Observing inefficient action can induce infant preference and learning.

'Motionese' can be defined as an exaggerated and repetitive action. It induces preference and learning in infants. However, which action component of motionese promotes infants' preference and learning remains largely unknown. In this study, we focused on inefficiency and toward-ness of action. Our study demonstrates that observing an inefficient holding out action can induce a visual preference in 4-month-old infants and learning in 10-month-old infants through eight experiments (N = 192). We found that when infants observe inefficient holding out action, the action attracts their attention and facilitates learning about the identity of the toy object accompanying it, especially when people direct inefficient actions towards them. Our findings indicate that both action efficiency and toward-ness may be key factors in infant learning.

Developmental changes of the neural mechanisms underlying level 2 visual perspective-taking: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

The ability to understand the way other people see the world differs from one's own viewpoint is referred to as ''visual perspective-taking'' (VPT). Previous studies have demonstrated the behavioral performance in level 2 VPT (VPT2), the ability to understand that two different observers can have unique visual experiences of the same scene or object depending on the observers' physical location, changes during childhood. However, the developmental aspects underlying the neural mechanisms of VPT2 remains unknown. We measured the hemodynamic responses to a VPT2 task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, with mental rotation (MR) as a control task in 7- to 11-year-old and 11- to 16-year-old groups. In the VPT2 task, participants were required to mentally compute the perspective of a toy on the turntable from that of a doll placed in a different location from the observer. For the MR task, participants reported their perspectives after the toy was rotated. We found significantly higher oxy-hemoglobin changes during the VPT2 task than the MR task in the 7- to 11-year-old group but not in the 11- to 16-year-old group, in the right middle and superior temporal, angular gyrus and frontal regions. These findings highlight the important role of the right temporoparietal region in processing perspective, up to 11 years.

Does culture shape face perception in autism? Cross-cultural evidence of the own-race advantage from the UK and Japan.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with face perception atypicalities, and atypical experience with faces has been proposed as an underlying explanation. Studying the own-race advantage (ORA) for face recognition can reveal the effect of experience on face perception in ASD, although the small number of studies in the area present mixed findings. This study probed the ORA in ASD by comparing two cultural groups simultaneously for the first time. Children with ASD in the UK (N = 16) and Japan (N = 26) were compared with age- and ability-matched typically developing (TD) children in the UK (N = 16) and Japan (N = 26). Participants completed a two-alternative forced-choice task, whereby they had to recognize a just seen face from a foil which was manipulated in one of four ways (IC: identity change; EE: easy eyes; HE: hard eyes; HM: hard mouth). Face stimuli were Asian and Caucasian, and thus the same stimuli were own and other race depending on the cultural group. The ASD groups in the UK and Japan did not show impaired face recognition abilities, or impairments with recognizing faces depending on manipulations to the eye region, and importantly they showed an ORA. There was considerable heterogeneity in the presence of the ORA in ASD and TD and also across cultures. Children in Japan had higher accuracy than children in the UK, and TD children in Japan did not show an ORA. This cross-cultural study challenges the view that atypical experiences with faces lead to a reduced/absent ORA in ASD.

Role of the Embodied Cognition Process in Perspective-Taking Ability During Childhood.

This study examined developmental changes in Level-2 visual perspective taking (VPT2) in 90 children aged 4-12 years and tested the role of their ability to mentally simulate changes to their bodily locations (self-motion imagery; SMI). Performance of a mental toy rotation task and a self-motion (SM) task (changing location of children) was superior to that of VPT2 and SMI tasks. Task performance of SMI was better than that of VPT2 before 10;0 (years;months). Furthermore, egocentric responses in VPT2 and SMI tasks were significantly more frequent than those in the mental rotation and SM tasks before 10;3. These findings suggest the involvement of embodied cognitive processes in perspective taking and the advantage of utilizing bodily information by age 10.

Communicative hand-waving gestures facilitate object learning in preverbal infants.

The theory of natural pedagogy has proposed that infants can use ostensive signals, including eye contact, infant-directed speech, and contingency to learn from others. However, the role of bodily gestures, such as hand-waving, in social learning has been largely ignored. To address this gap in the literature, this study sought to determine whether 4-month-old infants exhibited a preference for horizontal or vertical (control) hand-waving gestures. We also examined whether horizontal hand-waving gestures followed by pointing facilitated the process of object learning in 9-month-old infants. Results showed that 4-month-old infants preferred horizontal hand-waving gestures to vertical hand-waving gestures, even when featural and contextual information were removed. Furthermore, horizontal hand-waving gestures induced identity encoding for cued objects, whereas vertical gestures did not. These findings highlight the role of communicative intent embedded in bodily movements and indicate that hand-waving can serve as a new type of ostensive signal.

Optimization of a motor learning attention-directing strategy based on an individual's motor imagery ability.

Motor learning performance has been shown to be affected by various cognitive factors such as the focus of attention and motor imagery ability. Most previous studies on motor learning have shown that directing the attention of participants externally, such as on the outcome of an assigned body movement, can be more effective than directing their attention internally, such as on body movement itself. However, to the best of our knowledge, no findings have been reported on the effect of the focus of attention selected according to the motor imagery ability of an individual on motor learning performance. We measured individual motor imagery ability assessed by the Movement Imagery Questionnaire and classified the participants into kinesthetic-dominant (n = 12) and visual-dominant (n = 8) groups based on the questionnaire score. Subsequently, the participants performed a motor learning task such as tracing a trajectory using visuomotor rotation. When the participants were required to direct their attention internally, the after-effects of the learning task in the kinesthetic-dominant group were significantly greater than those in the visual-dominant group. Conversely, when the participants were required to direct their attention externally, the after-effects of the visual-dominant group were significantly greater than those of the kinesthetic-dominant group. Furthermore, we found a significant positive correlation between the size of after-effects and the modality-dominance of motor imagery. These results suggest that a suitable attention strategy based on the intrinsic motor imagery ability of an individual can improve performance during motor learning tasks.

Comparison of the Sensory Profile Among Autistic Individuals and Individuals with Williams Syndrome.

PURPOSE: With the current study, we aimed to reveal the similarities and differences in sensory profiles between Williams syndrome (WS) and autism spectrum disorder. METHODS: Using the sensory profile questionnaire completed by the caregivers, we analyzed the WS (n = 60, 3.4-19.8 years) and autistic (n = 39, 4.2-14.0 years) groups. RESULTS: The Severity Analysis revealed a significant group difference in Sensory Sensitivity but not in Low Registration, Sensation Seeking, and Sensation Avoiding subscales. Age can modulate the subscale scores differently across groups. For Sensation Seeking, the scores of both groups decreased with development. However, the scores of Sensory Sensitivity decreased with age in the autistic group but not in the WS group. Sensation Avoiding scores increased with development in the WS group but not in the autistic group. No significant developmental changes were observed in Low Registration. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the cross-syndrome similarities and differences in sensory profiles and developmental changes in autistic individuals and individuals with WS.

Autistic traits associated with dichotomic thinking mediated by intolerance of uncertainty.

A recent cognitive model suggests that autistic individuals may experience dichotomous thinking patterns mediated by intolerance of uncertainty; however, empirical evidence to support this model is lacking. This study aimed to identify the relationships between autistic traits, intolerance of uncertainty, and dichotomous thinking using the Autism Spectrum Quotient, Short Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale, and the Dichotomous Thinking Inventory. We collected data from non-clinical university students (N = 151; pilot study) and general adults (N = 500; main study) and analyzed the results using structural equation modeling. Both studies showed a significant indirect effect of autistic traits on dichotomous thinking mediated by intolerance of uncertainty. Moreover, the results indicated that intolerance of uncertainty was significantly and positively associated with Autism Spectrum Quotient and Dichotomous Thinking Inventory scores. Conversely, there was a significant negative direct association between Autism Spectrum Quotient and Dichotomous Thinking Inventory scores. This is the first study to demonstrate that autistic traits can result in dichotomous thinking through intolerance of uncertainty. These findings provide insight into the cognitive patterns of autistic individuals.

Development of emotion comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorder and Williams syndrome.

Although research has shed light on the development of emotion comprehension in typically developing children, little is known about emotion comprehension in children who are developing atypically. Thus, this study examined the developmental trajectory of emotion understanding in non-clinical (NC) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Williams syndrome (WS) using a Test of Emotion Comprehension. In the test, we measured children's understanding of (I) recognition of emotions based on facial expressions, (II) external causes of emotions, (III) desire-based emotions, (IV) belief-based emotions, (V) the influence of a reminder on a present emotional state, (VI) regulating an experienced emotion, (VII) hiding an emotional state, (VIII) mixed emotions, and (IX) moral emotions. A Bayesian modeling approach was applied to compare the developmental trajectories of emotion understanding across the syndrome groups. The results revealed that NC children and children with WS followed significantly different developmental trajectories in specific aspects of emotion understanding, while children with ASD followed a very similar path to NC children. Children with ASD and NC children gradually developed an understanding of each component of emotion comprehension as they matured. However, the understanding of some components, such as desire-based emotions, hiding an emotional state, and moral emotions, in children with WS was affected by their Autism Spectrum Quotient scores. This is one of the first cross-syndrome studies to assess the development of emotion comprehension in children with ASD and WS, providing important insights for understanding the nature of disability and advancing the development of intervention programs.

Electrophysiological evidence of global structure-from-motion processing of biological motion in 6-month-old infants.

Understanding the actions of others is a fundamental and important skill for navigating our social world. A striking example of how our visual system is sensitive to others' actions is the phenomenon of biological motion (BM), in which the visual system encodes socially relevant information regarding action from as few as a dozen point-lights of motion. Previous studies have demonstrated that infants can discriminate between BM and other types of actions. However, there is a lack of electrophysiological evidence outlining the exact point of time within the first year of life when global structure-from-motion processing of BM emerges. We herein show a clear event-related potential (ERP) response related to the global structure-from-motion processing of a coherent human point-light walker in 6-month-old infants. We introduced a novel experimental paradigm composed of two stimuli phases to extract a single ERP component related to the global structure-from-motion processing of a coherent human point-light walker. Furthermore, we demonstrated that an enhanced single ERP component observed at approximately 482-586 ms following the onset of the stimulus of a coherent human point-light walker was larger than that of a spatially scrambled point-light walker in 6-month-old infants. These findings suggest that 6-month-old infants can process the global structure-from-motion information of a coherent human point-light walker, which may involve the posterior part of the superior temporal sulcus region. The current findings further refine the recently outlined developmental theory of BM processing.

Visual perspective-taking ability in 7- and 12-month-old infants.

Understanding how we see the world is different from how other people see it is a crucial part of social cognition and is known as visual perspective-taking. Although previous studies have demonstrated that 14-month-old infants have the capacity to compute the visual perspectives of others, it remains unknown whether infants under 12 months also have this ability. In this study, we modified a conventional gaze-following experimental setting in which one toy was placed in front of a model and was hidden by a barrier (Blocked Line of Sight Condition), and another toy was placed without a barrier (Clear Line of Sight Condition). We examined the visual perspective-taking abilities of 48 infants aged 7 and 12 months by measuring the infants' gaze shift towards the gaze-cued toy object with and without a barrier. The results demonstrated that 12-month-old infants could correctly follow a model's gaze if the model's line of sight was clear. In contrast, 7-month-old infants showed no evidence of such capacity. Our findings indicate that 12-month-old infants seem to have the capacity to compute the visual perspective of others.

Comparison of the Social Responsiveness Scale-2 among Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Williams Syndrome in Japan.

This study examined the similarities/differences between the social phenotypes of Williams syndrome (WS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). As cultural norms may affect symptom evaluation, this study administered the Social Responsiveness Scale-2 to Japanese individuals with WS (n = 78, 4.4-44.0 years) and ASD (n = 75, 4.7-55.4 years). The scores for Social Motivation and Social Communication were significantly more severe in the ASD than WS group. Overall, the similarities and differences between the social phenotypes of the syndromes were consistent with the findings of a recent study conducted in the UK, except for the social awareness subscale score. This highlights the importance of cross-cultural investigations of WS and ASD.

Body configuration modulates the usage of local cues to direction in biological-motion perception.

The presence of information in a visual display does not guarantee its use by the visual system. Studies of inversion effects in both face recognition and biological-motion perception have shown that the same information may be used by observers when it is presented in an upright display but not used when the display is inverted. In our study, we tested the inversion effect in scrambled biological-motion displays to investigate mechanisms that validate information contained in the local motion of a point-light walker. Using novel biological-motion stimuli that contained no configural cues to the direction in which a walker was facing, we found that manipulating the relative vertical location of the walker's feet significantly affected observers' performance on a direction-discrimination task. Our data demonstrate that, by themselves, local cues can almost unambiguously indicate the facing direction of the agent in biological-motion stimuli. Additionally, we document a noteworthy interaction between local and global information and offer a new explanation for the effect of local inversion in biological-motion perception.

Allocation of attention to biological motion: local motion dominates global shape.

Directional information can be retrieved from a point-light walker (PLW) in two different ways: either from recovering the global shape of the articulated body or from signals in the local motion of individual dots. Here, we introduce a voluntary eye movement task to assess how the direction of a centrally presented, task-irrelevant PLW affects the onset latency and accuracy of saccades to peripheral targets. We then use this paradigm to design experiments to study which aspects of biological motion-the global form mediated by the motion of the walker or the local movements of critical features-drive the observed attentional effects. Putting the two cues into conflict, we show that saccade latency and accuracy were affected by the local motion of the dots representing the walker's feet-but only if they retain their familiar, predictable location within the display.

Greater reliance on proprioceptive information during a reaching task with perspective manipulation among children with autism spectrum disorders.

Difficulties with visual perspective-taking among individuals with autism spectrum disorders remain poorly understood. Many studies have presumed that first-person visual input can be mentally transformed to a third-person perspective during visual perspective-taking tasks; however, existing research has not fully revealed the computational strategy used by those with autism spectrum disorders for taking another person's perspective. In this study, we designed a novel approach to test a strategy using the opposite-directional effect among children with autism spectrum disorders. This effect refers to how a third-person perspective as a visual input alters a cognitive process. We directly manipulated participants' visual perspective by placing a camera at different positions; participants could watch themselves from a third-person perspective during a reaching task with no endpoint feedback. During a baseline task, endpoint bias (with endpoint feedback but no visual transformation) did not differ significantly between groups. However, the endpoint was affected by extrinsic coordinate information in the control group relative to the autism spectrum disorders group when the visual perspective was transformed. These results indicate an increased reliance on proprioception during the reaching task with perspective manipulation in the autism spectrum disorders group.

The two-process theory of biological motion processing.

Perception, identification, and understanding of others' actions from motion information are vital for our survival in the social world. A breakthrough in the understanding of action perception was the discovery that our visual system is sensitive to human action from the sparse motion input of only a dozen point lights, a phenomenon known as biological motion (BM) processing. Previous psychological and computational models cannot fully explain the emerging evidence for the existence of BM processing during early ontogeny. Here, we propose a two-process model of the mechanisms underlying BM processing. We hypothesize that the first system, the 'Step Detector,' rapidly processes the local foot motion and feet-below-the-body information that is specific to vertebrates, is less dependent on postnatal learning, and involves subcortical networks. The second system, the 'Bodily Action Evaluator,' slowly processes the fine global structure-from-motion, is specific to conspecific, and dependent on gradual learning processed in cortical networks. This proposed model provides new insight into research on the development of BM processing.

Differential orientation effect in the neural response to interacting biological motion of two agents.

BACKGROUND: A recent behavioral study demonstrated that the meaningful interaction of two agents enhances the detection sensitivity of biological motion (BM), however, it remains unclear when and how the 'interaction' information of two agents is represented in our neural system. To clarify this point, we used magnetoencephalography and introduced a novel experimental technique to extract a neuromagnetic response relating to two-agent BM perception. We then investigated how this response was modulated by the interaction of two agents. In the present experiment, we presented two kinds of visual stimuli (interacting and non-interacting BM) with two orientations (upright and inverted). RESULTS: We found a neuromagnetic response in the bilateral occipitotemporal region, on average 300 - 400 ms after the onset of a two-agent BM stimulus. This result showed that interhemispheric differences were apparent for the peak amplitudes. For the left hemisphere, the orientation effect was manifest when the two agents were made to interact, and the interaction effect was manifest when the stimulus was inverted. In the right hemisphere, the main effects of both orientation and interaction were significant, suggesting that the peak amplitude was attenuated when the visual stimulus was inverted or made to interact. CONCLUSION: These results demonstrate that the 'interaction' information of two agents can affect the neural activities in the bilateral occipitotemporal region, on average 300 - 400 ms after the onset of a two-agent BM stimulus, however, the modulation was different between hemispheres: the left hemisphere is more concerned with dynamics, whereas the right hemisphere is more concerned with form information.

Face-to-trait inferences in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Introduction: Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder characterized by the preferential loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, which project to the striatum. The disease is characterized by prominent motor symptoms, which are its cardinal features. Consequently, Parkinson's disease has been primarily considered a disorder of movement. However, increasing evidence has indicated that Parkinson's disease affects not only the motor domain but also the cognitive domain. Increasing evidence indicates that patients with Parkinson's disease have an impaired ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. Recent studies have reported that other socially relevant information from faces, including face-to-trait inferences for traits such as dominance, competence, and trustworthiness, may be processed in subcortical regions, including the amygdala and caudate nucleus. However, the mechanism underlying the processing of face-to-trait inferences for these traits in patients with Parkinson's disease is still unknown. This study aimed to assess the face-to-trait inference ability in patients with Parkinson's disease. Method: Face-to-trait inference ability was assessed using a forced-choice method in patients with Parkinson's disease and age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Results: Overall correct face-to-trait inferences occurred significantly less frequently in the Parkinson's disease group than in the control group. Further analysis revealed a significant interaction between groups and the extent to which facial features were exaggerated. Conclusions: The present results suggest that the sensitivity of face-to-trait processing was linear in the Parkinson's disease group but not in the healthy controls. These deficits may have resulted from dysfunction in subcortical regions, which may also lead to impairment in other social inferential abilities in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Individual optimal attentional strategy during implicit motor learning boosts frontoparietal neural processing efficiency: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

INTRODUCTION: Optimal focus of attention is a crucial factor for improving motor learning. Most previous studies have shown that directing attention to movement outcome (external focus; EF) is more effective than directing attention to body movement itself (internal focus; IF). However, our recent studies demonstrated that the optimal attentional strategy in healthy and clinical populations varies depending on individual motor imagery ability. To explore the neurological basis underlying individual optimal attentional strategy during motor learning tasks, in the present study, we measured frontoparietal activities using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). METHODS: Twenty-eight participants performed a visuomotor learning task requiring circular tracking. During the task, the participants were required to direct their attention internally or externally. The individual optimal attentional strategy was determined by comparing the after-effect sizes between the IF and EF conditions. RESULTS: Fifteen participants showed larger after-effects under the EF condition (External-dominant), whereas the others showed larger after-effects under the IF condition (Internal-dominant). Based on the differences in neural activities between Internal- and External-dominant groups, we identified the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 46) and right somatosensory association cortex (Brodmann area 7) as the neural bases associated with individual optimal attentional strategy during motor learning. Furthermore, we observed a significant negative correlation, that is, lower activity in these areas was associated with a larger after-effect size under the optimal attentional strategy. CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrated that more efficient neural processing in the frontoparietal area under the individual optimal attentional strategy can accelerate motor learning.

Prefrontal activity predicts individual differences in optimal attentional strategy for preventing motor performance decline: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Directing attention to movement outcomes (external focus; EF), not body movements (internal focus; IF), is a better cognitive strategy for motor performance. However, EF is not effective in some healthy individuals or stroke patients. We aimed to identify the neurological basis reflecting the individual optimal attentional strategy using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Sixty-four participants (23 healthy young, 23 healthy elderly, and 18 acute stroke) performed a reaching movement task under IF and EF conditions. Of these, 13 healthy young participants, 11 healthy elderly participants, and 6 stroke patients showed better motor performance under EF conditions (EF-dominant), whereas the others showed IF-dominance. We then measured prefrontal activity during rhythmic hand movements under both attentional conditions. IF-dominant participants showed significantly higher left prefrontal activity than EF-dominant participants under IF condition. In addition, receiver operating characteristic analysis supported that the higher activity in the left frontopolar and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices could detect IF-dominance as an individual's optimal attentional strategy for preventing motor performance decline. Taken together, these results suggest that prefrontal activity during motor tasks reflects an individual's ability to process internal body information, thereby conferring IF-dominance. These findings could be applied for the development of individually optimized rehabilitation programs.