A U‐Shaped Relation Between Sitting Ability and Upright Face Processing in Infants

A growing body of research indicates connections exist between action, perception, and cognition in infants. In this study, associated changes between sitting ability and upright face processing were tested in 111 infants. Using the visual habituation “switch” task (C. H. Cashon & L. B. Cohen, 2004; L. B. Cohen & C. H. Cashon, 2001), holistic processing of faces was assessed in same‐aged non‐ and near sitters (22–25 weeks) and same‐aged new and expert sitters (27–32 weeks). U‐shaped relation was found between sitting stage and holistic face processing such that only nonsitters and expert sitters processed faces holistically. It is posited that the results are due to a reorganization of the upright face‐processing system resulting from infants' learning to sit independently and trying to incorporate the meaning of upright faces.     

Bilingualism and symbolic abstraction: Implications for algebra learning

Much of the research on bilingualism and math learning focuses on the potential challenges that bilinguals and language learners may face. The current line of research took an alternative approach and explored whether a bilingual advantage may emerge for a novel algebraic problem solving task that requires symbolic thought, the Symbol Math task. No differences were seen between bilingual and monolingual samples on basic math or executive control tasks; however, a bilingual advantage was seen in performance on the Symbol Math task across two experiments. The results suggest that bilingualism may improve the ability to engage in more abstract or symbolic thought processes, which may have important implications for algebra learning.     

Visual discrimination of letter-like forms and its relationship to achievement over time in children with learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to better understand whether visual discrimination abilities are related to reading intelligence and other achievement areas in children with learning disabilities and normally achieving children. Children with visual discrimination problems were identified using the Gibson letter-like visual discrimination task. This task was given to a large sample of children with learning disabilities as well as a sample of normally achieving children. All children were followed throughout elementary school. Results indicated that children with learning disabilities who had visual discrimination problems at 6 or 7 years of age performed more poorly in reading and general achievement over the elementary school years in comparison to the other children with learning disabilities and compared to normally achieving children. Discussion centers around the importance of this skill for reading.     

Categorization skills in infants

The prototypical category-learning experiences with which infants are confronted are ones in which they have had prior experience with and have clearly noted the differences among a set of objects. Their task, then, is to notice also the similarities among the objects and to form a category based on these similarities. The goals of the current experiments were to create a laboratory situation in which it was clear that 10-month-old infants were distinguishing one category exemplar from another, and then to determine the structure of the category representation the infants developed under these learning conditions. A set of artificially created face stimuli was used in which the mean and modal prototypes were distinct. The infants' performance could not be explained by the context theory; they appear to have retained a count of the feature values observed during study. These data give support to the claim that prior to language, infants have available strategies for abstracting category-level information from their perceptual experiences with discriminable objects and events.     

Dissociations between serial position and number of letters effects in lateralised visual word recognition

Some previous studies of visual word recognition have reported an interaction between visual field and word length (measured by number of letters), such that recognition is affected more by word length for words presented in the left than for words presented in the right visual field. However, when manipulating serial position of letters in words to measure length effects, there are also reports of symmetrical word length effects in the two visual fields. Here we report two experiments, presenting four‐ and seven‐letter words, suggesting that the serial position and length effects in the hemispheres are separable and task dependent. For tasks that rely more heavily on letter‐level processing such as letter search (Experiment 1), performance in both hemifields showed similar effects of serial position; however, when comparing four‐ and seven‐letter words, an effect of word length was evident only in the left visual field, in line with the well‐established interaction between word length and hemifield. An interaction between word length and hemifield was confirmed for the same stimuli when they were employed in a lexical decision task, which forced whole‐word processing (Experiment 2). We conclude that the effects of serial position and number of letters in the two visual fields are separable, and are selectively affected by task type.     

Spatial selective attention and asynchrony of cognitive systems in adult dyslexic readers: an ERPs and behavioral study

The aim of this study was to gain additional knowledge about the asynchrony phenomenon in developmental dyslexia, especially when spatial selective attention is manipulated. Adults with developmental dyslexia and non-impaired readers underwent two experimental tasks, one including alphabetic stimuli (pre-lexical consonant–vowel syllables) and the other containing non-alphabetic stimuli (pictures and sounds of animals). Participants were instructed to attend to the right or left hemifields and to respond to all stimuli on that hemifield. Behavioral parameters and event-related potentials were recorded. The main finding was that the dyslexic readers demonstrated asynchrony between the auditory and visual modalities when alphabetic stimuli were presented on the right hemifield. These results suggest that intact reading is linked to a synchronized auditory and visual speed of processing even when spatial selective attention is manipulated. The findings of the current study are discussed in terms of asynchrony between modalities as a neurocognitive marker in developmental dyslexia.     

Back to Basics: A Bilingual Advantage in Infant Visual Habituation

Comparisons of cognitive processing in monolinguals and bilinguals have revealed a bilingual advantage in inhibitory control. Recent studies have demonstrated advantages associated with exposure to two languages in infancy. However, the domain specificity and scope of the infant bilingual advantage in infancy remains unclear. In the present study, 114 monolingual and bilingual infants were compared in a very basic task of information processing—visual habituation—at 6 months of age. Bilingual infants demonstrated greater efficiency in stimulus encoding as well as in improved recognition memory for familiar stimuli as compared to monolinguals. Findings reveal a generalized cognitive advantage in bilingual infants that is broad in scope, early to emerge, and not specific to language.     

Intermodal Perception of Adult and Child Faces and Voices by Infants

This research investigated the ability of 4- and 7-month-old infants to match unfamiliar, dynamic faces and voices on the basis of age or maturity. In Experiment 1, infants received videotaped trials of an adult and a child of the same gender, side by side, speaking a nursery rhyme in synchrony with one another. The voice to one and then the other face was played in synchrony with the movements of both faces in a random order across 12 trials. On one block of 6 trials a man and a boy were presented, and on the other block a woman and a girl. Results indicated significant matching of the faces and voices at both ages, and the infant's prior experience with children appeared to facilitate matching at 7 months. Further, a visual preference for the children's faces was found. Experiment 2 assessed matching to the same events by 7-month-olds, only with the faces inverted. Results indicated no evidence of matching; however, the visual preference for the children's faces was replicated. Together, the findings suggest that infants are able to detect invariant intermodal relations specifying the age or maturity of a person's face and voice. This matching was most likely based on information that was degraded by inverting the faces, including invariant relations between the sound of the voice and configurational aspects of the face, or between temporal aspects of the voice and the relative motion of facial features.     

Recognition of maternal axillary odors by infants

A series of 5 experiments was conducted to determine whether neonates, at approximately 2 weeks of age, can recognize their parents through axillary odors alone. Breast-feeding infants discriminated between their mother's axillary odor and odors produced by either nonparturient or unfamiliar lactating females. In contrast, breast-feeding infants displayed no evidence of recognizing the axillary odors of their father. Likewise, bottle-feeding infants appeared unable to recognize the odor of their mother when presented along with odors from a nonparturient female or an unfamiliar bottle-feeding female. Several hypotheses were presented in an attempt to account for the differential reactions to maternal odors by breast-feeding versus bottle-feeding infants. It was tentatively concluded that, while breast-feeding, infants are exposed to salient maternal odors and thereby rapidly become familiarized with their mother's unique olfactory signature.     

Infants Rely More on Gaze Cues From Own‐Race Than Other‐Race Adults for Learning Under Uncertainty

Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own‐ over other‐race faces, but whether this experience has downstream consequences is unknown. Three experiments examined whether 7‐month‐olds (range = 5.9–8.5 months; N = 96) use gaze from own‐ versus other‐race adults to anticipate events. When gaze predicted an event's occurrence with 100% reliability, 7‐month‐olds followed both adults equally; with 25% (chance) reliability, neither was followed. However, with 50% (uncertain) reliability, infants followed own‐ over other‐race gaze. Differential face race experience may thus affect how infants use social cues from own‐ versus other‐race adults for learning. Such findings suggest that infants integrate online statistical reliability information with prior knowledge of own versus other race to guide social interaction and learning.     

A study of the relationship between learning styles and cognitive abilities in engineering students

Learning preferences have been indirectly linked to student success in engineering programmes, without a significant body of research to connect learning preferences with cognitive abilities. A better understanding of the relationship between learning styles and cognitive abilities will allow educators to optimise the classroom experience for students. The goal of this study was to determine whether relationships exist between student learning styles, as determined by the Felder-Soloman Inventory of Learning Styles (FSILS), and their cognitive performance. Three tests were used to assess student's cognitive abilities: a matrix reasoning task, a Tower of London task, and a mental rotation task. Statistical t-tests and correlation coefficients were used to quantify the results. Results indicated that the global–sequential, active–referential, and visual–verbal FSILS learning styles scales are related to performance on cognitive tasks. Most of these relationships were found in response times, not accuracy. Differences in task performance between gender groups (male and female) were more notable than differences between learning styles groups.     

Individual Differences in Infant Visual Attention: Are Short Lookers Faster Processors or Feature Processors?

Individual differences in the duration of infants' visual fixations are reliable and stable and have been linked to differential cognitive performance; short-looking infants typically perform better than long-looking infants. 4 experiments tested the possibility of whether short lookers' superiority on perceptual-cognitive tasks is attributable to attention to the featural details of visual stimuli, or simply to differences in the speed or efficiency of visual processing. To do this, the performance of long- and short-looking 4-month-olds was examined on separate discrimination tasks that could be solved only by processing either featural or global information. The global task was easier than the featural task, but as the amount of time allotted for infants to solve either type of task was decreased, short lookers' performance was superior to that of long lookers. These results thus lend support to a speed or efficiency of stimulus processing interpretation of infant fixation duration.     

Intermanual transfer of shapes in preterm human infants from 33 to 34 + 6 weeks postconceptional age

This study investigated the ability of preterm infants to learn an object shape with one hand and discriminate a new shape in the opposite hand (without visual control). Twenty-four preterm infants between 33 and 34 + 6 gestational weeks received a tactile habituation task with either their right or left hand followed by a tactile discrimination task in the opposite hand. The results confirmed that habituation occurred for both shapes and both hands. Infants subsequently held the novel shape longer in the opposite hand. The results reveal that preterm infants are capable of intermanual transfer of shape information. In spite of the immaturity of the corpus callosum in preterm infants, its development seems to be sufficient to allow some transfer of information between both hands.     

Attention toward contexts modulates context-specificity of behavior in human predictive learning: Evidence from the <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-back task

According to the attentional theory of context processing (ATCP), learning becomes context specific when acquired under conditions that promote attention toward contextual stimuli regardless of whether attention deployment is guided by learning experience or by other factors unrelated to learning. In one experiment with humans, we investigated whether performance in a predictive learning task can be brought under contextual control by means of a secondary task that was unrelated to predictive learning, but supposed to modulate participants’ attention toward contexts. Initially, participants acquired cue-outcome relationships presented in contexts that were each composed of two elements from two dimensions. Acquisition training in the predictive learning task was combined with a one-back task that required participants to match across consecutive trials context elements belonging to one of the two dimensions. During a subsequent test, we observed that acquisition behavior in the predictive learning task was disrupted by changing the acquisition context along the dimension that was relevant for the one-back task, while there was no evidence for context specificity of predictive learning when the acquisition context was changed along the dimension that was irrelevant for the one-back task. Our results support the generality of the principles advocated by ATCP.     

The Relation of Affect to Attention and Learning in Infancy

The relation of positive affect to attention and learning was examined in 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds (N = 84). Affect and attention were assessed while the infants inspected a photograph. Affect was rated globally, for overall mood, and specifically, for amount of time smiling. Attention was indexed by the duration of the infant's longest (or peak) look, a measure previously linked to differential cognitive performance. At all ages, positive affect (shown by approximately half the infants) was associated with long look durations and slower learning, as assessed on a task in which infants learned to distinguish a familiar face from a series of novel faces. By contrast, neutral affect was associated with short looks and faster learning. Affect and look duration had synergistic effects, in that learning was faster than expected for infants who displayed both short looks and neutral affect. These findings are compatible with adult research that links positive affect to less analytical processing, and provide the first evidence that affect may be associated with the speed of processing differences implicated in short and long looking.     

Comparison of Student Achievement in the Summer Term and Regular Quarter

Advocates of modality preference posit that individuals have a dominant sense and that when new material is presented in this preferred modality, learning is enhanced. Despite the widespread belief in this position, there is little supporting evidence. In the present study, the authors implemented a Morse code–like recall task to examine whether visual and auditory recall is moderated by modality preference. When the perceptual discriminability of visual and auditory stimuli was controlled for, there was no significant relation between (a) modality preference and (b) visual and auditory recall. The nature of the task did however effect performance. When a temporal discrimination between stimuli was required, recall for auditory stimuli was superior to recall of visual stimuli. In contrast, when the task involved a spatial discrimination, the opposite effect was observed. It is not surprising that in each recall task, sequences with a discernible pattern were recalled more accurately than were sequences that lacked any obvious pattern. The authors concluded that the ability to recall simple material is determined more by the type of stimulus than by the preferences of the individual.     

Spontaneous talkers among students with learning disabilities: implications of right cerebral dysfunction

Experimental studies and clinical observations have indicated that right-hemisphere lesions produce impulsive talkative behavior. An exploratory study was conducted to investigate whether right-cerebral dysfunction would be evident in the intelligence test scores of talkative students with learning disabilities. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed.     

Electrophysiological correlates of infant recognition memory

Event-Related Potentials were recorded from 6-month-old infants in order to examine the electrophysiological correlates of recognition memory. In 1 study, infants were shown 1 face briefly, followed by the same face presented with high probability, and a novel face presented with low probability. 2 components were observed that distinguished between the novel and familiar events. Differences between these components in latency, polarity, and scalp topography led to the suggestion that 2 processes were involved in recognizing the stimuli. In a second study infants were again presented with 1 face briefly, followed by the same face and a novel face presented with equal probability. 1 component at central scalp distinguished between the novel and familiar events. In a third study, infants were simply presented with 2 previously unseen faces equally often. Infants responded as if the faces were identical, suggesting that previous experience with 1 stimulus directs infants' attention to the novel stimulus during the test portion of the task. The extent to which the observed responses reflect the updating of working memory is discussed, as is the extent to which infants' electrophysiological response to stimulus novelty and uncertainty resembles the adult's.     

Age‐Related Changes in Spreading Activation During Infancy

The concept of spreading activation describes how retrieval of one memory cues retrieval of other memories that are associated with it. This study explored spreading activation in 6‐, 12‐, and 18‐month‐old infants. Infants (n = 144) learned two tasks within the same experimental session; one task, deferred imitation (DI), is typically remembered longer than the other task, visual recognition memory (VRM). At all ages, retrieval of the DI memory facilitated retrieval of the VRM memory, but the conditions under which this spreading activation occurred changed as a function of age. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of mnemonic networks during infancy and the value of studying infants for our understanding of memory more generally.