Eloisa Valenza

Face Preference at Birth

Four experiments are reported that were aimed at elucidating some of the controversial issues concerning the preference for facelike patterns in newborns. The experiments were devised to contrast the original and the revised versions of the sensory hypothesis and the structural hypothesis as accounts of face preference in newborns. Experiments 1A and 1B supported the structural hypothesis by showing a visual preference for the stimulus for which components were located in the correct arrangement for a human face. Experiment 2 supported the sensory hypothesis by showing a visual preference for stimuli that were designed to have the optimal spatial frequency components for the newborn visual system. Experiment 3 showed that babies directed attention to a facelike pattern also when it was presented simultaneously with a nonfacelike stimulus with optimal spatial frequency for the newborn visual system.

Newborns' preference for up-down asymmetrical configurations

The present study was aimed at investigating whether, because of a differential sensitivity between the upper and the lower visual fields, in a visual preference task newborns would orient more frequently and look longer at patterns with a great number of high–contrast areas in the upper or lower visual field. Newborns were presented with three pairs of geometrical stimuli, each composed of a pattern with a greater number of elements in the upper part or a pattern with more elements in the lower part. The results showed a reliable preference for the stimuli that had more elements in the upper than in the lower part. The evidence obtained suggests the possibility that, at birth, the visibility of a stimulus depends not only on its sensory properties, but also on its structural characteristics.

Configural processing at birth: evidence for perceptual organisation.

We report a series of ten experiments aimed to investigate the newborns ability to discriminate the components of a visual pattern and to process the visual information that specifies the global configuration of a stimulus. The results reveal that: (i) newborn babies are able to distinguish individual elements of a stimulus (experiments 1A, IB, 1C, and ID); (ii) they can group individual elements into a holistic percept on the basis of Gestalt principles (experiments 2A and 3A); (iii) their spontaneous preferences cannot be easily modified by habituation (experiments 2B and 3B); and (iv) when horizontal stimuli are paired with vertical stimuli, they prefer the horizontal ones (experiments 4A and 4B).

Inhibition of Return in Newborn Infants

Abstract Inhibition of return is a reduced tendency to orient toward a previously attended spatial location, which, in adults, likely reflects an attentional bias toward novel locations. It is indexed by an increased latency and/or a reduction in the probability of an eye movement to the inhibited location. Previous research had indicated that inhibition of return develops between 3 and 6 months of age. We submitted 32 newborns (M age = 72 hours; SD = 0.0) to trials consisting of a pretest phase (a single visual cue shown for 3 s at 30° from fixation), a 2-s interval, and a test phase (two identical stimuli shown simultaneously at 30° for 5 s). We recorded the direction and latency of the first eye movement in both the pretest and test phases as well as the nonnutritive sucking rate. The results showed that eye movements occurred more frequently and with a shorter latency toward the uncued side (i.e., inhibition of return). There was also some indication that inhibition of return occurred only when in the pretest phase the infant shifted gaze toward the cue and nonnutritive sucking rate decreased. It was concluded that inhibition of return is present in the first days after birth.

Inhibition of return in newborns is temporo-nasal asymmetrical

Abstract Inhibition of return (IOR) is a reduced tendency to orient toward a previously attended spatial location. Inhibition of return is caused by suddenly introduced visual cues and reflects an attentional bias toward novel locations. It is indexed by an increased latency and/or a reduced tendency of an eye movement to the inhibited location. Under monocular viewing conditions, we submitted 24 newborns (M age = 50 hours) to trials consisting of a pretest phase (a single visual cue shown at 15° from fixation) and a test phase (two simultaneous, identical stimuli shown in the two visual hemifields at 15°). The results showed that, in the test phase, eye movements occured more often and with a shorter latency toward the side that had not been cued in the pretest phase. It was also found that the bias against the cued hemifield (i.e., IOR) was greater in the temporal than in the nasal hemifield. It was concluded that IOR is present just after birth and is mediated by extrageniculate rather than geniculostriate pathways.

Many faces, one rule: the role of perceptual expertise in infants’ sequential rule learning

Rule learning is a mechanism that allows infants to recognize and generalize rule-like patterns, such as ABB or ABA. Although infants are better at learning rules from speech vs. non-speech, rule learning can be applied also to frequently experienced visual stimuli, suggesting that perceptual expertise with material to be learned is critical in enhancing rule learning abilities. Yet infants’ rule learning has never been investigated using one of the most commonly experienced visual stimulus category available in infants’ environment, i.e., faces. Here, we investigate 7-month-olds’ ability to extract rule-like patterns from sequences composed of upright faces and compared their results to those of infants who viewed inverted faces, which presumably are encountered far less frequently than upright faces. Infants were habituated with face triads in either an ABA or ABB condition followed by a test phase with ABA and ABB triads composed of faces that differed from those showed during habituation. When upright faces were used, infants generalized the pattern presented during habituation to include the new face identities showed during testing, but when inverted faces were presented, infants failed to extract the rule. This finding supports the idea that perceptual expertise can modulate 7-month-olds’ abilities to detect rule-like patterns.

How a hat may affect 3-month-olds' recognition of a face: an eye-tracking study

Recent studies have shown that infants’ face recognition rests on a robust face representation that is resilient to a variety of facial transformations such as rotations in depth, motion, occlusion or deprivation of inner/outer features. Here, we investigated whether 3-month-old infants’ ability to represent the invariant aspects of a face is affected by the presence of an external add-on element, i.e. a hat. Using a visual habituation task, three experiments were carried out in which face recognition was investigated by manipulating the presence/absence of a hat during face encoding (i.e. habituation phase) and face recognition (i.e. test phase). An eye-tracker system was used to record the time infants spent looking at face-relevant information compared to the hat. The results showed that infants’ face recognition was not affected by the presence of the external element when the type of the hat did not vary between the habituation and test phases, and when both the novel and the familiar face wore the same hat during the test phase (Experiment 1). Infants’ ability to recognize the invariant aspects of a face was preserved also when the hat was absent in the habituation phase and the same hat was shown only during the test phase (Experiment 2). Conversely, when the novel face identity competed with a novel hat, the hat triggered the infants’ attention, interfering with the recognition process and preventing the infants’ preference for the novel face during the test phase (Experiment 3). Findings from the current study shed light on how faces and objects are processed when they are simultaneously presented in the same visual scene, contributing to an understanding of how infants respond to the multiple and composite information available in their surrounding environment.

Spatiotemporal neurodynamics of automatic temporal expectancy in 9-month old infants

Anticipating events occurrence (Temporal Expectancy) is a crucial capacity for survival. Yet, there is little evidence about the presence of cortical anticipatory activity from infancy. In this study we recorded the High-density electrophysiological activity in 9 month-old infants and adults undergoing an audio-visual S1–S2 paradigm simulating a lifelike “Peekaboo” game inducing automatic temporal expectancy of smiling faces. The results indicate in the S2-preceding Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) an early electrophysiological signature of expectancy-based anticipatory cortical activity. Moreover, the progressive CNV amplitude increasing across the task suggested that implicit temporal rule learning is at the basis of expectancy building-up over time. Cortical source reconstruction suggested a common CNV generator between adults and infants in the right prefrontal cortex. The decrease in the activity of this area across the task (time-on-task effect) further implied an early, core role of this region in implicit temporal rule learning. By contrast, a time-on-task activity boost was found in the supplementary motor area (SMA) in adults and in the temporoparietal regions in infants. Altogether, our findings suggest that the capacity of the human brain to translate temporal predictions into anticipatory neural activity emerges ontogenetically early, although the underlying spatiotemporal cortical dynamics change across development.

Face Orientation and Motion Differently Affect the Deployment of Visual Attention in Newborns and 4-Month-Old Infants.

Orienting visual attention allows us to properly select relevant visual information from a noisy environment. Despite extensive investigation of the orienting of visual attention in infancy, it is unknown whether and how stimulus characteristics modulate the deployment of attention from birth to 4 months of age, a period in which the efficiency in orienting of attention improves dramatically. The aim of the present study was to compare 4-month-old infants’ and newborns’ ability to orient attention from central to peripheral stimuli that have the same or different attributes. In Experiment 1, all the stimuli were dynamic and the only attribute of the central and peripheral stimuli to be manipulated was face orientation. In Experiment 2, both face orientation and motion of the central and peripheral stimuli were contrasted. The number of valid trials and saccadic latency were measured at both ages. Our results demonstrated that the deployment of attention is mainly influenced by motion at birth, while it is also influenced by face orientation at 4-month of age. These findings provide insight into the development of the orienting visual attention in the first few months of life and suggest that maturation may be not the only factor that determines the developmental change in orienting visual attention from birth to 4 months.

Persistent primary reflexes affect motor acts: Potential implications for autism spectrum disorder

In typical motor development progress in use of goal-directed actions and communicative gestures depends on the inhibition of several primitive reflexes, especially those that involve the hand or mouth. This study explored the relationship between the persistence of primitive reflexes that involve the hand or mouth and the motor repertoire in a sample of 12- to 17-month-old infants. Moreover, since children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often have difficulty in performing skilled movements and show poor gesture repertoire, and since ASD represents the upper extreme of a constellation of traits that may be continuously distributed in the general population, we investigated the relationship between the persistence of primitive reflexes in the same sample of infants and the subclinical autistic traits measured in their parents. Results revealed that the persistence of the primitive reflexes correlated with motor repertoire irrespective of infants age, and it was greater among infants whose parents had more subclinical autistic traits. Our findings suggest that the persistence of primitive reflexes might alter the developmental trajectory of future motor ability and therefore their evaluation might be an early indicator of atypical development.