Infants' recognition of their mothers' faces in facial drawings

Using drawings and deep neural networks to characterize the building blocks of human visual similarity

Early in life and without special training, human beings discern resemblance between abstract visual stimuli, such as drawings, and the real-world objects they represent. We used this capacity for visual abstraction as a tool for evaluating deep neural networks (DNNs) as models of human visual perception. Contrasting five contemporary DNNs, we evaluated how well each explains human similarity judgments among line drawings of recognizable and novel objects. For object sketches, human judgments were dominated by semantic category information; DNN representations contributed little additional information. In contrast, such features explained significant unique variance perceived similarity of abstract drawings. In both cases, a vision transformer trained to blend representations of images and their natural language descriptions showed the greatest ability to explain human perceptual similarity-an observation consistent with contemporary views of semantic representation and processing in the human mind and brain. Together, the results suggest that the building blocks of visual similarity may arise within systems that learn to use visual information, not for specific classification, but in service of generating semantic representations of objects.

The role of scenic context on upright face preference in infancy

Scenic information plays an important role in face processing, whereas it has received limited attention in the field of developmental research. In the current study, we investigated whether infants, like adults, utilize scenic information for face processing by the preferential-looking method. In Experiment 1, we examined 4-5 and 6-7-month-olds' visual preferences for upright faces compared to inverted faces in two surrounding scene conditions: intact (in which a face occurs in an intact scene) and scrambled (in which a face occurs in a jumbled scene). We found that 6- to 7-month-olds preferred the upright face in the intact scene, but not in the scrambled scene. Meanwhile, 4- to 5-month-olds showed significant upright face preference in both scenes. The results of Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility that the lack of preference for upright faces in the scrambled scene in 6- to 7-month-olds resulted from more distraction by the scrambledness of the image than occurs with 4- to 5-month-olds, by showing no developmental changes in preference either for the scrambled images or the intact images when faces did not appear. Our results suggest that infants aged 6 months or more utilize scenic information for face processing.

Language comprehension in toddlers with significant developmental delays: An IRT approach

PURPOSE

Language comprehension, or the ability to understand spoken language, is critical to a variety of child outcomes. Effective early intervention relies on valid, reliable language comprehension assessment. The purpose of this study was to explore language comprehension in a sample of toddlers with significant developmental delays associated with varied medical conditions.

METHOD

We investigated language comprehension in a sample of 112 toddlers by applying Item Response Theory (IRT) methods to two measures; one standardized and one flexible.

RESULTS

Data from a standardized measure fit the unidimensional model, whereas the flexible measure did not. The overall pattern of results suggested that items related to early social/contextual comprehension are distinct from linguistic comprehension items.

CONCLUSION

Our findings inform clinical practice by underscoring the importance of comprehensive assessment of language comprehension and considering strengths and weaknesses across social/contextual and linguistic comprehension among toddlers with developmental delays.

Infants' brain activity to cartoon face using functional near-infrared spectroscopy

In this study, to investigate whether infants showed face-specific brain activity to a cartoon human face, we conducted a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) experiment and a behavioral experiment. In the fNIRS experiment, we measured the hemodynamic responses of 5- and 6-month-old infants to cartoon female and cartoon character faces using fNIRS. The results showed that the concentration of oxy-Hb increased for cartoon female faces but not for cartoon character faces. This indicates that face-specific brain activity occurred for cartoon female faces but not cartoon character faces, despite the fact that both are faces. In the behavioral experiment, we examined whether the 5- and 6-month-old infants preferred cartoon female faces to cartoon character faces in the upright and inverted conditions. The results showed a preference for cartoon female faces in the upright but not in the inverted condition. This indicates that 5- and 6-month-old infants can perceive cartoon female faces, but not cartoon character faces, as faces. The results of the two experiments indicated that face-specific brain activity occurred for cartoon female faces. This indicates that infants can perceive cartoon female faces as faces.