The Development of Implicit Memory From Infancy to Childhood: On Average Performance Levels and Interindividual Differences.

The present multimethod longitudinal study aimed at investigating development and stability of implicit memory during infancy and early childhood. A total of 134 children were followed longitudinally from 3 months to 3 years of life assessing different age-appropriate measures of implicit memory. Results from structural equation modeling give further evidence that implicit memory is stable from 9 months of life on, with earlier performance predicting later performance. Second, it was found that implicit memory is present from early on, and no age-related improvements are found from 3 months on. Results are discussed with respect to the basic brain structures implicit memory builds on, as well as methodological issues.

[Emotional robots in a nursing context : Empirical analysis of the present use and the effects of Paro and Pleo]. / Emotionale Roboter im Pflegekontext : Empirische Analyse des bisherigen Einsatzes und der Wirkungen von Paro und Pleo.

BACKGROUND: It has been questioned by researchers in robotics as well in the general public to what extent companion-type robots can support the elderly with the fulfillment of their psychological and social needs. Although these robots have already been used in care settings in Germany, research has referred little to this practical experience in order to analyze their impact and benefit. To start to close this gap, the current article reports on the current use of companion-type robots in care settings, on the effects reported by professional caregivers as well as on the role of psychosocial needs in the acceptance and use of companion-type robots by the elderly. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In the first study, 30 professional caregivers with experience in the use of the robot seal Paro in care settings were interviewed regarding Paro's application and the observed effects on their clients. In the second study, three case examples are presented from an interaction study in which vulnerable elderly persons had the robot dinosaur Pleo at their disposal for a maximum period of 15 days. RESULTS: Paro is used very flexibly in a variety of settings and with a broad range of user groups (study 1). The reported psychosocial effects were mainly positive but short term. The case examples (study 2) show that psychosocial needs can both foster or hinder robot acceptance and use. They also emphasize the important role of caregivers in the interaction between the elderly and emotional robots in the context of eldercare. CONCLUSION: The beneficial and ethical use of companion-type robots in care settings demands a high commitment on the part of the caregivers. Given this prerequisite, emotional robots can be a valuable therapeutic tool.

Learning to recognize younger faces at an older age.

OBJECTIVES: Processing of horizontal face cues has been shown to be an important element in face recognition of adults aged up to 30 years. In contrast, horizontally aligned facial features do not appear to contribute to older adults' (60-75 years) recognition in a similar way. To this end, we investigated potential learning effects on the ability to recognize faces based on horizontal features. Previous research suggests face recognition based on all face information experiences an accelerated decline after the age of 70. However, recognition based only on horizontal face information has not yet been studied in old age (75+ years of age). Thus, we investigated whether older adults (aged up to as well as starting at 75 years) can learn to recognize faces based on horizontal face cues alone. METHOD: One younger and two older adult groups (20-30, 60-75, and 75+ years) were familiarized with a high and a low amount of previously unfamiliar faces-some containing all face cues and others containing only horizontal face cues (reduced information). Subsequently, all groups received a recognition test. RESULTS: Repeated learning increased natural face recognition for all three age groups when all face cues were available. However, increases in face recognition were only observed for younger adults when horizontal face cued were only available. DISCUSSION: The importance of horizontally aligned spatial frequencies for recognizing human faces is lessened before the age of 60 (and plateaus thereon), whereas recognition of stimuli containing all face cues is still capable of improvement.

Is selective attention the basis for selective imitation in infants? An eye-tracking study of deferred imitation with 12-month-olds.

Infants and children do not blindly copy every action they observe during imitation tasks. Research demonstrated that infants are efficient selective imitators. The impact of selective perceptual processes (selective attention) for selective deferred imitation, however, is still poorly described. The current study, therefore, analyzed 12-month-old infants' looking behavior during demonstration of two types of target actions: arbitrary versus functional actions. A fully automated remote eye tracker was used to assess infants' looking behavior during action demonstration. After a 30-min delay, infants' deferred imitation performance was assessed. Next to replicating a memory effect, results demonstrate that infants do imitate significantly more functional actions than arbitrary actions (functionality effect). Eye-tracking data show that whereas infants do not fixate significantly longer on functional actions than on arbitrary actions, amount of fixations and amount of saccades differ between functional and arbitrary actions, indicating different encoding mechanisms. In addition, item-level findings differ from overall findings, indicating that perceptual and conceptual item features influence looking behavior. Looking behavior on both the overall and item levels, however, does not relate to deferred imitation performance. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that, on the one hand, selective imitation is not explainable merely by selective attention processes. On the other hand, notwithstanding this reasoning, attention processes on the item level are important for encoding processes during target action demonstration. Limitations and future studies are discussed.

2-Year-Olds Learning From 2D Media With and Without Parental Support: Comparing Two Forms of Joint Media Engagement With Passive Viewing and Learning From 3D.

The study investigates to what degree two different joint media engagement (JME) strategies affect children's learning from two-dimensional (2D)-media. More specifically, we expected an instructed JME strategy to be more effective than a spontaneous, non-instructed, JME strategy. Thirty-five 2-year old children saw a short video on a tablet demonstrating memory tasks together with a parent. The parents were randomized into two groups: One group (N = 17) was instructed to help their child by describing the actions they saw on the video while the other group (N = 18) received no specific instruction besides "do as you usually do." The parents in the instructed group used significantly more words and verbs when supporting their child but both groups of children did equally well on the memory test. In a second step, we compared the performance of the two JME groups with an opportunistic comparison group (N = 95) tested with half of the memory tasks live and half of the tasks on 2D without any JME support. Results showed that the JME intervention groups received significantly higher recall scores than the no JME 2D comparison group. In contrast, the three-dimensional (3D) comparison group outperformed both JME groups. In sum, our findings suggest that JME as implemented here is more effective in promoting learning than a no JME 2D demonstration but less so than the standard 3D presentation of the tasks.

Role of monitoring and blunting coping styles in primary insomnia.

OBJECTIVE: Primary insomnia is one of the most prevalent sleep disorders and assumed to be initiated and maintained, among other factors, by psychological variables such as coping strategies, sleep hygiene techniques, and arousability. Althouugh the number and kind of stressors seem to be important initiators of insomnia, individual coping dispositions appear to play a larger role in maintaining it. This study explores the relationship between different coping dispositions (monitoring/blunting) and insomnia. Monitoring refers to information-seeking behavior under threat; blunting pertains to distractive strategies utilized in situations implying threat or danger. METHODS: The study compares 37 primary insomniacs (DSM IV criteria) and 47 good sleepers. Dependent measures included self-rating scales concerning sleep quality (Schlaffragebogen part B, Frankfurter Schlaffragebogen), coping styles (Frankfurt Monitoring Blunting Scales), and psychopathology (Neo Five Factors Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory). All measures had documented psychometric properties. RESULTS: Primary insomniacs were significantly more likely to rigidly resort to monitoring strategies in controllable as well as uncontrollable situations. Further, 73% of all rigid monitors identified in the sample were rated as primary insomniacs, whereas 86% of all rigid Blunters were good sleepers. Insomniacs showed higher levels of anxiety than good sleepers, coping style groups differed in anxiety and neuroticism scores. CONCLUSION: The study further supports the hypothesis that a monitoring coping style is related to primary insomnia. Blunting appears to be a good predictor of high sleep quality. The results are discussed with regard to improving treatment for patients suffering from primary insomnia.

An Own-Age Bias in Recognizing Faces with Horizontal Information.

Horizontal information, as a result of a selective filtering process, is essential in younger adults' (YA) ability to recognize human faces. Obermeyer et al. (2012) recently reported impaired recognition of faces with horizontal information in older adults (OA) suggesting age-variant processing. Two yet unconsidered factors (stimulus age and exposure duration) that may have influenced previous results, were investigated in this study. Forty-seven YA (18-35 years) and 49 OA (62-83 years) were tested in a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed design with the between-subjects factors age group (YA vs. OA) and stimulus age (young faces vs. older faces) and the within-subjects factors filter [filtered (HF) faces vs. unfiltered faces (UF)] and exposure duration (0.8 s vs. 8 s). Subjects were presented morph videos between pairs of faces: a starting face gradually merged into either the previously encoded target face or a control face. As expected, results showed an increase in recognition sensitivity (d') with longer exposure duration in YA with both younger and older HF faces. OA, however, were unable to recognize filtered young faces not even with increased exposure duration. Furthermore, only elderly participants showed more accurate recognition with faces of their own age relative to other-age faces (own-age bias, OAB). For YA no OAB was observed. Filtered face recognition was significantly correlated with unfiltered recognition in YA but not in OA. It is concluded, that processing of horizontal information changes at a higher age. Presenting filtered or unfiltered faces both targets convergent face-specific processing only in YA but not in OA.

Relations between 18-month-olds' gaze pattern and target action performance: a deferred imitation study with eye tracking.

Deferred imitation studies are used to assess infants' declarative memory performance. These studies have found that deferred imitation performance improves with age, which is usually attributed to advancing memory capabilities. Imitation studies, however, are also used to assess infants' action understanding. In this second research program it has been observed that infants around the age of one year imitate selectively, i.e., they imitate certain kinds of target actions and omit others. In contrast to this, two-year-olds usually imitate the model's exact actions. 18-month-olds imitate more exactly than one-year-olds, but more selectively than two-year-olds, a fact which makes this age group especially interesting, since the processes underlying selective vs. exact imitation are largely debated. The question, for example, if selective attention to certain kinds of target actions accounts for preferential imitation of these actions in young infants is still open. Additionally, relations between memory capabilities and selective imitation processes, as well as their role in shaping 18-month-olds' neither completely selective, nor completely exact imitation have not been thoroughly investigated yet. The present study, therefore, assessed 18-month-olds' gaze toward two types of actions (functional vs. arbitrary target actions) and the model's face during target action demonstration, as well as infants' deferred imitation performance. Although infants' fixation times to functional target actions were not longer than to arbitrary target actions, they imitated the functional target actions more frequently than the arbitrary ones. This suggests that selective imitation does not rely on selective gaze toward functional target actions during the demonstration phase. In addition, a post hoc analysis of interindividual differences suggested that infants' attention to the model's social-communicative cues might play an important role in exact imitation, meaning the imitation of both functional and arbitrary target actions.

Differences between Old and Young Adults' Ability to Recognize Human Faces Underlie Processing of Horizontal Information.

Recent psychophysical research supports the notion that horizontal information of a face is primarily important for facial identity processes. Even though this has been demonstrated to be valid for young adults, the concept of horizontal information as primary informative source has not yet been applied to older adults' ability to correctly identify faces. In the current paper, the role different filtering methods might play in an identity processing task is examined for young and old adults, both taken from student populations. Contrary to most findings in the field of developmental face perception, only a near-significant age effect is apparent in upright and un-manipulated presentation of stimuli, whereas a bigger difference between age groups can be observed for a condition which removes all but horizontal information of a face. It is concluded that a critical feature of human face perception, the preferential processing of horizontal information, is less efficient past the age of 60 and is involved in recognition processes that undergo age-related decline usually found in the literature.

The role of object functions for deferred imitation--do infants selectively retain and forget target actions?

The present study investigated the effect of target action functionality (functional vs. arbitrary actions) on 18- and 12-month-old infants' deferred imitation performance. While 18-month-olds' deferred imitation performance was assessed after a short (30 min) and after a long (2 weeks) delay, only the short delay was realized in 12-month-olds. Besides replicating the well established memory effect for both age groups, that is, an improved performance level of target actions in all memory tests as against to a baseline phase, a functionality effect was found, indicating that infants of both age groups imitated significantly more functional than arbitrary target actions. The rate of forgetting of target actions between the first and the second memory assessment was similar for functional and arbitrary actions, demonstrating that the forgetting process is not specific for the two types of target actions. Implications of the findings for both imitation and memory theories as well as for memory test construction are discussed.

Infants in control: rapid anticipation of action outcomes in a gaze-contingent paradigm.

Infants' poor motor abilities limit their interaction with their environment and render studying infant cognition notoriously difficult. Exceptions are eye movements, which reach high accuracy early, but generally do not allow manipulation of the physical environment. In this study, real-time eye tracking is used to put 6- and 8-month-old infants in direct control of their visual surroundings to study the fundamental problem of discovery of agency, i.e. the ability to infer that certain sensory events are caused by one's own actions. We demonstrate that infants quickly learn to perform eye movements to trigger the appearance of new stimuli and that they anticipate the consequences of their actions in as few as 3 trials. Our findings show that infants can rapidly discover new ways of controlling their environment. We suggest that gaze-contingent paradigms offer effective new ways for studying many aspects of infant learning and cognition in an interactive fashion and provide new opportunities for behavioral training and treatment in infants.

Memory development throughout the second year: overall developmental pattern, individual differences, and developmental trajectories.

The present three-wave longitudinal study analyzed the development of declarative memory in N=92 infants (12-, 18- and 24-month-olds) using a deferred imitation task. As expected, overall memory performance improved throughout the second year. Previous research is also replicated insofar as stability of inter-individual differences was low to moderate within this age range. In addition, cluster analyses identified two developmental groups showing different growth and different stability patterns. Multivariate analyses revealed specificities in language and self-development in these two developmental groups having different developmental trajectories.