Learning curve for one-month-old infants.

<p>Infants learned to associate presentations of a tone with presentations of an airpuff. Error bars represent Mean ± SEM.</p

Mullen Scales of Early Learning subscales.

<p>Mean T-scores and Pearson's correlations (<i>r</i>) with one-month learning slope.</p

Predictive relation between early learning and social behavior during the first year of life.

<p>Individual differences in associative learning measured at 1 month of age were correlated significantly with measures (a) 5-month Social Responsivity, (b) 9-month Social Contingency Detection, (c) 9-month Imitation, and (d) 12-month Joint Attention.</p

Predictive relation between early learning and 9-month neural activation of facial discrimination.

<p>Infants who learned more rapidly at one month of age showed greater discrimination in medial fronto-central activation to the mother's versus a stranger's face.</p

Tasks and measures collected at different ages during infancy.

<p>Tasks and measures collected at different ages during infancy.</p

Mean scalp EEG power for theta, alpha, and beta bands for the intervention sample.

<p>Care as usual group (CAUG; <i>N</i> = 48); Foster care group (FCG; <i>N</i> = 53); M (S.D.).</p

Learning to Attend to Threat Accelerates and Enhances Memory Consolidation

<div><p>Practice on a procedural task involves within-session learning and between-session consolidation of learning, with the latter requiring a minimum of about four hours to evolve due to involvement of slower cellular processes. Learning to attend to threats is vital for survival and thus may involve faster memory consolidation than simple procedural learning. Here, we tested whether attention to threat modulates the time-course and magnitude of learning and memory consolidation effects associated with skill practice. All participants (N = 90) practiced in two sessions on a dot-probe task featuring pairs of neutral and angry faces followed by target probes which were to be discriminated as rapidly as possible. In the attend-threat training condition, targets always appeared at the angry face location, forming an association between threat and target location; target location was unrelated to valence in a control training condition. Within each attention training condition, duration of the between-session rest interval was varied to establish the time-course for emergence of consolidation effects. During the first practice session, we observed robust improvement in task performance (online, within-session gains), followed by saturation of learning. Both training conditions exhibited similar overall learning capacities, but performance in the attend-threat condition was characterized by a faster learning rate relative to control. Consistent with the memory consolidation hypothesis, between-session performance gains (delayed gains) were observed only following a rest interval. However, rest intervals of 1 and 24 hours yielded similar delayed gains, suggesting accelerated consolidation processes. Moreover, attend-threat training resulted in greater delayed gains compared to the control condition. Auxiliary analyses revealed that enhanced performance was retained over several months, and that training to attend to neutral faces resulted in effects similar to control. These results provide a novel demonstration of how attention to threat can accelerate and enhance memory consolidation effects associated with skill acquisition.</p></div

EEG scalp distribution of alpha power.

<p>(a) Scalp topography of alpha power demonstrating the timing effects for care-as-usual group (CAUG; <i>N</i> = 48), foster care group placed after 24-months (>24mo FCG; <i>N</i> = 28), foster care group placed before 24-months (<24mo FCG; <i>N</i> = 25), and the never-institutionalized (NIG; <i>N</i> = 42) group. (b) Mean alpha power across the sites for each group (* <i>p</i><.05; *** <i>p</i><.005).</p

Delayed (offline, between-session) gains.

<p>Group means for mean delayed performance gains in Session 2, normalized to performance in the final block of Session 1. Displayed are (A) progression of mean delayed gains in Session 2 for all Rest Duration (No-Rest, 1 Hour, 24 Hours) by Training Condition (ATT, Control) groups; (B) main effect of Rest Duration (No-Rest, 1 Hour, 24 Hours), and (C) main effect of Training Condition (ATT, Control) on delayed performance gains. ATT = attend-threat training. Error bars signify ±1 s.e.m. *<i>p</i><0.05, **<i>p</i><0.01.</p

Selective effect of training condition on delayed (offline, between-session) gains.

<p>Mean delayed performance gains in Session 2, normalized to performance in the final block of Session 1, by Trial Type (NN, Threat) and Training Condition (ATT, Control). NN = neutral-neutral; ATT = attend-threat training. Error bars signify ±1 s.e.m. *<i>p</i><0.05, **<i>p</i><0.01.</p