From Perugino to Picasso revisited: Electrophysiological responses to faces in paintings from different art styles.

Behavioral research (Ventura, et al., 2023) suggested that pictorial representations of faces varying along a realism-distortion spectrum elicit holistic processing as natural faces. Whether holistic face neural responses are engaged similarly remains, however, underexplored. In the present study, we evaluated the neural correlates of naturalist and artistic face processing, by exploring electrophysiological responses to faces in photographs versus in four major painting styles. The N170 response to faces in photographs was indistinguishable from that elicited by faces in the renaissance art style (depicting the most realistic faces), whilst both categories elicited larger N170 than faces in other art styles (post-impressionism, expressionism, and cubism), with a gradation in brain activity. The present evidence suggest that visual processing may become finer grained the more the realistic nature of the face. Despite behavioral equivalence, the neural mechanisms for holistic processing of natural faces and faces in diverse art styles are not equivalent.

Impact of school SES on literacy development.

Effective literacy skills are essential to actively participate in today's society. However, little research has been conducted that examined the impact of contextual variables on literacy development. The present paper addressed whether and how the socioeconomic status of the school (S-SES) children attend affects their literacy achievements. Eight-hundred and seventy-eight 2nd and 4th grade children participated in the study. Data were collected in low-SES (vulnerable) and in mid-high-SES (non-vulnerable) schools. Children completed a large battery of language, cognitive, and literacy tasks in Catalan, a language spoken in a region in Spain where virtually all children are at least bilingual (they also speak Spanish) and it is the main language of instruction. Results showed that children in vulnerable schools were outperformed by children in non-vulnerable schools across all literacy competencies, but particularly affected higher order skills; that is, text quality and reading comprehension. Differences with their non-vulnerable peers remained, even after controlling for context-level covariates, including familial SES. However, S-SES ceased to exert significant influence once children's cognitive and, especially, linguistic skills were considered. The study adds to previous research claiming that school SES has an effect on students' literacy skills, above and beyond children's home SES. However, our findings also suggest that literacy performance is ultimately mostly dependent on educationally actionable, subject-level skills. Educational implications are discussed.

In a split second: Handwriting pauses in typical and struggling writers.

Introduction: A two-second threshold has been typically used when analyzing the writing processes. However, there is only a weak empirical basis to claim that specific average numbers and durations of pauses may be associated with specific writing processes. We focused on handwriting execution pauses, because immature writers are known to struggle with transcription skills. We aimed to provide an evidence-based account of the average number and duration of handwriting pauses in the mid-Primary grades and to identify process-level markers of writing difficulties. Methods: Eighty 3rd and 5th graders, with and without writing difficulties, participated in the study. We examined pauses in a handwriting-only task, to be able to isolate those which could only be attributed to handwriting processes. Letter features were considered, as well as children's handwriting fluency level. Results: The average duration of handwriting pauses was around 400ms, in line with assumptions that transcription pauses would fall under the 2,000ms threshold. We found that 3rd graders made more and longer pauses than 5th graders. Struggling writers made a similar number of pauses across grades than typically-developing children, although they were significantly longer, even after controlling for the effect of handwriting fluency. Discussion: Our findings provide an evidence-based account of the duration of handwriting pauses. They also suggest that children need fewer and shorter handwriting pauses as they progress in automatizing transcription. However, some young writers struggle with letter formation even after 3 to 5 years of instruction.