Gerald Turkewitz

Prenatal experience and neonatal responsiveness to vocal expressions of emotion

Newborn differentiation of emotion and the relevance of prenatal experience in influencing responsiveness to emotion was tested by examining newborn responses to the presentation of a range of vocal expressions. Differential responding was observed, as indicated by an increase in eye opening behavior in response to the presentation of happy speech patterns. More importantly, differential responding was observed only when the infants listened to emotional speech as spoken by speakers of their maternal language. No evidence of discrimination was found in the groups of infants listening to the same vocal expressions in a novel language. The results suggest that as a consequence of prenatal exposure to the distinctive prosodic maternal speech patterns that specify different emotions and to the temporally related stimuli created by distinctive maternal physiological concomitants of emotion, the fetus learns to differentiate those emotional speech patterns typical of the infants maternal language.

Changes in Hemispheric Advantage in Processing Facial Information with Increasing Stimulus Familiarization

Thirty-nine female subjects were given a task involving recognition of initially unfamiliar faces which were tachistoscopically presented to one or the other visual field. In support of a hypothesized dual mode of right hemisphere function, those subjects who showed an initial left visual field advantage exhibited a diminution and then an increase in this advantage with increasing familiarity with the faces. This resulted in a significant quadratic component in their magnitude of hemispheric advantage. In contrast, those individuals who showed an initial right visual field advantage had neither a significant linear nor quadratic component in the magnitude of their advantage. Significant correlations between number of errors and magnitude of hemispheric advantage, independent of direction, were also found. The results are discussed in terms of possible optimal sequences and timing of shifts in information processing strategies and associated hemispheric advantages.

Changes in Visual Field Advantage for Facial Recognition: The Development of a General Processing Strategy

During the recognition of tachistoscopically presented faces, subjects initially showing a LVF advantage decrease and then increase that advantage; subjects with an initial RVF advantage shift to a LVFA. We examined whether these shifts result from increasing familiarity with specific faces or rather from the development of a more general facial processing strategy. This was accomplished by changing the set of faces presented for recognition during testing. Across trials, the VFA of initially RVF advantaged subjects showed a linear trend, that of LVF advantaged Ss a quadratic trend. These trends dont differ from those of subjects tested with one set of faces, suggesting that subjects were learning a general strategy for facial recognition.

Learning in Chronically Protein-Deprived Rats

I am going to describe findings which are somewhat at variance with the findings that others have presented. Cowley and Griesel (1959, 1963) reported differences in the learning ability of protein-deprived and adequately nourished rats. In a number of the presentations made today it has been pointed out that motivational differences, motor differences, and attentional differences can all affect learning without necessarily reflecting any differences in learning ability per se. In fact, it was rather elegantly demonstrated that when proper attention is paid to such factors, it is extremely difficult to find differences in learning ability between well nourished and poorly nourished animals. However, it should be noted that Cowley and Griesel’s studies differed from those reported today not just with respect to the nature of the findings but with regard to the nature of the animals studied as well. That is, the animals which Cowley and Griesel found to be most deficient in learning were protein-deprived animals born to and reared by animals which had themselves been protein-deprived.