Yanjie Su

Facial Expression Recognition: Can Preschoolers with Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids Catch It?

Tager-Flusberg and Sullivan (2000) presented a cognitive model of theory of mind (ToM), in which they thought ToM included two components--a social-perceptual component and a social-cognitive component. Facial expression recognition (FER) is an ability tapping the social-perceptual component. Previous findings suggested that normal hearing children did not demonstrate any advantage over those with cochlear implants (CI) or hearing aids (HA) in FER with age and gender matched. In these studies, the ages of the participants with CI or HA were over 7 years old. However, normal hearing preschoolers can accurately recognize basic facial expressions. Childrens early FER skills are essential to later successful social interactions. It is not clear whether preschoolers with CI or HA have problems in FER. Two experiments were conducted to compare the FER of preschoolers with CI or HA with normal hearing children (with age matched). The results of both experiments consistently showed that normal hearing children performed significantly better than those with CI or HA, suggesting to some extent that there was a delay in preschoolers with CI or HA on FER. No significant correlations (with age and type of participants controlled) were found between language ability (measured by PPVT) and FER in Experiment 2, to some extent validating a cognitive model of ToM in another view. The findings suggested that earlier rehabilitation for children with CI or HA should include not only language treatment but also emotional intervention, which would help them catch up with normal hearings as soon as possible.

Personality as a predictor of general health in captive golden snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana).

Increasing studies in human and animals have shown that personality is related to biological profile and affects health outcomes. Understanding the link between personality and health will contribute to preventing illness and promoting well‐being in non‐human primates. The present study examined whether personality predicted health outcomes in captive golden snub‐nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana). Personality was measured by rating on a list of traits and four factors (Aggressiveness, Sociability, Mellowness, and Excitability) were extracted. Morbidity was measured by occurrence, duration, and number of illnesses, as well as (mean and maximum) digestive dysfunction symptoms scores. Morbidity measurements were coded from illness history which was recorded during the 27 months since the personality assessment. The results showed that lower Aggressiveness predicted greater number of illness, longer illness duration, and more serious digestive dysfunction. In addition, Mellowness, Excitability, and age by Sociability interaction influenced digestive function significantly. Low mellow individuals, high excitable individuals, high sociable younger individuals and low sociable older individuals had poorer digestive function. The present study demonstrated that personality was associated with morbidity in captive R. roxellanae and stress might contribute to this association. Personality assessment provided useful information on individual vulnerability. Carefully looking for early signs of illness among vulnerable individuals is expected to reduce health risks, which would promote welfare in captive non‐human primates. Am. J. Primatol. 75:524‐533, 2013.

Deaf children's use of clear visual cues in mindreading

Previous studies show that typically developing 4-year old children can understand other peoples false beliefs but that deaf children of hearing families have difficulty in understanding false beliefs until the age of approximately 13. Because false beliefs are implicit mental states that are not expressed through clear visual cues in standard false belief tasks, the present study examines the hypothesis that the deaf childrens developmental delay in understanding false beliefs may reflect their difficulty in understanding a spectrum of mental states that are not expressed through clear visual cues. Nine- to 13-year-old deaf children of hearing families and 4-6-year-old typically developing children completed false belief tasks and emotion recognition tasks under different cue conditions. The results indicated that after controlling for the effect of the childrens language abilities, the deaf children inferred other peoples false beliefs as accurately as the typically developing children when other peoples false beliefs were clearly expressed through their eye-gaze direction. However, the deaf children performed worse than the typically developing children when asked to infer false beliefs with ambiguous or no eye-gaze cues. Moreover, the deaf children were capable of recognizing other peoples emotions that were clearly conveyed by their facial or body expressions. The results suggest that although theory-based or simulation-based mental state understanding is typical of hearing childrens theory of mind mechanism, for deaf children of hearing families, clear cue-based mental state understanding may be their specific theory of mind mechanism.

The Relationship Between Visual Perspective Taking and Imitation Impairments in Children with Autism

Perspective taking (or role taking) refers to the ability of individuals to distinguish their own perspectives from those of others, and to make correct judgments about the latter. It comprises both the visual (perceptual) level at which the individual imagines what another person can see from a contrasting vantage point (Kurdek & Rodgon, 1975) and the socialcognitive (conceptual) level at which he or she assesses another person’s mental state (also referred to as the “Theory of Mind” or ToM; Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Visual perspective taking (VPT) is further differentiated into two levels, namely, the ability to understand that people have selective visual fields (Level-1) and the ability to understand that they have different views of the same object (Level-2) (Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981). According to the hypothesis put forward by Baron-Cohen and colleagues (Baron-Cohen, 1988; Frith & Happe, 1999; Leslie & Frith, 1988), individuals with autism may suffer selective deficit to infer mental representations (referred to as meta-representation, Leslie, 1987), which may affect their ability to infer other’s mental state (ToM) and their own mental state (self-consciousness). However, they can still indicate other’s view in VPT tasks. Empirical evidence generally supports the hypothesis of a theory of mind deficit in autism (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Leslie & Frith, 1988; Perner, Frith, Leslie, & Leekam, 1989; Reed, 1994), but the results on VPT tests have been inconsistent. Some studies have demonstrated VPT deficit in autism (Hamilton, Brindley, & Frith, 2009; Reed, 2002; Warreyn, Roeyers, Oelbrandt, & de Groote, 2005; Yirmiya, Sigman, & Zacks, 1994), but others have found no such deficit (Baron-Cohen, 1989; Dawson & Fernald, 1987; Hobson, 1984; Leekam, Baron-Cohen, Perrett, Milders, & Brown, 1997; Leslie & Frith, 1988; Reed & Peterson, 1990; Tan & Harris, 1991). These contradictory findings may be due to differences in the task demands (Reed, 2002) and age of participants (Warreyn et al., 2005) among the studies, or to such methodological issues as the ceiling effect (Yirmiya et al., 1994). The first aim of the current study is thus to explore the possible reasons for these inconsistent results.

A preliminary study on the function of food begging in Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana): challenge to begging for nutritional gain.

Several hypotheses have been developed to explain what benefits a donor may gain from sharing food with another individual, with nutritional gain assumed to be the sole benefit for the beggar. Recently, it has been proposed that begging behaviour serves a social function in non-human primates. In this study, the nutritional-gain assumption was again challenged based on observations on a captive group of Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana), or golden snub-nosed monkeys. The major findings from this study are that (1) beggars sometimes left their own branches or passed by available branches to beg for similar food from other individuals, (2) beggars occasionally ignored branches that were acquired by begging and (3) food begging occurred more frequently in the all-male unit after the social rank had changed between 2 individuals in this unit. Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that some begging behaviours in captive golden snub-nosed monkeys were not driven by nutritional gain only; instead, we propose that these begging behaviours could be interpreted as attempts at deriving social benefits.