounds varying in location and pitch were carried out, in which the immediate consequences of repeating or changing task-relevant and task-irrelevant attributes were orthogonally examined. A consistent pattern of data was shown, in that the magnitude of selective attention failure was larger when the task-relevant value repeated across trials, while differences between dimensions were larger when the task-relevant value changed across trials. These effects of irrelevance and dimension as a function of intertrial contingency are summarized in a model depicting the dynamic allocation of processing resource.     

Perceptual and response components in repetition priming of spoken words and pseudowords

Two experiments explored repetition priming effects for spoken words and pseudowords in order to investigate abstractionist and episodic accounts of spoken word recognition and repetition priming. In Experiment 1, lexical decisions were made on spoken words and pseudowords with half of the items presented twice (～12 intervening items). Half of all repetitions were spoken in a “different voice” from the first presentations. Experiment 2 used the same procedure but with stimuli embedded in noise to slow responses. Results showed greater priming for words than for pseudowords and no effect of voice change in both normal and effortful processing conditions. Additional analyses showed that for slower participants, priming is more equivalent for words and pseudowords, suggesting episodic stimulus–response associations that suppress familiarity-based mechanisms that ordinarily enhance word priming. By relating behavioural priming to the time-course of pseudoword identification we showed that under normal listening conditions (Experiment 1) priming reflects facilitation of both perceptual and decision components, whereas in effortful listening conditions (Experiment 2) priming effects primarily reflect enhanced decision/response generation processes. Both stimulus–response associations and enhanced processing of sensory input seem to be voice independent, providing novel evidence concerning the degree of perceptual abstraction in the recognition of spoken words and pseudowords.     

Task-switching cost and repetition priming: Two overlooked confounds in the fixed-set procedure of the Sternberg paradigm and how they affect memory set-size effects

Subjects performed Sternberg-type memory recognition tasks (Sternberg paradigm) in four experiments. Category-instance names were used as learning and testing materials. Sternberg's original experiments demonstrated a linear relation between reaction time (RT) and memory-set size (MSS). A few later studies found no relation, and other studies found a nonlinear relation (logarithmic) between the two variables. These deviations were used as evidence undermining Sternberg's serial scan theory. This study identified two confounding variables in the fixed-set procedure of the paradigm (where multiple probes are presented at test for a learned memory set) that could generate a MSS RT function that was either flat or logarithmic rather than linearly increasing. These two confounding variables were task-switching cost and repetition priming. The former factor worked against smaller memory sets and in favour of larger sets whereas the latter factor worked in the opposite way. Results demonstrated that a null or a logarithmic RT-to-MSS relation could be the artefact of the combined effects of these two variables. The Sternberg paradigm has been used widely in memory research, and a thorough understanding of the subtle methodological pitfalls is crucial. It is suggested that a varied-set procedure (where only one probe is presented at test for a learned memory set) is a more contamination-free procedure for measuring the MSS effects, and that if a fixed-set procedure is used, it is worthwhile examining the RT function of the very first trials across the MSSs, which are presumably relatively free of contamination by the subsequent trials.