Disappearance of biased visual attention in young infants: remediation of tonic neck reflex or maturation of visual asymmetry?

Typically, infants younger than four months fail to attend to the left side of their spatial field, most likely because of an innate asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR). In a critical transition, by four months of age, infants begin to reach and develop depth perception; and, by five months of age, they tend to monitor the entire spatial field. However, this developmental transition can be delayed. Moreover, there always is a residual right sided spatial bias under cognitive load, a phenomenon that may occur as well among adult stroke patients. While causative factors of biased visual attention in both infants and brain-injured adults may vary, mechanisms of remediation may be similar. This literature review addresses whether the infant’s emergence of attention toward a full visual spatial field and the associated shift from monocular to binocular vision occurs because of (a) increased left side reaching loosens the rarely mentioned high muscle tension ATNR, or (b) maturational resolution of a visual asymmetry in motion perception. More research is needed to investigate the origins of the infants’ visual control system and factors involved in its development, especially because Alzheimer and dementia patients may also show primitive two-dimensional vision and deficits in perceiving objects-in-motion that seem to mirror earlier infant visual perception

Sex differences as a statistical variable

Gender differences are often seen as either biologically determined, or culturally acquired or conditioned. However, in an age where gender equality is the main target, neither peer reviewers nor students show much interest in gender differences. Moreover, not only do people try to integrate their 'ying' and 'yang' in their personalities, also trans-gender identities are publicly acknowledged, appreciated and respected. Thus, in this chapter, I will argue that we need to downgrade gender differences to a statistical variable that explains variance, sharpens statistical effects and reveals strategies. I am giving examples from my developmental psychology research where the split-sample analysis by gender showed amazing and often unexpected effects

Do drawing stages really exist? Children’s early mapping of perspective.

Drawing in perspective seems to involve a prolonged development and is not usually present in children’s drawings before about age 9—at least as found in previous research. In the study presented here, we built several three-dimensional spatial models to simulate the developmental stages of children’s spatial drawing systems, a simple platform without spatial constraints (Stage 1), and a platform with walls and a sky lid (earth model; Stage 2). Stage 3 (orthogonal) and Stage 4 (perspective) models had explicit boundaries around the spatial field to denote areas and a matched control that controlled for the surround area outside of the boundaries. Four age groups from 7 to 10 years of age drew five non-overlapping figures. All age groups adapted the average figure size to the level of the spatial system (stage) of the models but only when explicit spatial field boundaries were available: The more advanced the spatial system, the smaller the average figure size. It was striking to note that 7- to 8-year-old children drew in perspective as often as 9- to 10-year-olds when the spatial models had a trapezoid field with converging diagonal sides. This early perspective mapping may have occurred because of the agreement between retinal image (appearance) and design (identity) of the perspective models. Hence, it would be more useful to think of the perspective drawing development as a layered rather than as a stagewise process because typically developing young children can access low-level visual information and draw in perspective instead of deploying high-level conceptual knowledge about the geometrical principles of perspective construction

Fine motor skills and unsystematic spatial binding in the common region test (CRT): under-inclusivity in ASD and over-inclusivity in ADHD

Introduction: The Common Region Test (CRT) is useful for predicting children’s visual memory as individual object-place binding predicted better object memory while objects-region coding predicted better place memory. Aim: The aim was to test children with ASD and ADHD with regards to spatial binding in the CRT. Methods: (1) 19 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), (2) 20 children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), (3) gender-matched chronological age (CA) and (4) verbal mental age (MA) typically developing (TD) children as control groups were tested with the CRT and Bender Gestalt tests (N = 117). Results: Children with ASD and ADHD showed more unsystematic coding than TD children. This was due to lower fine motor skills, and in children with ADHD also because of reduced verbal naming. Almost all children with ASD presented the less mature under-inclusive Type I unsystematic coding which included object-place binding, while children with ADHD showed the overinclusive Type II unsystematic coding that was overriding the Gestalt-like properties of proximity and similarity. Conclusions: It was demonstrated that the CRT is a useful screening instrument for ASD and ADHD that shows that their spatial categorization varies in their unsystematic visuo-spatial classification due to fine motor skill deficiencies

Mozart sharpens and Mahler degrades the word memory trace

We investigated the impact of the Mozart effect on word memory when music was heard in the delay rather than using music to induce mood or as background music. A sample of N = 84 participants was randomly assigned to one of three groups listening to a one-minute sound clip of Mozart (Kleine Nachtmusik) or Mahler (Adagietto) during the delay, with a third control group waiting in silence for the word memory test. Words were positive, negative or neutral and matched for word length and frequency. The word memory task was repeated three times (enforced rehearsal). Word memory was best after Mozart and worst after Mahler, with memory performance in the control condition in between. The Mozart effect occurred for word memory across positive, negative and neutral words. The Mozart effect also occurred independently of ethnicity, or the level of happiness in the participants. We conclude that word memory traces sharpened after Mozart’s music because the sonogram and spectrograms showed that this music had self-contained and bounded phrases like in psycholinguistic structures of words and sentences. In contrast, word memory traces may have washed out and degraded during the delay because Mahler’s music was flowing like a foreign language speech stream where a native speaker would not be able to parse words

Keeping it in three dimensions: measuring the development of mental rotation in children with the rotated colour cube test (RCCT)

This study introduces the new Rotated Colour Cube Test (RCCT) as a measure of object identification and mental rotation using single 3D colour cube images in a matching-to-sample procedure. One hundred 7- to 11-year-old children were tested with aligned or rotated cube models, distracters and targets. While different orientations of distracters made the RCCT more difficult, different colours of distracters had the opposite effect and made the RCCT easier because colour facilitated clearer discrimination between target and distracters. Ten-year-olds performed significantly better than 7- to 8-year-olds. The RCCT significantly correlated with children’s performance on the Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices Test (RCPM) presumably due to the shared multiple-choice format, but the RCCT was easier, as it did not require sequencing. Children from families with a high socio-economic status performed best on both tests, with boys outperforming girls on the more difficult RCCT test sections

On being in the wrong place: the role of children’s conceptual understanding and ballgame experience when judging a football player’s offside position

We investigated the role of children’s conceptual understanding and ballgame experience when judging whether a football player is in an offside position, or not. In the offside position, a player takes advantage of being behind the defence line of the opposing team and just waits for the ball to arrive in order to score a goal. We explained the offside rule to 7- and 9-year-old children with a Subbuteo setup. They produced drawings of an offside position until it was correct (drawing to criterion). Thereafter, children judged whether a designated player was in an offside position in a computerized task. Like adults, also children found it easier to judge when a player was in a wrong rather than a right place. Only when including frequency of ballgame practice in the analysis it was revealed that boys were better independently of age as they judged the offside position more systematically

Faster and more accurate identification of male faces in female care home residents

We investigated whether healthy older adults who live in female-dominated old age care homes can identify the gender of male and female faces of people from different ethnicities in the same way as young adults. We hypothesized that this mainly female environment would lead by exposure to a female-gender bias. A sample of 40 participants aged 20-30 and 70-80 years identified the sex-of-face of 120 images of young and old adults, male and female faces, black and white faces, presented in a randomized sequence in a self-paced computer task. The young group was significantly more accurate and faster than the older group in sex-of-face identification. Men’s faces were identified as male faster than female faces as female by both young and old adults. Men’s faces were also more accurately identified by younger adults, but in care home residents, this was only the case for faces of young white and older black men. Faces of white older women were identified more accurately than those of black older women by the care home residents, especially in the women-only sample when men were excluded from statistical analysis. Because the known masculinity bias in women prevailed beyond the menopause, it is discussed whether rather than fertility hormones, women’s testosterone would be a likely candidate explaining the male advantage in sex-of-face identification throughout the life-span

Deterioration and Recovery in Verbal Recall: Repetition Helps against Pro-Active Interference

The current study tests whether memory deterioration due to pro-active interference (PI) in verbal recall could be halted via block repetition potentially leading to an increased memory consolidation. We also tested whether bilinguals would be better shielded against memory deterioration than monolinguals because they constantly need to enrich their vocabulary to compensate for their smaller lexica in either language. We tested monolinguals and balanced bilinguals with an N-Back and a free verbal recall task. Repetition showed a significant main effect with a large effect size. In Study 1 (N=45), monolingual men showed less improvement in the repetition blocks, while bilingual men showed a significant doubling of their word recall on each repetition. In Study 2 (N=78), monolingual women were less likely to use the repetition opportunity to improve the word score. Thus, in both studies, a significant monolingual disadvantage showed. When the two data sets were merged (N=123), statistical effects showed that the single word list repetition had successfully and significantly increased resistance to PI, but all individual differences due to bilingualism and sex had disappeared. This supported a previous meta-analysis showing that a monolingual disadvantage does not hold in large samples with N > 100 (Paap effect)

The space paradox in graphic representation

The negative space drawing technique refers to drawing the transparent space around and between objects, rather than drawing the objects themselves. This space-based instruction is thought to attenuate object-specific visual attention and to enhance perception of a spatial expanse. Developmentally, it is equivalent to the Piagetian dichotomic space concept of filled and empty space. A sample of 96 children from 5 to 12 years of age and 24 adults (N = 120) drew on a computer tablet a real-life model spacebox placed in front of the participant, with three cubes placed inside the model. Children followed two instructions, a Visual Realism (VR) Instruction “Please draw the three cubes and the box as you can see them” and a Negative Space (NSp) Instruction “Please draw the space around the objects,” with the sequence counterbalanced. NSp outline drawings began to show from 9 years onwards. A positive effect of the NSp technique showed for occlusion drawing because of the depiction of common contour of objects which could create a cohesive scene feature such as a horizon. The VR instruction focused attention toward the space box and enhanced 3D drawing of both the spacebox and the cubes. Thus, it could be concluded—rather paradoxically—that drawing in 3D is better based on object- than on space-based attention, while drawing occlusion is better based on space-based than object-based attention. We suggest, however, that a better definition of VR as attention to object appearances is that VR unifies objects and spatial context into one global plane