Beatrix Lábadi

Count on arousal: introducing a new method for investigating the effects of emotional valence and arousal on visual search performance

There is a large body of research, indicating that threatening stimuli with evolutionary history are prioritised in visual processing. It has been proposed that all threatening stimuli are prioritised, irrespective of evolutionary age, but it was argued that the method used to produce the results was not suitable for investigating the phenomenon. We present a new visual search task and provide evidence that it is an appropriate tool for future research. In Experiment 1, we investigated how the influence of emotional stimuli on visual search performance varies with valence (negative, positive, and neutral) and arousal (medium and high). Negative valence found to have a greater impact. Furthermore, our results underscore the importance of controlling for arousal. Experiment 2 confirmed these findings and also revealed that negative valence decreases performance by diverting attention away from the task, but arousal can compensate for this by increasing attentional capacity. This mechanism does not seem to be affected by the evolutionary history of the stimulus. In Experiment 3, we reproduced these results using a touchscreen monitor and controlling for variance in low-level visual features. We claim that these results support the notion of preferential processing of threatening cues, regardless of evolutionary origin. However, the level of threat, i.e., how arousing the cue is, has to be taken into account to explain the findings.

Mental State Understanding in Children with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum.

Impaired social functioning is a well-known outcome of individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum. Social deficits in nonliteral language comprehension, humor, social reasoning, and recognition of facial expression have all been documented in adults with agenesis of the corpus callosum. In the present study, we examined the emotional and mentalizing deficits that contributing to the social-cognitive development in children with isolated corpus callosum agenesia, including emotion recognition, theory of mind, executive function, working memory, and behavioral impairments as assessed by the parents. The study involved children between the age of 6 and 8 years along with typically developing children who were matched by IQ, age, gender, education, and caregivers education. The findings indicated that children with agenesis of the corpus callosum exhibited mild impairments in all social factors (recognizing emotions, understanding theory of mind), and showed more behavioral problems than control children. Taken together, these findings suggest that reduced callosal connectivity may contribute to the development of higher-order social-cognitive deficits, involving limits of complex and rapidly occurring social information to be processed. The studies of AgCC shed lights of the role of structural connectivity across the hemispheres in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Multisensory integration and age-dependent sensitivity to body representation modification induced by the rubber hand illusion

The aim of the present study was to compare junior and senior healthy participants for their multimodal integration capability. The instrument used for the investigation was the rubber hand illusion (RHI) where synchronous and asynchronous multimodal stimulation were applied. The study focused on assessing the rate of integration for visuo-tactile and visuo-proprioceptive stimuli. Methods: From a large sample of right-handed volunteers, 50 senior employees (containing younger and middle age adults) and 51 senior retired (senior adults) participants were recruited. Results: The between-subject analyses revealed that individuals both the junior and the senior participants responded to induction of RHI with vivid ownership and disownership experiences and a higher mislocalization error in the synchronous condition. However, the between-group analysis showed that participants in the senior group reported less vivid ownership and less vivid total RHI experiences scores compared to members of the junior group, but no mislocalization error differences were found between the groups. Conclusion: The results indicated that when visuo-tactile stimuli synchronously presented, the gain in multisensory integration decreased in seniors group. In contrast, in the case of visuo-proprioceptive synchronous presentation, the efficiency of multisensory integration remained unchanged across the lifespan.

Sex Difference of Cognitive Strategy on Mental Rotation Task

The mental rotation is a classical paradigm in cognitive psychology. Recent tests demonstrate that the linearity coefficient (r2) is an appropriate variable to show the cognitive appearance (cognitive strategy) of mental rotation. It is well documented that males perform better than females on object mental rotation. The present work is the first demonstration of a sex difference of cognitive strategy used during mental rotation. A linearity coefficient of females was higher than the coefficient of males. This result implies that females use a more active and powerful mental rotation strategy. This is very important from the viewpoint of some methodology. In the cognitive neuroscience there are various fMRI and MEG works which measure brain activity during mental rotation. However, beside the demonstration of mental rotation paradigm, it may be very important provide that subjects at whom occur actually the mental rotation during brain scanning.

Understanding deceptive intentions behind pointing gestures in 12-15-month-old infants

We examined the comprehension of deceptive intentions revealed in searching task in infancy, on the theoretical basis of natural pedagogy and epistemic trust. The main findings showed that 12-15-month-old infants are able to discriminate the reliable and the deceptive actions of adults, but they do not generalize their previous experience in connection with a novel person, who is treated as a new reliable source of information.

A corpus callosum agenesia viselkedéses és kognitív profilja - összefoglaló

Background and purpose Agenesis of corpus callosum is a relatively frequent congenital cerebral malformation including dysplasia, total or partial absence of corpus callosum. The agenesis of corpus callosum can be occured in isolated form without accompanying somatic or central nervous system abnormalities and it can be associated with other central nervus system malformations. The behavioral and cognitive outcome is more favorable for patients with isolated agenesis of corpus callous than syndromic form of corpus callosum. The aim of this study is to review recent research on behavioral and social-cognitive functions in individuals with agenesis of corpus callosum. Developmental delay is common especially in higher-order cognitive and social functions. Methods An internet database search was performed to identify publications on the subject. Results Fifty-five publications in English corresponded to the criteria. These studies reported deficits in language, social cognition and emotions in individuals with agenesis of corpus callosum which is known as primary corpus callous syndrome. Conclusion The results indicate that individuals with agenesis of corpus callosum have deficiency in social-cognitive domain (recognition of emotions, weakness in paralinguistic aspects of language and mentalizing abilities). The impaired social cognition can be manifested in behavioral problems like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.