Visual‐motor and executive functions in children born preterm: The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test revisited

Böhm, B., Lundequist, A. & Smedler, A.‐C. (2010). Visual‐motor and executive functions in children born preterm: The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test revisited. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 376–384. Visual‐motor development and executive functions were investigated with the Bender Test at age 5½ years in 175 children born preterm and 125 full‐term controls, within the longitudinal Stockholm Neonatal Project. Assessment also included WPPSI‐R and NEPSY neuropsychological battery for ages 4–7 ( Korkman, 1990 ). Bender protocols were scored according to Brannigan & Decker (2003) , Koppitz (1963) and a complementary neuropsychological scoring system (ABC), aimed at executive functions and developed for this study. Bender results by all three scoring systems were strongly related to overall cognitive level (Performance IQ), in both groups. The preterm group displayed inferior visual‐motor skills compared to controls also when controlling for IQ. The largest group differences were found on the ABC scoring, which shared unique variance with NEPSY tests of executive function. Multiple regression analyses showed that hyperactive behavior and inattention increased the risk for visual‐motor deficits in children born preterm, whereas no added risk was seen among hyperactive term children. Gender differences favoring girls were strongest within the preterm group, presumably reflecting the specific vulnerability of preterm boys. The results indicate that preterm children develop a different neurobehavioral organization from children born at term, and that the Bender test with a neuropsychological scoring is a useful tool in developmental screening around school start.     

An Experiment upon Repeated Reproduction

The author presented dwarf hamsters (Phodopus campbelli) and golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) with conspecific and inanimate signals for food. Both species approached a cardboard stimulus that predicted food. The dwarf hamsters engaged in high levels of social contact directed toward a conspecific conditioned stimulus for food, but the golden hamsters did not. The author also presented dwarf hamsters with a conspecific signal that did not indicate food, and the levels of social behaviors that they directed toward it were significantly lower. These results suggest the presence of a social component in the dwarf hamster feeding system and are consistent with previous findings that the social transmission of food preferences occurs more readily in dwarf hamsters than in golden hamsters.     

Coordination of Eye and Leg Movements During Visually Guided Stepping

In the present study, 2 related hypotheses were tested: first, that vision is used in a feedforward control mode during precision stepping onto visual targets and, second, that the oculomotor and locomotor control centers interact to produce coordinated eye and leg movements during that task. Participants' (N = 4) eye movements and step cycle transition events were monitored while they performed a task requiring precise foot placement at every step onto irregularly placed stepping stones under conditions in which the availability of visual information was either restricted or intermittently removed altogether. Accurate saccades, followed by accurate steps, to the next footfall target were almost always made even when the information had been invisible for as long as 500 ms. Despite delays in footlift caused by the temporary removal (and subsequent reinstatement) of visual information, the mean interval between the start of the eye movement and the start of the swing toward a target did not vary significantly (p > .05). In contrast, the mean interval between saccade onset away from a target and a foot landing on that target (stance onset) did vary significantly (p < .05) under the different experimental conditions. Those results support the stated hypotheses.     

Eye-Hand Coordination in Rhythmical Pointing

The authors investigated the relation between hand kinematics and eye movements in 2 variants of a rhythmical Fitts's task in which eye movements were necessary or not necessary. P. M. Fitts's (1954) law held in both conditions with similar slope and marginal differences in hand-kinematic patterns and movement continuity. Movement continuity and eye—hand synchronization were more directly related to movement time than to task index of difficulty. When movement time was decreased to fewer than 350 ms, eye—hand synchronization switched from continuous monitoring to intermittent control. The 1:1 frequency ratio with stable π/6 relative phase changed for 1:3 and 1:5 frequency ratios with less stable phase relations. The authors conclude that eye and hand movements in a rhythmical Fitts's task are dynamically synchronized to produce the best behavioral performance.     

How do Motor Systems Deal with the Problems of Controlling Three-Dimensional Rotations?

Rotations are fundamental to motor control, not only for orienting to stimuli but also in the joint articulations that underlie translational movements. Studying three-dimensional (3-D) rotations of the simplest joint system, the eye, has provided general insights into the neural control of movement. First, in selecting one 3-D eye orientation for each two-dimensional (2-D) gaze direction, the oculomotor system generates a behavior called Listing's law that constrains eye position to a 2-D plane, Listing's plane. This selection is made internally by an inverse kinematic transformation called the Listing's law operator. Second, the oculomotor system incorporates the inherent multiplicative relationship between rotational velocity and position to generate the 3-D movement and position commands required by Listing's law. Finally, the coordinate systems for these commands appear to align with Listing's plane rather than with anatomic structures. Recent investigations have revealed similar behavioral constraints in the orientations of the head and arm, suggesting that the neural mechanisms for Listing's law may have analogues in many motor systems.     

Comment on “Retention Characteristics of Motor Short-Term Memory Cues”

Marteniuk (1973) used negative results, which may be attributed to a lack of power, to question the adequacy of variable error as a measure of forgetting. He also used these negative results, along with constant error results which were consistent with the Laabs (1971, 1973) model of motor memory, to reject parts of the model related to variable error. Caution is advised when interpreting negative results and interchanging dependent measures.     

Waldo reveals cultural differences in return fixations

ABSTRACT

Humans routinely perform visual search towards targets to adapt to the environment. These sequences of ballistic eye movements are shaped by a combination of top–down and bottom–up factors. Recent research documented that human observers display cultural-specific fixation patterns in a range of visual processing tasks. In particular, eye movement strategies extracting information from faces clearly differs between Western Caucasian (WC) and East Asian (EA) observers. However, whether such cultural differences are also present for visual scene processing remains debated. To this aim, we recorded the eye movements of WC and EA observers while they were solving visual search problems parametrically varying in difficulty: Where’s Waldo. Both groups had a comparable familiarity with the Waldo books reaching a comparable level of accuracy in target detection. Both cultural groups also showed a comparable temporal effect on inhibition of return, with longer fixation durations when saccades were performed to a return location compared to other locations. Westerners, however, located Waldo faster than Easterners. Interestingly, this modulation of speed was likely related to differences occurring on the low-level mechanisms of spatial inhibition of return, with EA observers returning more often to previously visited locations than the WC observers. This suboptimal eye movement strategy in the Easterners might be engendered by their cultural perceptual bias consisting in? a greater use of extra-foveal information. Overall, our data point towards the existence of a subtle, but significant difference in the processing of visual scenes across observers from different cultures during active visual search.     

不规则几何图形识别取样特征的眼动研究

探讨不规则几何图形识别中取样的眼动特征。被试为12名大学生,刺激材料为20个不规则几何图形,采用EyelinkII型眼动仪。结果发现,随作业难度加大,被试在认知加工中的有效取样时间比显著下降。在不良视觉条件下,图形信息的取样点数量显著减少,眼动扫视路径显著增长。在识别旋转图形时,有效取样时间下降,取样点数量增加,眼动扫视路径增长。图形信息的显示条件与显示方式的交互作用对图形识别的反应时、取样点的数量和眼动扫视路径长度的影响显著。