Advanced Developmental Psychology

Advanced Developmental Psychology
PSY 620P February 12, 2015

Domains of Development
Perception Cognition Language Social/Emotional

Perception in the world
Perceptual narrowing Visual and auditory Face processing Other-race effect (ORE) Wait, is there an ORE Individualized training – short & long term effects Holistic face processing—developmental deficits Longer infant gazes  higher effortful control 4-10 months41 months ASD implications

Perceptual Narrowing Young infants show greater preparedness to respond to any potential social signal Set of experience-expectant sensitivities that have adaptive significance Minimal input needed to maintain sensitivities Mechanistic explanation is implied

Simpson et al. example

What’s going on? English-learning infants hear Hindi contrast better than English-speaking adults Almost as well as adult Hindi-speakers

Perceptual Narrowing During Infancy: A Comparison of Language and Faces
Maurer and Werker (2013)

“Critical” Initial Formulation
Similarity in timing

Bichay

Preface: Face Processing preference
Bar-Haim et al., 2006

Origin of other-race effect (ORE)
Perceptual narrowing- infants become attuned to faces that they are exposed to more in the environment (own-race faces) relative to less frequently encountered faces (other-race faces) Perception of emotion Experience and emotion processing Bichay

Behavioral visual-paired comparison (VPC) results
after 30 seconds of familiarization to the familiar face. Whereas 5-month-old infants looked longer to the novel Caucasian and African American faces, showing evidence of discrimination for both races, 9-month-old infants only looked longer to novel Caucasian faces. Bichay

Method Sample Behavioral procedure Electrophysiological procedure
Caucasian infants (5 mo and 9 mo) who have little or no previous experience with African Americans Behavioral procedure Visual paired comparison (VPC) Electrophysiological procedure ERP recorded Bichay

ERP Results (P400 amplitude)
P400 is a component of face-processing response Figure 6 Perceptual processing of congruency. (a) Illustrates the P400 component in response to African American and Caucasian congruent and incongruent sound ⁄ face pairs in 5-month-old and 9-month-old infants (arrow denotes significant latency differences). (b) Mean Latency (±SEM) for the P400, across conditions, for both ages. In 9-month-old infants the latency in response to the Caucasian incongruent condition peaked faster than the Caucasian congruent condition. No differences were found for 5-month-old infants. Bichay

Introduction ORE: other-race effect Past studies Perceptual narrowing
Emerges during 1st year of life Past studies Multisensory, multi-attribute representation of dynamic vocalizing faces  multisensory redundancy  perceptual salience Multisensory processing abilities improve with age/experience The other-race effect is an example of perceptual narrowing, which is a developmental process during which the brain uses experiences from the environment to shape one’s perceptual abilities. This process improves the perception of things that people experience often and decreases their ability to perceive some things that they are not often exposed. So essentially that creates proficiency in one area and deficiency in another. Specifically the ORE refers to the idea that adults are more proficient at recognizing, discriminating, and remembering the faces of their own race than those of other races. The ORE emerges in infancy and seems to solidify during the first year of life. In fact, studies have demonstrated that infants who are exposed mostly to a single-race face category stop discriminating other-race faces by the end of their first year. To study the ORE, most of the past studies have used either static images of silent faces or dynamic but silent faces. So no audio stimulation. However, as you can imagine, that may create an inaccurate developmental picture as that doesn’t capture typical infants’ daily social interactions, which are usually filled with not only dynamic faces, but also those with vocalizations Because these dynamic vocalizing faces are, generally speaking, moving and making sounds, they elicit more infant attention and better discrimination and therefore are even more perceptually salient. Dynamic, vocalizing faces are multi-sensory in that they combine various attributes (e.g., pitch, facial expressions, tempo, affect, and intensity) which instills them with multisensory redundancy Multisensory redundancy is known to increase perceptual salience, so given that, perhaps infants who have already undergone perceptual narrowing can still discriminate other-race faces if they are dynamic and vocalizing. Studies suggest that infants possess some rudimentary multisensory processing abilities at birth, which get better as they get older and experience the world. As these processing abilities improve, so does the ability to selectively attend to sources of multisensory redundancy, like the mouth, it’s where one can glean a lot of sensory information.

Study Rationale & Aims ORE: the direct result of disproportionate early experience with own race faces attentional bias Mechanisms underlying ORE remain plastic during infancy Static, silent faces vs. dynamic vocalizing faces Aim #1: Determine whether infants can discriminate own- and other-race faces at each age What does successful discrimination require? Aim #2: Record selective attention of infants The decline in the ability to discriminate other-race faces may be the direct result of disproportionate early experiences with own-race faces versus other-race faces, which has been suggested to produce an attentional bias for the processing of own-race faces. This is further shown by past studies that have directly manipulated early experiences and demonstrated that perceptual narrowing can be slowed or reversed. Overall, previous studies suggest that the mechanisms underlying the ORE remain relatively plastic during its initial emergence in infancy. Something notable. Most of the past studies surrounding the development of the ORE have only used static, silent images or dynamic, silent images; hence, those results may just reflect the responsiveness to these specific faces rather than an overall decline in the ability to discriminate other-race faces. So in other words, maybe older infants who exhibit the ORE in response to static faces are actually able to discriminate other-race faces that are dynamic and vocalizing. The primary aim of this study was to determine whether infants can discriminate own- and other-race faces at each age and, if so, whether successful discrimination required the presence of concurrent audible speech articulations or whether any concurrent sounds were sufficient for discrimination. A secondary aim of this study was to obtain concurrent measures of selective attention to different parts of the face to determine where infants focused their selective attention during the learning phase.

Experiment #1 Pre-test Habituation Test procedure Post-test
Hypotheses 3 experiments were conducted. In each, 2 age groups were tested: 4-6 month olds and month olds. All were from Caucasian backgrounds. Three videos: the first showed a short segment of Winnie the Pooh, the second showed a continuously expanding green disk, and the third was of a face saying the speech syllable /a/. The experimenters used different female actors to create four pairs of videos. Two of these video pairs consisted of Caucasian faces while the other two pairs used Asian faces. The faces were of similar attractiveness and distinctiveness. Each video used the same woman’s voice to ensure that idiosyncrasies could not be linked to a particular face. A custom-written program was used to implement the habituation/test procedure and eye tracking was used to measure selective attention. The purpose of the pre-test trial (Winnie the Pooh video) was to assess the infant’s initial level of attention. During the habituation phase, infants could see and hear the actor repeatedly uttering the syllable /a/. The habituation/test procedure used in this experiment was based on a 1 s look-away criterion. This meant that the stimulus was presented for as long as infants were looking at the stimulus-presentation monitor and until they looked away from it for more than 1 s or until 60 s elapsed. The test phase consisted of alternating familiar and novel test trials, with the familiar test trial representing the same face that was presented during the habituation phase, and the novel test trial presenting a new face that belonged to the same race category as the face presented during habituation. The experiment ended with a post-test trial (Winnie the Pooh again) to measure terminal level of attention. Hypotheses: both age groups would exhibit response recovery when presented with novel faces and of either race

Results of Experiment #1
To test their first hypothesis that both age groups would exhibit response recovery when presented with novel faces, they combined the duration of looking scores for the two Familiar and the two Novel test trials to yield a single mean duration of looking score for each respective type of test trial. Figure 3 shows the mean duration of looking at the Familiar and Novel faces as a function of age, separately for own-race and other-race faces. To test the hypothesis that infants would exhibit response recovery when presented with novel faces of either race, they used planned, paired-samples, t tests (one-tailed) to compare responsiveness across the Familiar and Novel test trials at each age, respectively. These tests indicated that both groups (the 4–6-month-old infants and the month old infants) exhibited significant response recovery when presented with novel Caucasian faces as well as novel Asian faces. In sum, the results from this experiment indicate that infants of both ages successfully discriminated own- and other-race dynamic faces which were accompanied by a redundant audible speech utterance. Critically, the findings demonstrate that 10–12-month-old infants can discriminate other-race faces when they can be seen and heard uttering a speech sound, which contrasts with results from previous studies. The researchers interpreted that the infants’ successful facial discrimination was based on the dynamic multisensory characteristics of the faces. Specifically, the multisensory redundancy probably increased the perceptual salience of the face which in turn probably increased the infants’ attentional focus, to the point that it made it possible for them to engage in deeper processing of facial feature information.

Experiment #2 Repeated Experiment #1, this time in silence
The next experiment tested this possibility. If the successful face discrimination obtained in Experiment 1 depends on the accompanying and redundant speech utterances, then infants should not be able to discriminate silent faces even if they can see articulating speech. If, however, dynamic facial cues are sufficient for discrimination, then the infants should be able to discriminate the faces. So the researchers repeated Experiment 1, except that this time they presented the faces in silence. They hypothesized that the younger infants would be able to discriminate both types of faces because of their broad perceptual tuning for all face categories, but that the older infants would not be able to discriminate other-race faces because of the effects of perceptual narrowing. Once again, 2 age groups were tested: 4-6 month olds and month olds. Also once again, data informing the mean duration of looking scores for the two familiar and two novel test trials were collapsed to get a single mean for each respective type of test trial. Results indicated that the 4–6-month-old infants did not exhibit response recovery to either the novel Caucasian face or to the novel Asian face. In contrast, results indicated that the 10–12-month-old infants exhibited response recovery to the novel Caucasian face, but not to the novel Asian face. Findings indicated that dynamic visual cues alone are not enough to elicit discrimination in the younger infants nor are they sufficient to elicit discrimination of other-race faces in the older infants. Only the own-race faces were able to be discriminated for the 10–12-month-old infants.

Experiment #3 Repeated Experiment #1, this time with a temporally synchronized nonspeech sound “boing” The previous experiments showed that both age groups of infants can discriminate dynamic other-race faces as long as they are accompanied by a redundant speech utterance. If that’s the case, what specific form must the redundancy take for the older infants to overcome the ORE? Must the redundancy be represented by equivalent speech information across the modalities or can it be a more general form of redundancy that is specified by facial speech cues together with temporally synchronized sounds? To answer this question, we repeated Experiment 1 except that this time we presented the faces together with a temporally synchronized nonspeech sound. The same videos were used, this time though the faces saying /a/ were accompanied by a “boing” sound. These tests indicated that the 4–6-month-old infants discriminated the Caucasian faces and the Asian faces. In contrast, the paired-samples t tests indicated that the 10–12-month-old infants discriminated the Caucasian faces, but that they did not discriminate the Asian faces. In other words, the data from the older infants suggest that they require that other-race faces be accompanied by redundant speech attributes, rather than just sounds, to be able to successfully discriminate other-race faces, while the younger infants do not.

Selective Attention Eye tracking AOIs
To collect the point-of-gaze data with the eye tracker, the researchers defined four areas-of-interest (AOI): the whole face, eyes, nose, and mouth. To determine where infants focused their attention during learning, they examined point-of-gaze during the first three habituation trials They calculated each infant’s proportion-of-total-looking time (PTLT) scores for the eyes, nose, and mouth AOI by dividing the amount of total looking to each of these AOIs by the total amount of looking to the whole face AOI. Then they entered the PTLT scores into a mixed, repeated-measures ANOVA, with AOI (eyes, nose, and mouth) as the within-subjects factor and Age (4–6 and 10–12 months of age), FaceRace (Caucasian or Asian), and Experiment (1, 2, or 3) as between subjects factors. These results indicate that, regardless of the actor’s race and whether it was accompanied by a speech syllable or a non-speech sound, the 4–6-month-old infants distributed their attention equally to the three regions of the face during the habituation phase but that the 10–12-month-old infants allocated most of their attention to the mouth.

Findings & Implications
Experiment #1 Experiment #2 Experiment #3 Selective attention to the mouth Plasticity of the perceptual system Multisensory unity expectation McGurk effect ( Findings from the first experiment indicated that when infants saw and heard a face uttering a speech syllable, both the 4–6-month-olds and 10–12-month-olds were able to discriminate own-race and other-race faces. In the second experiment, when the infants saw a face silently uttering a speech syllable, the 4–6-month-olds did not discriminate either type of face while the 10–12-month-olds only discriminated own-race faces. Finally in the third experiment, when the infants saw a face uttering a speech syllable while they heard a non-speech sound, the 4–6-month-olds discriminated both types of faces whereas the 10–12-month-olds once again only discriminated own-race faces. Selective attention to the mouth by month olds allows them to discover various properties of complex audiovisual speech. Overall, the fact that the older infants discriminated other-race faces when they were accompanied by a speech sound confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that the ORE (as it’s been studied previously) reflects responsiveness to static/silent and dynamic/silent stimuli rather than the end of a sensitive developmental period for face processing. They also found, however, that the 4–6-month-olds in the study did not discriminate silent but dynamic own- and other-race faces, indicating that when these infants see a face articulating a speech syllable, they can only discriminate it when the face is accompanied by an auditory stimulus. Thus, these findings suggest that a concurrent auditory stimulus enhances the processing of facial feature information in the younger infants; basically, that, at this age, infants expect to hear a sound when they see a face with a moving mouth. Unlike other studies that were often used as comparisons, in this study, the infants’ task was to detect the facial features that differentiated dynamic faces and to discriminate them in the context of accompanying but unchanging auditory information. Meaning that the task was to focus on facial features and not on the association between the facial features and accompanying information. The multisensory unity expectation implications of the current results are especially interesting in light of evidence from adults that such expectations play an important role in multisensory responsiveness. In conclusion, the fact that 10–12-month-old infants can discriminate dynamic other–race faces producing a speech syllable indicates that the ORE is not fully established by the end of the first year of life. It is too early to tell whether this process of perceptual narrowing reflects a single sensitive period or multiple ones that depend on domain and/or sensory modality

Discussion What specific early experiences could enhance an infant’s perceptual salience? What implications could future other-race face studies have? What implications do these study results have on cross-cultural adoptions? Could perceptual sensitivity translate to cultural sensitivity? Do we feel like this study accurately measured discrimination? Is there another/better way to do so? What role might early trauma perpetrated by an other-race person play? Would it reduce or increase infants’ sensitivity to other-race faces? Should this study be conducted with older infants (12-24 months)? This, in turn, means that we must take infants’ typical experiences into account if we want to achieve a clear understanding of the interaction between early experience, perceptual narrowing, and the developmental emergence of perceptual expertise. I know the intention of the study was making the faces match, but are these races dissimilar enough to really capture this effect?

Follow up study assessing the long-term effects (at ages 4-6) of conceptual learning between 6 and 9 months of age Early training with names (Boris the monkey) makes you a faster human face processor Vanesa & Daniel

Perceptual narrowing and training
As a result, environmentally relevant categories are privileged in both perception and recognition Perceptual narrowing and training By 9 mos, infants better distinguish faces in familiar groups With 6 hours of individual level (“Boris”) training (6 to 9 mos) 9-month-olds differentiate unfamiliar monkey faces And … 9-month-olds with individual-level, but not category-level experience, show better stroller discrimination Learning to individuate objects or faces during infancy leads to neural specialization The N170 ERP is part of an index of expert holistic processing in adults Modulated by inversion of faces Perceptual narrowing/tuning Labeling Early individual-level learning results in differential processing of learned categories Perceptual narrowing- Developmental process during which the brain uses environmental experiences to shape perceptual abilities. This process improves the perception of things that people experience often and causes them to experience a decline in the ability to perceive some things to which they are not often exposed given approximately 6 hours of training from 6 to 9 months of age, 9-month-olds continued to differentiate unfamiliar monkey faces, while 9-month-olds with no experience exhibited a decline in discrimination ability (Pascalis et al., 2005). Furthermore, when labeling was experimentally manipulated (individual names: ‘Boris’, ‘Fiona’; a category label: ‘Monkey’, ‘Monkey’; or no label at all), only 9-month-olds trained with individual names (from 6 to 9 months of age) continued to differentiate monkey faces (Scott & Monesson, 2009). that can be measured in event-related potential (ERP) waveforms Vanesa & Daniel

6 months to 6 years Sample 78 children (4-6 years-old) Randomly assigned to label versus category learning groups in previous study (Scott & Monesson, 2009, 2010; Scott, 2011) Parents read/looked at a book with either 6 monkey faces or strollers for 3 months (6 hours total) Labeled at the individual or category level Children completed a behavioral discrimination and ERP inversion task that included untrained exemplars from within the trained category monkey faces or strollers untrained categories (strollers for children trained with monkey faces and monkey faces for children trained with strollers) human faces “Boris” vs. “monkey” Vanesa

Method & Analyses Behavioral procedure Electrophysiological procedure
Match-to-sample paradigm Response time and accuracy Independent t-tests Electrophysiological procedure Upright and inverted images of monkey faces, strollers, and human faces 3x3x3 mixed model MANOVA Factors: training group, condition, and region After three correct practice trials with colored shapes (M = 3.2 trials), children completed three random match-to-sample trials from each of the following four conditions: (1) novel exemplars from within trained category, (2) familiar trained exemplars from within the trained category, (3) exemplars from the untrained category (e.g. strollers for children trained with monkey faces), and (4) human faces. For each trial, children viewed one image for 5 seconds. After a 5- second delay, the familiar image and a novel image from within the same category were presented side-by-side. Children indicated via button press which of the two images was familiar. The number of trials per condition was consistent with what was used for the visual-paired comparison task when the participants were infants (Scott, 2011; Scott & Monesson, 2009). Vanesa

Individual-trained are faster overall and faster to human faces
Vanesa

Results Vanesa

Individual-level training!
Children with early individual-level training exhibited faster response times and adult-like neural responses to human faces Early individual-level learning results in long-lasting process-specific benefits What is it about individual labels?! Brief, early learning experiences prior to formal education can be important for later developmental abilities Vanesa

Early visual deprivation  later development
Developmental changes in capabilities Low spatial frequency sensitivity—eventual recovery But some capabilities are permanently damaged Mid and high spatial frequency Holistic face processing Face recognition based on spacing of features Differences between spared vs. permanently damaged domains in terms of their typical developmental course?

Holistic Face Processing: Misaligned and composite stimuli
Is top half the same? Figure 2 Test stimuli for the composite face effect. On ‘same’ trials, the top halves of the two sequential faces are the same but they are combined with different bottom halves. The subjects’ task is to indicate that the tops are the same. When the halves are aligned in upright faces, visually normal adults find the task difficult on same trials because holistic processing creates the impression of two different faces. When the halves are misaligned to break holistic processing, the task is much easier. Reprinted from Le Grand, Mondloch, Maurer & Brent (2004, Figure 1, left panel). LeGrand, Mondloch, Maurer, & Brent, 2004 Same?

Holistic Face Processing
Figure 3 Results for the composite face task for patients treated for bilateral congenital cataract and age-matched controls. On the critical probe trials (same/aligned), the control group is less accurate and has longer reaction times compared to both the patient group and their own performance when the holistic interference from the irrelevant bottom half is reduced by misalignment (same/misaligned). Patients’ superior performance on same/aligned trials and their identical performance on same trials for the aligned and misaligned blocks both provide evidence that the patients do not process faces holistically. Reprinted from Le Grand, Mondloch, Maurer & Brent (2004, Figure 2). LeGrand, Mondloch, Maurer, & Brent, 2004

This pattern Was presented to 93 premature infants for 60 sec.
Fixation duration in infancy and score on the intelligence test, r(91) = -.36, p < Infants who gazed at the pattern for more time had lower intelligence at 18 years if age. Less gaze timehigher intelligence Why? Sigman, M., Cohen, S. E., & Beckwith, L. (1997). Why does infant attention predict adolescent intelligence? Infant Behavior & Development, 20(2),

Individual Differences in Infant Fixation Duration Relate to Attention and Behavioral Control in Childhood (Papageorgiou et al., 2014)

Infant Fixation Duration
Individual Differences in Infant Fixation Duration (Papageorgiou et al., 2014) Results Parent-reported Childhood Temperament Preschool: Early Childhood Behavior Qnr (ECBQ) School-age: Children’s Behavior Qnr (CBQ) Effortful Control Attentional focusing Inhibitory control Low-intensity pleasure Perceptual sensitivity Surgency Activity level High-intensity pleasure Impulsivity Shyness (reverse-scored Infant Fixation Duration Covariates: Child’s age, Qnr version, Child’s sex, Total # of eye tracking trials completed and fixations detected

Parent-reported Childhood Behavior Hyperactivity-Inattention Scale
Individual Differences in Infant Fixation Duration (Papageorgiou et al., 2014) Results Parent-reported Childhood Behavior Hyperactivity-Inattention Scale Preschool: Revised Ruttner Parent Scale (RRPSPC) -- Rate frequency of 4 different behaviors School-age: Children’s Behavior Qnr (CBQ) -- Rate frequency of 5 different behaviors Infant Fixation Duration Covariates: Child’s age, Qnr version, Child’s sex, Total # of eye tracking trials completed and fixations detected

Messinger

Example stimuli, visual scanpaths, regions-of-interest, and
longitudinal eye-tracking data from 2 until 24 months of age. Attention to eyes is present but in decline in 2–6-month-old infants later diagnosed with autism. W Jones & A Klin Nature 000, 1-5 (2013) doi: /nature12715

Methods Tracked eye gaze during naturalistic “caregiver interaction” videos Measured percentage of visual fixation to eyes, mouth, body and objects in a naturalistic video Tracked over time

TD vs ASD TD Look more at eyes than anywhere else from 2 to 6 months
Mouth fixation increases during 1st year, peaks at 18 months Body and object fixation drops through first year ASD Eye fixation declines from 2-24 months Mouth fixation increases until 18m Object and body fixation declines slowly in 1st year Object fixation rises in 2nd year Two individual kids

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