The Effect of Experience on Infants’ Visual Preferences

Research has shown that 3 to 4-month-olds with female primary caregivers show visual preferences for female relative to male faces (Quinn, Yahr, Kuhn, Slater, & Pascalis, 2002). Facial experience is likely an important influence on these preferences. From birth, infants’ experiences guide face processing skills. This processing ability influences the development of efficient face recognition later in life. The following study investigated (1) How visual pref­erences are influenced by real world experience with males and females, and (2) How experi­ence affects older infants’ visual preferences (i.e., 10-month-olds)

Differential Trajectories in the Development of Attractiveness Biases Toward Female and Male Targets

Across the first year, most infants have approximately 2.5 times more social interactions with women than men. There is evidence that because of this differential experience, infants develop a cognitive representation for human faces that is weighted toward female-like and attractive. Subsequently, attractiveness is more salient when infants process female relative to male faces. These early asymmetries in facial experience and the greater saliency of attractiveness for female and male targets persist into early childhood, which contributes to attractiveness influencing children’s categorization and judgments of females more strongly than for males. During middle childhood, children’s facial representations become more differentiated, which might explain increases in children’s attractiveness biases for male targets during this developmental period. By adolescence, mating interests seem to combine with these developing facial representations to influence attractiveness preferences. This chapter reviews asymmetries in the saliency of attractiveness for female and male targets from infancy to adolescence and focuses on how cognitive facial representations likely guide how attractiveness influences children’s processing of female and male targets

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.04.009

a b s t r a c t Parents of 2-, 5-, 8-, and 11-month-olds used two scales we developed to provide information about their infants' facial experience with familiar and unfamiliar individuals during one week. Results showed large discrepancies in the race, sex, and age of faces that infants experience during their first year with the majority of their facial experience being with their primary caregiver, females, and other individuals of the same-race and age as their primary caregiver. The infant's age and an unfamiliar individual's sex were predictive of their time spent interacting with one another. Moreover, an unfamiliar individual's sex was predictive of the attention infants allocated during social interactions. Differences in frequency and length of interactions with certain types of faces, as well as in infant attention toward certain individuals, all likely contribute to the development of expertise in processing commonly experienced face types and deficiencies in processing less commonly experienced face types

How Children and Adults Make Judgments About Who To Trust

Beauty is Good Stereotype : Higher attractive individuals are thought to be more intelligent, more successful, and happier overall. They also obtain more visual attention and are deemed more trustworthy. Making a choice based on a person\u27s appearance and attributes might lead to dangerous consequences and lead to being deceived. We investigated how the appearance of male and female experts influence whether children and adults trust statements made by the expert, establish what that expert knows and determine that expert\u27s attributes (warmth and competence). The results of this study will help us better determine what cues children and adults use when making trustworthiness decisions.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/durep_posters/1085/thumbnail.jp

How experience influences infants’ recognition of male and female faces

Young infants with female primary caregivers are able to differentiate familiar female faces from novel female faces but not male faces. Experience processing faces may be important for being able to discriminate among similar-looking faces. Subsequently, increasing infants’ experience with less familiar faces should improve their ability to differentiate those types of faces. This study examined if infants’ experience with faces affected their recognition of new faces. Prior to testing, 2-3 month old infants were assigned to one of three conditions: a male video, a female video, and no video condition. Infants were familiarized to both male and female faces during test. For the male faces, infants who saw the male video showed a familiarity preference, infants who saw the female video showed a novelty preference, and infants who saw no video showed no preference. For female faces, infants showed no preference when assigned to the male video and no video condition, while infants assigned to the female video (n = 5) showed a familiarity preference. A follow up infant-controlled habituation study tested if infants processed faces featurally or holistically. During testing, infants saw one familiar face, one composite face, and one novel face. None of the infants in the male video, female video, or no video conditions were able to distinguish the familiar face from the composite face. Only infants in the female video condition showed an increase in looking time from the familiar face to the novel face

Climate Change Impacts on Harmful Algal Blooms in U.S. Freshwaters: A Screening-Level Assessment

Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CyanoHABs) have serious adverse effects on human and environmental health. Herein, we developed a modeling framework that predicts the effect of climate change on cyanobacteria concentrations in large reservoirs in the contiguous U.S. The framework, which uses climate change projections from five global circulation models, two greenhouse gas emission scenarios, and two cyanobacterial growth scenarios, is unique in coupling climate projections with a hydrologic/water quality network model of the contiguous United States. Thus, it generates both regional and nationwide projections useful as a screening-level assessment of climate impacts on CyanoHAB prevalence as well as potential lost recreation days and associated economic value. Our projections indicate that CyanoHAB concentrations are likely to increase primarily due to water temperature increases tempered by increased nutrient levels resulting from changing demographics and climatic impacts on hydrology that drive nutrient transport. The combination of these factors results in the mean number of days of CyanoHAB occurrence ranging from about 7 days per year per waterbody under current conditions, to 16-23 days in 2050 and 18-39 days in 2090. From a regional perspective, we find the largest increases in CyanoHAB occurrence in the Northeast U.S., while the greatest impacts to recreation, in terms of costs, are in the Southeast

Nervous end-structures in the human neurohypophysis

Different types of nervous terminations were described in the human neurohypophysis. The fibers of the hypothalamo-hypophysial tract terminate in the ventricular wall, on blood vessels and around pituicytes; they form terminal networks and end-glomeruli. Verschiedene Typen von Nervenendungen werden in der Neurohypophyse beschrieben. Die Fasern des Tractus hypothalamo-hypophyseus endigen in der Wand des Ventrikels, an Blutgefäen und um Pituicyten. Sie bilden ein terminales Netzwerk und Endglomeruli. Les différents types des terminaisons nerveuses sont décrits dans la neurohypophyse humaine. Les fibres du tractus hypothalamo-hypophysaire se terminent dans la paroi ventriculaire, près de vaisseaux sanguins et dans les environs de pituicites. Elles forment des réseaux terminaux et des glomerules terminaux.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41655/1/702_2005_Article_BF01227771.pd

Vascular basement membranes as pathways for the passage of fluid into and out of the brain

In the absence of conventional lymphatics, drainage of interstitial fluid and solutes from the brain parenchyma to cervical lymph nodes is along basement membranes in the walls of cerebral capillaries and tunica media of arteries. Perivascular pathways are also involved in the entry of CSF into the brain by the convective influx/glymphatic system. The objective of this study is to differentiate the cerebral vascular basement membrane pathways by which fluid passes out of the brain from the pathway by which CSF enters the brain. Experiment 1: 0.5 µl of soluble biotinylated or fluorescent Aβ, or 1 µl 15 nm gold nanoparticles was injected into the mouse hippocampus and their distributions determined at 5 min by transmission electron microscopy. Aβ was distributed within the extracellular spaces of the hippocampus and within basement membranes of capillaries and tunica media of arteries. Nanoparticles did not enter capillary basement membranes from the extracellular spaces. Experiment 2: 2 µl of 15 nm nanoparticles were injected into mouse CSF. Within 5min, groups of nanoparticles were present in the pial-glial basement membrane on the outer aspect of cortical arteries between the investing layer of pia mater and the glia limitans. The results of this study and previous research suggest that cerebral vascular basement membranes form the pathways by which fluid passes into and out of the brain but that different basement membrane layers are involved. The significance of these findings for neuroimmunology, Alzheimer's disease, drug delivery to the brain and the concept of the Virchow-Robin space are discussed

CNS Penetration of Intrathecal-Lumbar Idursulfase in the Monkey, Dog and Mouse: Implications for Neurological Outcomes of Lysosomal Storage Disorder

A major challenge for the treatment of many central nervous system (CNS) disorders is the lack of convenient and effective methods for delivering biological agents to the brain. Mucopolysaccharidosis II (Hunter syndrome) is a rare inherited lysosomal storage disorder resulting from a deficiency of iduronate-2-sulfatase (I2S). I2S is a large, highly glycosylated enzyme. Intravenous administration is not likely to be an effective therapy for disease-related neurological outcomes that require enzyme access to the brain cells, in particular neurons and oligodendrocytes. We demonstrate that intracerebroventricular and lumbar intrathecal administration of recombinant I2S in dogs and nonhuman primates resulted in widespread enzyme distribution in the brain parenchyma, including remarkable deposition in the lysosomes of both neurons and oligodendrocytes. Lumbar intrathecal administration also resulted in enzyme delivery to the spinal cord, whereas little enzyme was detected there after intraventricular administration. Mucopolysaccharidosis II model is available in mice. Lumbar administration of recombinant I2S to enzyme deficient animals reduced the storage of glycosaminoglycans in both superficial and deep brain tissues, with concurrent morphological improvements. The observed patterns of enzyme transport from cerebrospinal fluid to the CNS tissues and the resultant biological activity (a) warrant further investigation of intrathecal delivery of I2S via lumbar catheter as an experimental treatment for the neurological symptoms of Hunter syndrome and (b) may have broader implications for CNS treatment with biopharmaceuticals