Longitudinal Study of Child Face Recognition

We present a longitudinal study of face recognition performance on Children Longitudinal Face (CLF) dataset containing 3,682 face images of 919 subjects, in the age group [2, 18] years. Each subject has at least four face images acquired over a time span of up to six years. Face comparison scores are obtained from (i) a state-of-the-art COTS matcher (COTS-A), (ii) an open-source matcher (FaceNet), and (iii) a simple sum fusion of scores obtained from COTS-A and FaceNet matchers. To improve the performance of the open-source FaceNet matcher for child face recognition, we were able to fine-tune it on an independent training set of 3,294 face images of 1,119 children in the age group [3, 18] years. Multilevel statistical models are fit to genuine comparison scores from the CLF dataset to determine the decrease in face recognition accuracy over time. Additionally, we analyze both the verification and open-set identification accuracies in order to evaluate state-of-the-art face recognition technology for tracing and identifying children lost at a young age as victims of child trafficking or abduction

The role of infants’ mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity, and emotion recognition in childhood callous unemotional behaviours

While some children with callous unemotional (CU) behaviours show difficulty recognizing emotional expressions, the underlying developmental pathways are not well understood. Reduced infant attention to the caregiver's face and a lack of sensitive parenting have previously been associated with emerging CU features. The current study examined whether facial emotion recognition mediates the association between infants' mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity, and later CU behaviours. Participants were 206 full-term infants and their families from a prospective longitudinal study, the Durham Child Health and Development Study (DCHDS). Measures of infants' mother-directed gaze, and maternal sensitivity were collected at 6 months, facial emotion recognition performance at 6 years, and CU behaviours at 7 years. A path analysis showed a significant effect of emotion recognition predicting CU behaviours (β = -0.275, S.E. = 0.084, p = 0.001). While the main effects of infants' mother-directed gaze and maternal sensitivity were not significant, their interaction significantly predicted CU behaviours (β = 0.194, S.E. = 0.081, p = 0.016) with region of significance analysis showing a significant negative relationship between infant gaze and later CU behaviours only for those with low maternal sensitivity. There were no indirect effects of infants' mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity or the mother-directed gaze by maternal sensitivity interaction via emotion recognition. Emotion recognition appears to act as an independent predictor of CU behaviours, rather than mediating the relationship between infants' mother-directed gaze and maternal sensitivity with later CU behaviours. This supports the idea of multiple risk factors for CU behaviours

Visual Perceptual Difficulties and Under-Achievement at School in a Large Community-Based Sample of Children

Difficulties with visual perception (VP) are often described in children with neurological or developmental problems. However, there are few data regarding the range of visual perceptual abilities in populations of normal children, or on the impact of these abilities on children's day-to-day functioning. Methods Data were obtained for 4512 participants in an ongoing birth cohort study (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children; ALSPAC). The children's mothers responded to questions designed to elicit indications of visual perceptual difficulties or immaturity, when their children were aged 13 years. We examined associations with standardised school test results in reading and in mathematics at age 1314 years (SATS-KS3), accounting for potential confounders including IQ. Results Three underlying factors explained half the variance in the VP question responses. These correlated best with questions on interpreting cluttered scenes; guidance of movement and face recognition. The adjusted parameter estimates (95% CI) for the cluttered-scenes factor (0.05; 0.02 to 0.08; p<0.001) suggested positive associations with the reading test results whilst that for the guidance-of-movement factor (0.03; 0.00 to 0.06; p = 0.026) suggested positive association with the mathematics results. The raw scores were associated with both test results. Discussion VP abilities were widely distributed in this sample of 13-year old children. Lower levels of VP function were associated with under-achievement in reading and in mathematics. Simple interventions can help children with VP difficulties, so research is needed into practicable, cost-effective strategies for identification and assessment, so that support can be targeted appropriately

Development of audiovisual comprehension skills in prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants

Objective: The present study investigated the development of audiovisual comprehension skills in prelingually deaf children who received cochlear implants. Design: We analyzed results obtained with the Common Phrases (Robbins et al., 1995) test of sentence comprehension from 80 prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants who were enrolled in a longitudinal study, from pre-implantation to 5 years after implantation. Results: The results revealed that prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants performed better under audiovisual (AV) presentation compared with auditory-alone (A-alone) or visual-alone (V-alone) conditions. AV sentence comprehension skills were found to be strongly correlated with several clinical outcome measures of speech perception, speech intelligibility, and language. Finally, pre-implantation V-alone performance on the Common Phrases test was strongly correlated with 3-year postimplantation performance on clinical outcome measures of speech perception, speech intelligibility, and language skills. Conclusions: The results suggest that lipreading skills and AV speech perception reflect a common source of variance associated with the development of phonological processing skills that is shared among a wide range of speech and language outcome measures

Does comorbid anxiety counteract emotion recognition deficits in conduct disorder?

Background: Previous research has reported altered emotion recognition in both conduct disorder (CD) and anxiety disorders (ADs) - but these effects appear to be of different kinds. Adolescents with CD often show a generalised pattern of deficits, while those with ADs show hypersensitivity to specific negative emotions. Although these conditions often cooccur, little is known regarding emotion recognition performance in comorbid CD+ADs. Here, we test the hypothesis that in the comorbid case, anxiety-related emotion hypersensitivity counteracts the emotion recognition deficits typically observed in CD. Method: We compared facial emotion recognition across four groups of adolescents aged 12-18 years: those with CD alone (n = 28), ADs alone (n = 23), cooccurring CD+ADs (n = 20) and typically developing controls (n = 28). The emotion recognition task we used systematically manipulated the emotional intensity of facial expressions as well as fixation location (eye, nose or mouth region). Results: Conduct disorder was associated with a generalised impairment in emotion recognition; however, this may have been modulated by group differences in IQ. AD was associated with increased sensitivity to low-intensity happiness, disgust and sadness. In general, the comorbid CD+ADs group performed similarly to typically developing controls. Conclusions: Although CD alone was associated with emotion recognition impairments, ADs and comorbid CD+ADs were associated with normal or enhanced emotion recognition performance. The presence of comorbid ADs appeared to counteract the effects of CD, suggesting a potentially protective role, although future research should examine the contribution of IQ and gender to these effects

Environmental and genetic influences on neurocognitive development: the importance of multiple methodologies and time-dependent intervention

Genetic mutations and environmental factors dynamically influence gene expression and developmental trajectories at the neural, cognitive, and behavioral levels. The examples in this article cover different periods of neurocognitive development—early childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—and focus on studies in which researchers have used a variety of methodologies to illustrate the early effects of socioeconomic status and stress on brain function, as well as how allelic differences explain why some individuals respond to intervention and others do not. These studies highlight how similar behaviors can be driven by different underlying neural processes and show how a neurocomputational model of early development can account for neurodevelopmental syndromes, such as autism spectrum disorders, with novel implications for intervention. Finally, these studies illustrate the importance of the timing of environmental and genetic factors on development, consistent with our view that phenotypes are emergent, not predetermined

A Review Study of Psychometric Functioning of a Picture Scale to Assess Joy in Childhood

The early emergence of emotional understanding by means of facial expressions allows the assessmentof basic emotions from young ages through pictures or photographs of human faces. Thisevaluation strategy allows children, with limited language to reveal feelings that neither investigatorsnor clinicians would be able to obtain verbally. The present work presents a non-verbal activityaimed at testing children?s joy. It is based on a visual analogue scale integrated by sevenpictures of infant facial expressions. This scale has the advantage of presenting an animated design,more friendly and appealing than simplified face scales. Its psychometric functioning, revisedfrom different studies, demonstrates that it is a reliable and valid alternative to analyze the experienceof joy in small children.Fil: Oros, Laura Beatriz. Universidad de la Cuenca del Plata. Secretaria de Politicas del Conocimiento. Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas (sede Posadas); Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Richaud, Maria Cristina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Psicología Matemática y Experimental Dr. Horacio J. A. Rimoldi; Argentin

A longitudinal study of audiovisual speech perception by hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants

The present study investigated the development of audiovisual speech perception skills in children who are prelingually deaf and received cochlear implants. We analyzed results from the Pediatric Speech Intelligibility (Jerger, Lewis, Hawkins, & Jerger, 1980) test of audiovisual spoken word and sentence recognition skills obtained from a large group of young children with cochlear implants enrolled in a longitudinal study, from pre-implantation to 3 years post-implantation. The results revealed better performance under the audiovisual presentation condition compared with auditory-alone and visual-alone conditions. Performance in all three conditions improved over time following implantation. The results also revealed differential effects of early sensory and linguistic experience. Children from oral communication (OC) education backgrounds performed better overall than children from total communication (TC backgrounds. Finally, children in the early-implanted group performed better than children in the late-implanted group in the auditory-alone presentation condition after 2 years of cochlear implant use, whereas children in the late-implanted group performed better than children in the early-implanted group in the visual-alone condition. The results of the present study suggest that measures of audiovisual speech perception may provide new methods to assess hearing, speech, and language development in young children with cochlear implants

Face engagement during infancy predicts later face recognition ability in younger siblings of children with autism

Face recognition difficulties are frequently documented in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). It has been hypothesized that these difficulties result from a reduced interest in faces early in life, leading to decreased cortical specialization and atypical development of the neural circuitry for face processing. However, a recent study by our lab demonstrated that infants at increased familial risk for ASD, irrespective of their diagnostic status at 3 years, exhibit a clear orienting response to faces. The present study was conducted as a follow-up on the same cohort to investigate how measures of early engagement with faces relate to face-processing abilities later in life. We also investigated whether face recognition difficulties are specifically related to an ASD diagnosis, or whether they are present at a higher rate in all those at familial risk. At 3 years we found a reduced ability to recognize unfamiliar faces in the high-risk group that was not specific to those children who received an ASD diagnosis, consistent with face recognition difficulties being an endophenotype of the disorder. Furthermore, we found that longer looking at faces at 7 months was associated with poorer performance on the face recognition task at 3 years in the high- risk group. These findings suggest that longer looking at faces in infants at risk for ASD might reflect early face-processing difficulties and predicts difficulties with recognizing faces later in life