Enhanced gaze‐following behavior in Deaf infants of Deaf parents

Gaze following plays a role in parent–infant communication and is a key mechanism by which infants acquire information about the world from social input. Gaze following in Deaf infants has been understudied. Twelve Deaf infants of Deaf parents (DoD) who had native exposure to American Sign Language (ASL) were gender‐matched and age‐matched (±7 days) to 60 spoken‐language hearing control infants. Results showed that the DoD infants had significantly higher gaze‐following scores than the hearing infants. We hypothesize that in the absence of auditory input, and with support from ASL‐fluent Deaf parents, infants become attuned to visual‐communicative signals from other people, which engenders increased gaze following. These findings underscore the need to revise the ‘deficit model’ of deafness. Deaf infants immersed in natural sign language from birth are better at understanding the signals and identifying the referential meaning of adults’ gaze behavior compared to hearing infants not exposed to sign language. Broader implications for theories of social‐cognitive development are discussed. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/QXCDK_CUmAI     

Face detection in 2‐ to 6‐month‐old infants is influenced by gaze direction and species

Humans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality. Despite the importance of both of these early social skills—attending to faces and attending to the eyes—surprisingly little is known about how they interact. We used eye tracking to explore whether eye contact influences infants' face detection. Longitudinally, we examined 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐month‐olds' (N = 65) visual scanning of complex image arrays with human and animal faces varying in eye contact and head orientation. Across all ages, infants displayed superior detection of faces with eye contact; however, this effect varied as a function of species and head orientation. Infants were more attentive to human than animal faces and were more sensitive to eye and head orientation for human faces compared to animal faces. Unexpectedly, human faces with both averted heads and eyes received the most attention. This pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following—the ability to look where another individual looks—which begins to develop around this age. Infants may be especially interested in averted gaze faces, providing early scaffolding for joint attention. This study represents the first investigation to document infants' attention patterns to faces systematically varying in their attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that infants develop early, specialized functional conspecific face detection.     

Drivers’ visual attention: A field study at intersections

Crossing a road intersection, a driver must collect visual information from various locations. The allocation of visual attention, which allows this collection, mainly relies on top-down processes. This study focuses on three top-down factors which influence the collection of visual information: the value of visual information for the ongoing task, their bandwidth, and the familiarity with the environment. These factors are studied according to the priority rules at intersections (Give way, Stop or Priority), the expected traffic density (Lower or Higher) and the number of passages (First or Second passage). Fourteen participants were installed in an instrumented vehicle equipped with an eye-tracker. They drove during 1h45 along a 80-km long route, mainly on rural roads, which included 19 intersections. Visual attention was studied by means of the head and gaze horizontal eccentricity. Effects were found for each of the three factors, in agreement with Wickens’ theoretical framework and with previous studies, despite the important variability in the data due to the experimental situation.     

孤独症谱系障碍者视觉定向与视觉搜索的特点及神经机制

定向网络是注意网络的重要组成部分, 主要包括视觉定向与视觉搜索两大任务。对于这两大注意任务, 正常个体在神经机制上存在较大的重叠, 然而, 孤独症个体却表现出截然相反的行为证据。研究者从非社会信息的注意视角发现, 一般而言, 在视觉定向上, 孤独症个体注意转移不存在缺陷, 而注意脱离存在困难, 但该结论仍有争议; 在视觉搜索上, 孤独症个体存在视觉搜索优势, 但该优势发生的阶段及原因仍需进一步探究。未来研究应进一步考察孤独症个体在视觉定向任务中左右视野的不对称性、视觉搜索优势的内在机制及两大注意任务之间的相互关系。     

视觉工作记忆中的内部注意选择：效果、特性及机制

视觉工作记忆中(VWM)已稳定存储的表征,依然会受内部注意选择的影响,说明内部注意选择对VWM发挥重要作用。本文首先阐述该领域主要的研究方法,然后对VWM中内部注意选择的效果和四个特性：时程、对象、容量和可持续性,以及其背后可能的理论机制和神经机制进行分析和总结。并据此从VWM的存储结构、内部注意的产生机制和处理方式等方面,为未来研究提出方向和建议。     

视觉空间工作记忆组间差异的神经机制

为考察视觉空间工作记忆（working memory, WM）维持和操作的组间差异及其神经机制,本研究记录了高、低WM组完成延迟再认（维持）任务和心理旋转（操作）任务时的行为和事件相关电位数据。结果发现,在操作任务中,高WM组比低WM组的反应时显著更短;高WM组的中前额叶慢波显著更正、双侧后顶区慢波显著更负,并且两者的波幅显著负相关。在维持任务中,两组被试的反应时无显著差异;高WM组的中前额叶慢波显著更正。结果表明,高WM组的执行注意能力可能更强,能通过有效调节和分配加工资源来表征视觉信息。     

The Cross-Modal Coordination of Interpersonal Timing: Six-Week-Olds Infants' Gaze with Adults' Vocal Behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that 6-week-old infants are capable of coordinated interpersonal timing within social interactions. Coordinated interpersonal timing refers to changes in the timing of one individual's behavior as a function of the timing of another individual's behavior. Each of 45, first-born 6-week-old infants interacted with his or her mother and a stranger for a total of 14 minutes. The interactions were videotaped and coded for the gaze behavior of the infants and the vocal behavior of the mothers and strangers. Time-series regression analyses were used to assess the extent to which the timing of each of the infants' gazes was coordinated with the timing of the adults' vocal behavior. The results revealed that (a) coordinated timing occurs between infants and their mothers and between infants and strangers as early as when infants are 6 weeks old, and (b) strangers coordinated the timing of their pauses with the infants to a greater extent than did mothers. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of temporal sensitivity in social interaction.     

Crossmodal temporal order and processing acuity in developmentally dyslexic young adults

We investigated crossmodal temporal performance in processing rapid sequential nonlinguistic events in developmentally dyslexic young adults (ages 20-36 years) and an age- and IQ-matched control group in audiotactile, visuotactile, and audiovisual combinations. Two methods were used for estimating 84% correct temporal acuity thresholds: temporal order judgment (TOJ) and temporal processing acuity (TPA). TPA requires phase difference detection: the judgment of simultaneity/nonsimultaneity of brief stimuli in two parallel, spatially separate triplets. The dyslexic readers' average temporal performance was somewhat poorer in all six comparisons; in audiovisual comparisons the group differences were not statistically significant, however. A principal component analysis indicated that temporal acuity and phonological awareness are related in dyslexic readers. The impairment of temporal input processing seems to be a general correlative feature of dyslexia in children and adults, but the overlap in performance between dyslexic and normal readers suggests that it is not a sufficient reason for developmental reading difficulties.     

Ratings of emotion in laterally presented faces: sex and handedness effects

Sixteen right-handed participants (8 male and 8 female students) and 16 left-handed participants (8 male and 8 female students) were presented with cartoon faces expressing emotions ranging from extremely positive to extremely negative. A forced-choice paradigm was used in which the participants were asked to rate the faces as either positive or negative. Compared to men, women rated faces more positively, especially in response to right visual field presentations. Women rated neutral and mildly positive faces more positively in the right than in the left visual field, whereas men rated these faces consistently across visual fields. Handedness did not affect the ratings of emotion. The data suggest a positive emotional bias of the left hemisphere in women.     

Simultaneous visual discrimination in Asian elephants

Two experiments explored the behavior of 20 Asian elephants (Elephas aximus) in simultaneous visual discrimination tasks. In Experiment 1, 7 Burmese logging elephants acquired a white+/black- discrimination, reaching criterion in a mean of 2.6 sessions and 117 discrete trials, whereas 4 elephants acquired a black+/white- discrimination in 5.3 sessions and 293 trials. One elephant failed to reach criterion in the white+/black- task in 9 sessions and 549 trials, and 2 elephants failed to reach criterion in the black+/white- task in 9 sessions and 452 trials. In Experiment 2, 3 elephants learned a large/small transposition problem, reaching criterion within a mean of 1.7 sessions and 58 trials. Four elephants failed to reach criterion in 4.8 sessions and 193 trials. Data from both the black/white and large/small discriminations showed a surprising age effect, suggesting that elephants beyond the age of 20 to 30 years either may be unable to acquire these visual discriminations or may require an inordinate number of trials to do so. Overall, our results cannot be readily reconciled with the widespread view that elephants possess exceptional intelligence.