Infants' reorienting efficiency depends on parental autistic traits and predicts future socio-communicative behaviors.

Attentional reorienting is dysfunctional not only in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but also in infants who will develop ASD, thus constituting a potential causal factor of future social interaction and communication abilities. Following the research domain criteria framework, we hypothesized that the presence of subclinical autistic traits in parents should lead to atypical infants' attentional reorienting, which in turn should impact on their future socio-communication behavior in toddlerhood. During an attentional cueing task, we measured the saccadic latencies in a large sample (total enrolled n = 89; final sample n = 71) of 8-month-old infants from the general population as a proxy for their stimulus-driven attention. Infants were grouped in a high parental traits (HPT; n = 23) or in a low parental traits (LPT; n = 48) group, according to the degree of autistic traits self-reported by their parents. Infants (n = 33) were then longitudinally followed to test their socio-communicative behaviors at 21 months. Results show a sluggish reorienting system, which was a longitudinal predictor of future socio-communicative skills at 21 months. Our combined transgenerational and longitudinal findings suggest that the early functionality of the stimulus-driven attentional network-redirecting attention from one event to another-could be directly connected to future social and communication development.

Validation of an open source, remote web-based eye-tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood.

Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in-person eye-tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web-based eye-tracking with in-lab eye-tracking in young children. We report a multi-lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tested sample of 18-27-month-old toddlers (N = 125) revealed that web-based eye-tracking successfully captured goal-based action predictions, although the proportion of the goal-directed anticipatory looking was lower compared to the in-lab sample (N = 70). As expected, attrition rate was substantially higher in the web-based (42%) than the in-lab sample (10%). Excluding trials based on visual inspection of the match of time-locked gaze coordinates and the participant's webcam video overlayed on the stimuli was an important preprocessing step to reduce noise in the data. We discuss the use of this remote web-based method in comparison with other current methodological innovations. Our study demonstrates that remote web-based eye-tracking can be a useful tool for testing toddlers, facilitating recruitment of larger and more diverse samples; a caveat to consider is the larger drop-out rate.

Improving the generalizability of infant psychological research: The ManyBabies model.

Yarkoni's analysis clearly articulates a number of concerns limiting the generalizability and explanatory power of psychological findings, many of which are compounded in infancy research. ManyBabies addresses these concerns via a radically collaborative, large-scale and open approach to research that is grounded in theory-building, committed to diversification, and focused on understanding sources of variation.

On the domain specificity of the mechanisms underpinning spontaneous anticipatory looks in false-belief tasks.

Many studies proposed that infants' and adults' looking behavior suggest a spontaneous and implicit ability to reason about others' beliefs. It has been argued, however, that these successes are false positives due to domain-general processes, such as retroactive interference. In this study, we investigated the domain specificity of mechanisms underpinning participants' looking behavior by manipulating the dynamic cues in the event stimuli. Infants aged 15 and 20 months and adults saw animation events in which either a self-moving triangle, or a hand holding an identical inert triangle, chased an animated disk. Most 20-month-olds and adults showed belief congruent anticipatory looks in the agent-triangle condition, whereas they showed no bias in the inert triangle control condition. These results are not consistent with submentalizing accounts based on domain-general low-level processes and provide further support for domain-specific explanations positing an early-emerging mentalistic reasoning.

Infants' use of motion cues in object individuation processes.

We investigated 10-month-old infants' and adults' numerical expectations in scenarios where information on self-motion and static object features may give rise to numerically incongruent representations. A red circle or a blue box with yellow stripes appeared on the left side of a screen, moved autonomously sideways and then moved back behind the screen. Next, on the opposite side, an identical object was first brought in view by a hand and then pushed back behind the screen (Experiments 1 and 2). The screen was finally removed, revealing either one or two objects. Infants looked longer at one-object test events, suggesting that they expected to find two objects. Adults were also shown these animations and were asked for their numerical expectations. Contrary to infants, they expected one single object (Experiment 3). Whereas preverbal infants' numerical expectations appeared to be dominated by information on object autonomous and induced motion, adults' expectations were mainly guided by information about object shape, size, and color. These findings were discussed in relation to current models on the development of object individuation processes.

Many moral buttons or just one? Evidence from emotional facial expressions.

We investigated whether moral violations involving harm selectively elicit anger, whereas purity violations selectively elicit disgust, as predicted by the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). We analysed participants' spontaneous facial expressions as they listened to scenarios depicting moral violations of harm and purity. As predicted by MFT, anger reactions were elicited more frequently by harmful than by impure actions. However, violations of purity elicited more smiling reactions and expressions of anger than of disgust. This effect was found both in a classic set of scenarios and in a new set in which the different kinds of violations were matched on weirdness. Overall, these findings are at odds with predictions derived from MFT and provide support for "monist" accounts that posit harm at the basis of all moral violations. However, we found that smiles were differentially linked to purity violations, which leaves open the possibility of distinct moral modules.

Toddlers map the word 'good' to helping agents, but not to fair distributors.

Infants begin to understand some of the meanings of the adjective good at around thirteen months, but it is not clear when they start to map it to concepts in the moral domain. We investigated infants' and toddlers' knowledge of good in the domains of help and fairness. Participants at 20 and 30 months were shown computer animations involving helpful and hindering agents, or agents who performed fair or unfair distributions, and were asked to "pick the good one". Toddlers at 30 months took good as referring to helping, but not to the fair agents. However, when asked "to pick one", they choose the fair distributor. These findings suggest that by 30 months toddlers have started to map good to some socio-moral features, such as a helping disposition, but not to fairness in distributive actions.

The attentional 'zoom-lens' in 8-month-old infants.

The spatial attention mechanisms of orienting and zooming cooperate to properly select visual information from the environment and plan eye movements accordingly. Despite the fact that orienting ability has been extensively studied in infancy, the zooming mechanism--namely, the ability to distribute the attentional resources to a small or large portion of the visual field--has never been tested before. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the attentional zooming abilities of 8-month-old infants. An eye-tracker device was employed to measure the saccadic latencies (SLs) at the onset of a visual target displayed at two eccentricities. The size of the more eccentric target was adjusted in order to counteract the effect of cortical magnification. Before the target display, attentional resources were automatically focused (zoom-in) or spread out (zoom-out) by using a small or large cue, respectively. Two different cue-target intervals were also employed to measure the time course of this attentional mechanism. The results showed that infants' SLs varied as a function of the cue size. Moreover, a clear time course emerged, demonstrating that infants can rapidly adjust the attentional focus size during a pre-saccadic temporal window. These findings could serve as an early marker for neurodevelopmental disorders associated with attentional zooming dysfunction such as autism and dyslexia.

Electrophysiological signatures of visual temporal processing deficits in developmental dyslexia.

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that affects reading ability despite normal intelligence and education. In search of core deficits, previous evidence has linked DD with impairments in temporal aspects of perceptual processing, which might underlie phonological deficits as well as inefficient graphemic parsing during reading. However, electrophysiological evidence for atypical temporal processing in DD is still scarce in the visual modality. Here, we investigated the efficiency of both temporal segregation and integration of visual information by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). We confirmed previous evidence of a selective segregation deficit in dyslexia for stimuli presented in rapid succession (<80 ms), despite unaffected integration performance. Importantly, we found a reduced N1 amplitude in DD, a component related to the allocation of attentional resources, which was independent of task demands (i.e., evident in both segregation and integration). In addition, the P3 amplitude, linked to working memory and processing load, was modulated by task demands in controls but not in individuals with DD. These results suggest that atypical attentional sampling in dyslexia might weaken the quality of information stored in visual working memory, leading to behavioral and electrophysiological signatures of atypical temporal segregation. These results are consistent with some existing theories of dyslexia, such as the magnocellular theory and the "Sluggish Attentional Shifting" framework, and represent novel evidence for neural correlates of decreased visual temporal resolution in DD.

The power of coaches' emotions: A case study on how coaches' facial expressions impact performance of young female synchronized ice-skaters.

OBJECTIVES: The present study aimed to investigate the impact of coaches' pleasant and unpleasant facial expressions on affects and team performance of young elite female synchronized ice-skaters. METHODS: Initially, the coach provided a neutral explanation of the exercise, which was followed by the athletes' execution. The ice-skaters then received either pleasant or unpleasant feedback from the coach, completed two questionnaires, and performed the exercise again. The study involved two familiar and two unfamiliar coaches. RESULTS: Coaches' pleasant expressions increased athletes' arousal/hedonic tone and positive affect, while coaches' unpleasant expressions heightened athletes' negative affect. Moreover, participants significantly performed better after receiving an unpleasant facial expression by the coach. Receiving pleasant/unpleasant feedback from a familiar or unfamiliar coach did not have a significant impact on team pre- and post-feedback performance. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that coaches' facial expressions impacted athletes' positive/negative affect, and that, under specific circumstances, receiving unpleasant feedback from the coach can improve team performance.

A unified approach to demographic data collection for research with young children across diverse cultures.

Culture is a key determinant of children's development both in its own right and as a measure of generalizability of developmental phenomena. Studying the role of culture in development requires information about participants' demographic backgrounds. However, both reporting and treatment of demographic data are limited and inconsistent in child development research. A barrier to reporting demographic data in a consistent fashion is that no standardized tool currently exists to collect these data. Variation in cultural expectations, family structures, and life circumstances across communities make the creation of a unifying instrument challenging. Here, we present a framework to standardize demographic reporting for early child development (birth to 3 years of age), focusing on six core sociodemographic construct categories: biological information, gestational status, health status, community of descent, caregiving environment, and socioeconomic status. For each category, we discuss potential constructs and measurement items and provide guidance for their use and adaptation to diverse contexts. These items are stored in an open repository of context-adapted questionnaires that provide a consistent approach to obtaining and reporting demographic information so that these data can be archived and shared in a more standardized format. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Investigating the obesogenic effects of marketing snacks with toys: an experimental study in Latin America.

BACKGROUND: The inclusion of toys in food packages is a common marketing practice, and it is suspected of promoting obesogenic behaviours. This study aimed to determine whether toys packaged with food are indeed increasing the amount of food eaten by children, and if this effect is enhanced by contemporary exposure to TV and/or advertising. METHODS: A total of 600 children (balanced according to gender and age groups, 3-6 and 7-10 years old) were randomized in three school facilities in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico and exposed to food (snacks) alone or food associated with toys in an experimental setting. All of the children received the same meal at lunchtime. The products were packages in which chocolate was associated with toys in an egg-shaped container partially filled by chocolate. The children were asked to eat ad libitum for 20 minutes during the afternoon break. In addition, the children were randomized into two groups and either shown or not shown a movie cartoon, with three different levels of exposure to commercials in the TV viewing condition (1, 2 or 3 advertisements). RESULTS: No significant differences emerged between the "toys" and "no toys" groups even after taking into account exposure to TV, commercials and other confounding factors. CONCLUSIONS: The inclusion of toys in food packages was not shown per se to lead to an increase in the caloric intake of children.

Is startle a lateralised response in early infancy?

The aim of the study was to explore whether the acoustic startle response shows signs of early lateralisation. Using non-invasive startle measurements (Automated Infant Motor Movement Startle Seat and Facial Action Coding System), an analysis of response latencies and intensities on the right and left body sides was performed, investigating the presence of asymmetries on the whole-body startle and on the facial component of the startle motor pattern in a group of 5-month-old infants. The findings suggest that the infant whole-body startle is a lateralised response, characterised by a right bias latency. This lateralisation could reflect an underlying lateralised organisation of the infant startle neural circuitry. On the other hand, the analysis of the facial component of the startle motor pattern did not reveal any significant asymmetry. The discrepancy found in the whole-body response and in the startle facial component will be discussed, reflecting on the limits of the adopted methodologies. The use of a high-speed camcorder might allow future research to analyse more in depth the startle fast face responses.

Evaluations of pro-environmental behaviors by 7-month-old infants.

Environmental morality is the foundation of a sustainable future, yet its ontogenetic origin remains unknown. In the present study, we asked whether 7-month-olds have a sense of 'environmental morality'. Infants' evaluations of two pro-environmental actions were assessed in both visual and reaching preferential tasks. In Experiment 1, the overt behavior of protecting (i.e., collecting artificial objects spread on a lawn) was compared with the action of harming the environment (i.e., by disregarding the objects). In Experiment 2, the covert behavior of protecting the environment (i.e., maintaining artificial objects inside a container) was compared with the action of harming the environment (i.e., littering the artificial objects on a lawn). The results showed infants' reaching preference for the agent who performed overt pro-environmental actions (Experiment 1), and no preference for the agent who performed covert pro-environmental actions (Experiment 2). These findings reveal a rudimentary ecological sense and suggest that infants require different abilities to evaluate overt impact-oriented and covert intend-oriented pro-environmental behaviors.

Periodic and Aperiodic EEG Features as Potential Markers of Developmental Dyslexia.

Developmental Dyslexia (DD) is a neurobiological condition affecting the ability to read fluently and/or accurately. Analyzing resting-state electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in DD may provide a deeper characterization of the underlying pathophysiology and possible biomarkers. So far, studies investigating resting-state activity in DD provided limited evidence and did not consider the aperiodic component of the power spectrum. In the present study, adults with (n = 26) and without DD (n = 31) underwent a reading skills assessment and resting-state EEG to investigate potential alterations in aperiodic activity, their impact on the periodic counterpart and reading performance. In parieto-occipital channels, DD participants showed a significantly different aperiodic activity as indexed by a flatter and lower power spectrum. These aperiodic measures were significantly related to text reading time, suggesting a link with individual differences in reading difficulties. In the beta band, the DD group showed significantly decreased aperiodic-adjusted power compared to typical readers, which was significantly correlated to word reading accuracy. Overall, here we provide evidence showing alterations of the endogenous aperiodic activity in DD participants consistently with the increased neural noise hypothesis. In addition, we confirm alterations of endogenous beta rhythms, which are discussed in terms of their potential link with magnocellular-dorsal stream deficit.

The Dynamic Interplay of Affective, Cognitive and Contextual Resources on Children's Creative Potential: The Modulatory Role of Trait Emotional Intelligence.

In the present work we explored in two separate studies the modulatory role of trait emotional intelligence (EI) over the effect exerted on children's creative potential by two other key elements defining creativity, namely cognitive resources (here explored through basic executive functions, Study 1) and contextual-environmental factors (that is, teachers' implicit conceptions of the factors influencing children's creativity, Study 2). Confirming previous research, executive functions (particularly interference control and working memory) emerged as main predictors of children's creative performance; however, their positive effect arose especially when associated with a high trait EI level. In the same vein, teachers' implicit conception about children's creative potential and about their efficacy in teaching creativity emerged to exert a facilitatory effect on children' creative potential. This effect occurred particularly when associated with low trait EI levels, affecting differently girls and boys. Trait EI emerged from these studies as an important individual resource to consider in order to understand the potential benefit of other (cognitive and contextual-environmental) resources on children's creative potential. The implications on the role of trait EI as a constitutional element of children's creativity, capable of promoting the expression of their creative potential, are discussed.

The "snacking child" and its social network: some insights from an Italian survey.

BACKGROUND: The hypothesis underlying this work is that the social network of a child might have an impact on the alimentary behaviors, in particular for what concerns snack consumption patterns. METHODS: 1215 Italian children 6-10 ys old were interviewed using a CATI facility in January 2010. 608 "snackers" and 607 "no-snackers" were identified. Information regarding family composition, child and relatives BMI, mother perception of child weight, child, father and mother physical activity, TV watching, social network, leisure time habits and dietary habits of peers, were collected. Association of variables with the status of snacker was investigated using a multivariable logistic regression model. RESULTS: Snackers children seem to be part of more numerous social network (1.40 friends vs 1.14, p = 0.042) where the majority of peers are also eating snacks, this percentage being significantly higher (89.5 vs 76.3, p < 0.001) than in the "no-snacker" group. The snacking group is identified by the fact that it tends to practice at least 4 hours per week of physical activity (OR: 1.36, CI: 1.03-1.9). No evidence of an association between snacking consumption and overweight status has been shown by our study. CONCLUSIONS: The snacking child has more active peer-to-peer social relationships, mostly related with sport activities. However, spending leisure time in sportive activities implies being part of a social environment which is definitely a positive one from the point of view of obesity control, and indeed, no increase of overweight/obesity is seen in relation to snack consumption.

Three methodologies for measuring the acoustic startle response in early infancy.

The present study investigated whether three methodologies currently used in animal as well as human adult startle research could be adapted for measuring the startle response in 5-month-old infants. The three methods performed: an automated and computerized recording of the infants' whole-body motor reactions (Automated Infant Motor Movement Startle Seat, AIMMSS); a coding of the infants' facial muscular contractions involved in the startle response (FACS, Baby FACS); an analysis of the infants' eyeblink intensity in response to the startle probes (Eye-Blink Strength scale). The results showed that these methods accurately registered the latency and intensity parameters of the reactions to acoustic startle stimuli. A correlational analysis showed, also, that the three methods registered the same motor reaction measuring the infant acoustic startle response in a consistent way.

Investigating the role of temporal processing in developmental dyslexia: Evidence for a specific deficit in rapid visual segmentation.

The current study investigates the role of temporal processing in the visual domain in participants with developmental dyslexia (DD), the most common neurodevelopmental disorder, which is characterized by severe and specific difficulties in learning to read despite normal intelligence and adequate education. Specifically, our aim was to test whether DD is associated with a general impairment of temporal sensory processing or a specific deficit in temporal integration (which ensures stability of object identity and location) or segregation (which ensures sensitivity to changes in visual input). Participants with DD performed a task that measured both temporal integration and segregation using an identical sequence of two displays separated by a varying interstimulus interval (ISI) under two different task instructions. Results showed that participants with DD performed worse in the segregation task, with a shallower slope of the psychometric curve of percentage correct as a function of the ISI between the two target displays. Moreover, we found also a relationship between temporal segregation performance and text, words, and pseudowords reading speeds at the individual level. In contrast, no significant association between reading (dis)ability and temporal integration emerged. The current findings provide evidence for a difference in the fine temporal resolution of visual processing in DD and, considering the growing evidence about a link between visual temporal segregation and neural oscillations at specific frequencies, they support the idea that DD is characterized by an altered oscillatory sampling within the visual system.