Fernando Carvajal

MOTHER AND INFANT SMILING EXCHANGES DURING FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTION IN INFANTS WITH AND WITHOUT DOWN SYNDROME

We examined social smiling in infants with and without Down syndrome, aged from 3.2 to 13.6 months old. They were videotaped during an episode of spontaneous face-to-face interaction and a subsequent mothers still-face situation. Results indicated that infants smiled longer in the spontaneous face-to-face episode than in the still-face episode, even though this result was only significant in typically developing infants. Typically developing infants also smiled for a longer period than Downs syndrome infants during the spontaneous interaction episode. Moreover, infants smile preceded the onset of the mothers smile, but in 6.2- to 13.6-month-old typically developing infants, the probability of mothers smiling before infants increased. These findings emphasize the possible existence of differences in the development of facial expression from signs to social symbols between infants with and without Down syndrome.

Perception and recall of faces and facial expressions following temporal lobectomy.

The perception of and memory for faces, with or without emotional content, were studied in 43 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy who had undergone unilateral resection of the hippocampus and the amygdala and in 43 healthy participants for comparison. Each participant performed four tasks from the Florida Affect Battery (Facial Discrimination, Affect Discrimination, Affect Naming, Affect Selection) and two memory tasks (in one case of a face and in the other of a facial expression). Findings indicated that, although patients with unilateral temporal lobectomy (right or left) showed no difficulty in discriminating faces, they were not as good at remembering faces. Also, patients who had had a left temporal lobectomy showed impairment in discriminating facial expressions, in the memory of a facial expression and/or in naming facial expressions.

Face-to-face emotion interaction studies in Down syndrome infants:

Infants with Down syndrome constitute an ideal population for analysing the development of emotional expression from the first months of life, due basically to the fact that this chromosomal alteration is identifiable from birth and results in well-known difficulties of cognitive development and in basic learning processes. Taking into account the functional aspects of facial expression during initial social interaction, in this review we present a series of studies which, although based on different theoretical approaches and different methodologies, have the common objective of analysing the emotional behaviour of young infants with and without Down syndrome during face-to-face interaction with their mothers. The main conclusions emerging from these studies are: (a) that, as in the case of typically developing infants, Down syndrome infants and their mothers present a series of coordinated and interdependent expressive interchanges; (b) that, despite the differences found between infants with and without Down syndrome in quantitative parameters of expressive behaviour, such as frequency, duration and intensity of the different emotional expressions or their point of initiation in development, what seems to be most significant is the clear functional similarity observed in the two groups of subjects during initial mother-infant interaction; and (c) that these differences may be understood by considering different psychobiological explanations as well as the known cognitive deficits.

Looking Behavior and Smiling in Down Syndrome Infants

We studied the relation between direction of gaze and smiling in 15 typically developing infants and 15 infants with Down syndrome. All of them were videotaped during face-to-face interaction with their mothers at home, and while having access to their familiar toys. Results showed that mothers in the two groups behaved in a similar way; that Down syndrome infants looked at their mothers face for longer than typically developing children; and that the relationship between looking and smiling was similar in the two cases and reflected as an increase in the time the infant looked at its mothers face and a decrease in the time the infant looked at toys. It was deduced that Down syndrome infants are capable of distinguishing the differential significance of faces and toys, so that, in the same way as typically developing infants, they direct their affective behavior fundamentally towards the social element, which leads us to consider the affiliative function implied by this expression.

Processing of facial expressions of emotions by adults with Down syndrome and moderate intellectual disability.

The processing of facial expressions of emotions by 23 adults with Down syndrome and moderate intellectual disability was compared with that of adults with intellectual disability of other etiologies (24 matched in cognitive level and 26 with mild intellectual disability). Each participant performed 4 tasks of the Florida Affect Battery and an original task in which they had to match facial expressions after observing the complete face or one of its halves. Adults with Down syndrome did not show any specific difficulties in recognizing facial expressions in spite of showing a poorer discrimination between facial expressions and tended to take more notice of the lower half of the face.

Is a neutral expression also a neutral stimulus? A study with functional magnetic resonance.

Although neutral faces do not initially convey an explicit emotional message, it has been found that individuals tend to assign them an affective content. Moreover, previous research has shown that affective judgments are mediated by the task they have to perform. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 21 healthy participants, we focus this study on the cerebral activity patterns triggered by neutral and emotional faces in two different tasks (social or gender judgments). Results obtained, using conjunction analyses, indicated that viewing both emotional and neutral faces evokes activity in several similar brain areas indicating a common neural substrate. Moreover, neutral faces specifically elicit activation of cerebellum, frontal and temporal areas, while emotional faces involve the cuneus, anterior cingulated gyrus, medial orbitofrontal cortex, posterior superior temporal gyrus, precentral/postcentral gyrus and insula. The task selected was also found to influence brain activity, in that the social task recruited frontal areas while the gender task involved the posterior cingulated, inferior parietal lobule and middle temporal gyrus to a greater extent. Specifically, in the social task viewing neutral faces was associated with longer reaction times and increased activity of left dorsolateral frontal cortex compared with viewing facial expressions of emotions. In contrast, in the same task emotional expressions distinctively activated the left amygdale. The results are discussed taking into consideration the fact that, like other facial expressions, neutral expressions are usually assigned some emotional significance. However, neutral faces evoke a greater activation of circuits probably involved in more elaborate cognitive processing.

A holistic analysis of relationships between executive function and memory in Parkinson's disease

Apart from motor symptoms, Parkinsons disease is characterized by executive and memory problems that have been observed from early stages of the disease. This study explores the possible relationships between these cognitive impairments in a group of 23 individuals with Parkinsons disease (PD) in comparison to a group of 18 healthy individuals. Compared with young individuals, normal aging is characterized by an increased association between executive function and episodic memory, especially with verbal material. We hypothesize that this association between verbal episodic memory and executive function may be weaker in PD as a consequence of the decline in these two cognitive abilities. To test this hypothesis, three categories of standardized tests were administered to both groups: (a) tests for executive function, (b) tests for visuospatial episodic memory, and (c) tests for verbal episodic memory. Performance outputs were analyzed using factor analysis, canonical regression, and structural equation modeling to obtain a holistic perspective of the linkage of these processes and to compare the differences between groups. In general, PD patients performed worse than controls in both executive function and episodic memory (with verbal and visuospatial material). Moreover, we found that relationships between executive function and visuospatial memory scores were high and quite similar in both groups. However, the relationship between verbal episodic memory and executive function was weaker in PD than in healthy individuals. These results suggest that a different brain mechanism could explain executive and verbal memory impairments in PD.

Implicaciones del modelo de la androginia en el comportamiento sexual: arousal subjetivo y fantasías sexuales

ResumenSe intento delimitar el papel de la variable «rol de genero», operativizado segun el BSRI (Bem, 1974), en el arousal sexual subjetivo, evaluado mediante tres escalas en las que los sujetos (86 estudiantes universitarios de ambos sexos, entre 21 y 25 anos) debian valorar el nivel de activacion, la reaction emocional y la estetica percibidas de siete narraciones de caracter erotico que diferian en cuanto al tipo de relacion sexual (homosexual versus heterosexual), a la dominancia en la relacion presentada (femenina versus masculina) y al tipo de relato (romantico versus pornografico). Los resultados mostraron la necesidad de considerar la interaction de las variables «sexo» y «rol de genero» para explicar adecuadamente los datos, asi como cierto apoyo a la teoria de la proyeccion-Objetivacion de Money y Ehrhandt (1972). Finalmente, se valido la escala de Fantasias sexuales de Wilson (1978) con nuestra muestra, encontrando una alta fiabilidad interna del instrumento (α = 0.86), y una estructura factor...

The Duchenne smile with open mouth in infants with Down syndrome

Abstract Duchenne and non-Duchenne type of smiles were studied in infants with and without Down syndrome while they looked at their mother’s face or at objects. In infants with Down syndrome the Duchenne smile with open mouth was the most frequent, regardless of the direction of their gaze. The study of different type of smiles may be related to sociocognitive development in children with Down syndrome.

Comportamiento expresivo que antecede a la sonrisa social: Comparación entre lactantes normales y afectados por el síndrome de Down

ResumenEl objetivo de este trabajo ha sido comprobar la sonrisa social de los lactantes normales con la de los afectados por el sindrome de Down (mongolismo), atendiendo principalmente a los movimientos expresivos de las cejas que la precedieron. Por medio de una tecnica de base anatomica, se analizaron las respuestas faciales de alegria de ocho ninos normales y otros ocho con sindrome de Down, con edades comprendidas entre los tres y cinco meses, que aparecieron durante la interaccion cara a cara con sus madres. Con independencia de su retraso cognitivo, los ninos con sindrome de Down mostraron basicamente los mismos movimientos expresivos que los normales antes y durante la sonrisa. No obstante, se encontraron algunas diferencias en la frecuencia y duracion media de las sonrisas, asi como en la frecuencia de los movimientos expresivos de las cejas previos a la misma. Estos resultados se discuten en terminos de las alteraciones psicofisiologicas que sufren los ninos con sindrome de Down, derivadas de un ...