Head motion during fMRI tasks is reduced in children and adults if participants take breaks

Head motion remains a challenging confound in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of both children and adults. Most pediatric neuroimaging labs have developed experience-based, child-friendly standards concerning e.g. the maximum length of a session or the time between mock scanner training and actual scanning. However, it is unclear which factors of child-friendly neuroimaging approaches are effective in reducing head motion. Here, we investigate three main factors including (i) time lag of mock scanner training to the actual scan, (ii) prior scan time, and (iii) task engagement in a dataset of 77 children (aged 6-13) and 64 adults (aged 18-35) using a multilevel modeling approach. In children, distributing fMRI data acquisition across multiple same-day sessions reduces head motion. In adults, motion is reduced after inside-scanner breaks. Despite these positive effects of splitting up data acquisition, motion increases over the course of a study as well as over the course of a run in both children and adults. Our results suggest that splitting up fMRI data acquisition is an effective tool to reduce head motion in general. At the same time, different ways of splitting up data acquisition benefit children and adults

U Can Touch This:How Tablets Can Be Used to Study Cognitive Development

New technological devices, particularly those with touch screens, have become virtually omnipresent over the last decade. Practically from birth, children are now surrounded by smart phones and tablets. Despite being our constant companions, little is known about whether these tools can be used not only for entertainment, but also to collect reliable scientific data. Tablets may prove particularly useful for collecting behavioral data from those children (1–10 years), who are, for the most part, too old for studies based on looking times and too young for classical psychophysical testing. Here, we analyzed data from six studies that utilized touch screen tablets to deliver experimental paradigms in developmental psychology. In studies 1 and 2, we employed a simple sorting and recall task with children from the ages of 2–8. Study 3 (ages 9 and 10) extended these tasks by increasing the difficulty of the stimuli and adding a staircase-based perception task. A visual search paradigm was used in study 4 (ages 2–5), while 1- to 3-year-olds were presented with an extinction learning task in study 5. In study 6, we used a simple visuo-spatial paradigm to obtain more details about the distribution of reaction times on touch screens over all ages. We collected data from adult participants in each study as well, for comparison purposes. We analyzed these data sets in regard to four metrics: self-reported tablet usage, completeness of data, accuracy of responses and response times. In sum, we found that children from the age of two onwards are very capable of interacting with tablets, are able to understand the respective tasks and are able to use tablets to register their answers accordingly. Results from all studies reiterated the advantages of data collection through tablets: ease of use, high portability, low-cost, and high levels of engagement for children. We illustrate the great potential of conducting psychological studies in young children using tablets, and also discuss both methodological challenges and their potential solutions

Face recognition is similarly affected by viewpoint in school-aged children and adults

There is an ongoing debate on the question when face processing abilities mature. One aspect that has been part of this debate is the ability to recognize faces in and across different viewpoints. Here, we tested 128 participants consisting of school-age children (ages, 5 –10 years) and adults (ages, 19–37 years) in two experiments to investigate the effects of different viewpoints (including front, three-quarter, profile view) on face recognition during development. Furthermore, we compared recognition performance for faces to that of another object category (cars). In the first experiment ($\it n$ = 88) we tested if the pattern of performance for faces presented in different viewpoints is similar in school-aged children and adults. Participants completed a two-alternative- forced-choice (2AFC) memory task comprising images of both faces and cars in front, three-quarter and profile view, which were presented in the same viewpoint during learning and testing. In the second experiment ($\it n$ = 40) we tested if face recognition is similarly affected by viewpoint changes in children and adults. In this experiment the 2AFC memory task included a change of viewpoint between learning and testing. While in both experiments we found higher recognition performance for faces with increasing age, the overall pattern of both viewpoint and viewpoint-change-effects and also the difference between view-change- and no-change-conditions was similar across age groups. In contrast to faces, no viewpoint effects were observed in cars (experiment 1), viewpoint change effects, however, were similar for cars and faces (experiment 2). In sum, our results suggest early maturity of the ability to recognize faces in and across different viewpoints

Age-related increase of image-invariance in the fusiform face area

Face recognition undergoes prolonged development from childhood to adulthood, thereby raising the question which neural underpinnings are driving this development. Here, we address the development of the neural foundation of the ability to recognize a face across naturally varying images. Fourteen children (ages, 7–10) and 14 adults (ages, 20–23) watched images of either the same or different faces in a functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation paradigm. The same face was either presented in exact image repetitions or in varying images. Additionally, a subset of participants completed a behavioral task, in which they decided if the face in consecutively presented images belonged to the same person. Results revealed age-related increases in neural sensitivity to face identity in the fusiform face area. Importantly, ventral temporal face-selective regions exhibited more image-invariance – as indicated by stronger adaptation for different images of the same person – in adults compared to children. Crucially, the amount of adaptation to face identity across varying images was correlated with the ability to recognize individual faces in different images. These results suggest that the increase of image-invariance in face-selective regions might be related to the development of face recognition skills

Development of Face Detection in Preschool Children

We investigated the ability to detect a face among other visual objects in a complex visual array in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children, as well as in adults. To this end, we used a visual search paradigm implemented on a touch-tablet device. Subjects (N = 100) saw up to eighty 3 x 3 visual search arrays and had to find and tap upon a target – a face or a car – among eight objects that served as distractors. Our data revealed a relative face detection advantage, which did not differ in its extent between children and adults. This suggests, that beginning in young childhood and ending in adulthood, face detection performance advances as a consequence of other cognitive functions like a general advance in visual search performance. Our study closes a gap of knowledge about the development of face detection – as a prototype for social stimuli and their capacity to attract attention – from early to middle childhood. The project's manuscript was - submitted to the International Journal of Behavioral Development on 28-Mar-2017 - submitted in revised form on 27-Jun-2017 - accepted on 03-Sep-2017 - published online first on 02-Nov-2017 - published in the print issue 42(2):439-444 on 01-Jul-2018 and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025417738058 Full text-requests may be directed to the first author. Internal project name: KENNID

U can touch this

New technological devices, particularly those with touch screens, have become virtually omnipresent over the last decade. Practically from birth, children are now surrounded by smart phones and tablets. Despite being our constant companions, little is known about whether these tools can be used not only for entertainment, but also to collect reliable scientific data. Tablets may prove particularly useful for collecting behavioral data from those children (1–10 years), who are, for the most part, too old for studies based on looking times and too young for classical psychophysical testing. Here, we analyzed data from six studies that utilized touch screen tablets to deliver experimental paradigms in developmental psychology. In studies 1 and 2, we employed a simple sorting and recall task with children from the ages of 2–8. Study 3 (ages 9 and 10) extended these tasks by increasing the difficulty of the stimuli and adding a staircase-based perception task. A visual search paradigm was used in study 4 (ages 2–5), while 1- to 3-year-olds were presented with an extinction learning task in study 5. In study 6, we used a simple visuo-spatial paradigm to obtain more details about the distribution of reaction times on touch screens over all ages. We collected data from adult participants in each study as well, for comparison purposes. We analyzed these data sets in regard to four metrics: self-reported tablet usage, completeness of data, accuracy of responses and response times. In sum, we found that children from the age of two onwards are very capable of interacting with tablets, are able to understand the respective tasks and are able to use tablets to register their answers accordingly. Results from all studies reiterated the advantages of data collection through tablets: ease of use, high portability, low-cost, and highlevels of engagement for children. We illustrate the great potential of conducting psychological studies in young children using tablets, and also discuss both methodologica lchallenges and their potential solutions