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Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Feb 2020The own name is a salient stimulus, used by others to initiate social interaction. Typically developing infants orient towards the sound of their own name and exhibit...
The own name is a salient stimulus, used by others to initiate social interaction. Typically developing infants orient towards the sound of their own name and exhibit enhanced event-related potentials (ERP) at 5 months. The lack of orientation to the own name is considered to be one of the earliest signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we investigated ERPs to hearing the own name in infants at high and low risk for ASD, at 10 and 14 months. We hypothesized that low-risk infants would exhibit enhanced frontal ERP responses to their own name compared to an unfamiliar name, while high-risk infants were expected to show attenuation or absence of this difference in their ERP responses. In contrast to expectations, we did not find enhanced ERPs to own name in the low-risk group. However, the high-risk group exhibited attenuated frontal positive-going activity to their own name compared to an unfamiliar name and compared to the low-risk group, at the age of 14 months. These results suggest that infants at high risk for ASD start to process their own name differently shortly after one year of age, a period when frontal brain development is happening at a fast rate.
Topics: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Child Development; Child, Preschool; Evoked Potentials; Female; Hearing; Humans; Infant; Male; Names; Social Change
PubMed: 31826839
DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100739 -
Neuropsychologia Apr 2017Understanding the neural processes that underlie learning to read can provide a scientific foundation for literacy education but studying these processes in real-world...
Understanding the neural processes that underlie learning to read can provide a scientific foundation for literacy education but studying these processes in real-world contexts remains challenging. We present behavioural data from adult participants learning to read artificial words and name artificial objects over two days. Learning profiles and generalisation confirmed that componential learning of visual-verbal associations distinguishes reading from object naming. Functional MRI data collected on the second day allowed us to identify the neural systems that support componential reading as distinct from systems supporting holistic visual-verbal associations in object naming. Results showed increased activation in posterior ventral occipitotemporal (vOT), parietal, and frontal cortices when reading an artificial orthography compared to naming artificial objects, and the reverse profile in anterior vOT regions. However, activation differences between trained and untrained words were absent, suggesting a lack of cortical representations for whole words. Despite this, hippocampal responses provided some evidence for overnight consolidation of both words and objects learned on day 1. The comparison between neural activity for artificial words and objects showed extensive overlap with systems differentially engaged for real object naming and English word/pseudoword reading in the same participants. These findings therefore provide evidence that artificial learning paradigms offer an alternative method for studying the neural systems supporting language and literacy. Implications for literacy acquisition are discussed.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Adolescent; Adult; Association; Brain; Brain Mapping; Female; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Mental Recall; Names; Oxygen; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Phonetics; Photic Stimulation; Reaction Time; Reading; Verbal Learning; Vocabulary; Young Adult
PubMed: 27720949
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.09.025 -
Memory & Cognition Oct 2021Accessing semantic information has negative consequences for successive recovering attempts of similar information. For instance, in the course of picture-naming tasks,...
Accessing semantic information has negative consequences for successive recovering attempts of similar information. For instance, in the course of picture-naming tasks, the time required to name an object is determined by the total number of items from the same category that have already been named; naming latencies increase proportionally to the total number of semantically related words named previously. This phenomenon is called cumulative semantic cost (or interference). Two picture-naming experiments with children (4-11 years old, 229 participants) investigate whether having successfully named the previous within-category items is a necessary condition for the cumulative semantic cost to appear. We anticipated that younger children would have a larger rate of nonresponses compared with older children, reflecting the fact that younger children have not yet consolidated many lexical representations. Our results confirmed this prediction. Critically, we also observed that cumulative semantic cost was independent of having successfully retrieved previous within-category lexical items. Furthermore, picture trials for which the previous within-category item elicited a nonresponse showed the same amount of cost as those picture trials for which the previous within-category item elicited a correct naming event. Our findings indicate that it is the attempt to retrieve a lexical unit, and not the successful retrieval of a specific lexical unit, that causes semantic cost in picture naming. This cost can be explained by a mechanism of weakening the semantic-to-lexical mappings of semantic coordinate words. The findings are also discussed in the context of retrieval-induced forgetting effects in memory recall research.
Topics: Adolescent; Child; Child, Preschool; Humans; Names; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Semantics
PubMed: 33782859
DOI: 10.3758/s13421-021-01172-3 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... May 2022Infants begin learning the visual referents of nouns before their first birthday. Despite considerable empirical and theoretical effort, little is known about the...
Infants begin learning the visual referents of nouns before their first birthday. Despite considerable empirical and theoretical effort, little is known about the statistics of the experiences that enable infants to break into object–name learning. We used wearable sensors to collect infant experiences of visual objects and their heard names for 40 early-learned categories. The analyzed data were from one context that occurs multiple times a day and includes objects with early-learned names: mealtime. The statistics reveal two distinct timescales of experience. At the timescale of many mealtime episodes (n = 87), the visual categories were pervasively present, but naming of the objects in each of those categories was very rare. At the timescale of single mealtime episodes, names and referents did cooccur, but each name–referent pair appeared in very few of the mealtime episodes. The statistics are consistent with incremental learning of visual categories across many episodes and the rapid learning of name–object mappings within individual episodes. The two timescales are also consistent with a known cortical learning mechanism for one-episode learning of associations: new information, the heard name, is incorporated into well-established memories, the seen object category, when the new information cooccurs with the reactivation of that slowly established memory.
Topics: Humans; Infant; Language; Language Development; Learning; Names; Vocabulary
PubMed: 35482916
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2123239119 -
Nature Communications Sep 2019The current study uses big data to study prosocial behavior by analyzing donations made on the GoFundMe platform. In a dataset of more than $44 million in online...
The current study uses big data to study prosocial behavior by analyzing donations made on the GoFundMe platform. In a dataset of more than $44 million in online donations, we find that 21% were made while opting to be anonymous to the public, with survey results indicating that 11% of these anonymous donations (2.3% of all donations) are not attributable to any egoistic goal. Additionally, we find that donors gave significantly more to recipients who had the same last name as them. We find evidence that men and women donated more when more donors of the opposite sex were visible on the screen at the time of donating. Our results suggest that men and women were both significantly affected by the average donation amounts visible at the time of their decisions, and men were influenced more. We find that women expressed significantly more empathy than men in messages accompanying their donations.
Topics: Adult; Altruism; Charities; Decision Making; Female; Humans; Male; Motivation; Names; Online Systems; Social Behavior; Social Media; Surveys and Questionnaires
PubMed: 31481650
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11852-z -
Journal of Autism and Developmental... Mar 2021Diminished response to name, a potential early marker of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), may also indicate risk for other disorders characterized by attention problems,...
Diminished response to name, a potential early marker of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), may also indicate risk for other disorders characterized by attention problems, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Using a familial risk design, we examined whether response to name ability at 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months of age differed between three 36-month outcome groups: ASD, ADHD Concerns, or a Comparison group. Persistent differences between the ASD and Comparison groups were evident beginning at 12 months; differences between the ADHD Concerns and Comparison groups were evident between 12 and 18 months only. Results suggest that response to name may be a general marker for ASD and ADHD risk in infancy but a specific indicator of ASD by 24-months.
Topics: Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Child; Female; Humans; Infant; Male; Names; Social Adjustment
PubMed: 31974800
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-020-04369-8 -
Recognition and naming test of the Portuguese population for national and international celebrities.Behavior Research Methods Dec 2021Research on familiar faces has been conducted in different countries and resort to celebrities faces, stimuli that are highly constrained by geographic context and...
Research on familiar faces has been conducted in different countries and resort to celebrities faces, stimuli that are highly constrained by geographic context and cultural peculiarities, since many celebrities are only famous in particular countries. Despite their relevance to psychological research, there are no normative studies of celebrities' facial recognition in Portugal. We developed a database with 160 black and white pictures of famous persons' faces in this work. The data collection took place in two different studies. In study 1, participants were asked to recognize and name celebrity faces; while in study 2, celebrity names were rated for AoA, familiarity, and distinctiveness. Data were gathered from two different samples of Portuguese young adults aged between 18 and 25 years old, and both procedures were performed online through a questionnaire created in Qualtrics software. This database provides ratings of AoA, familiarity, facial distinctiveness, recognition rate, and naming rate for each celebrity, which will allow further selection of celebrities, based on these five attributes, for studies using Portuguese samples. Also, possible relationships between these five variables were analyzed and presented, highlighting facial distinctiveness as a predictor for both naming and recognition rate of celebrity faces.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Facial Recognition; Famous Persons; Humans; Names; Portugal; Recognition, Psychology; Young Adult
PubMed: 33826092
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01572-y -
Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology :... Mar 2018We examined BOLD (Blood-Oxygen-Level Dependent) activity reduction upon stimuli repetition of face-name pairs in older adults with amnestic (aMCI) and non-amnestic...
OBJECTIVE
We examined BOLD (Blood-Oxygen-Level Dependent) activity reduction upon stimuli repetition of face-name pairs in older adults with amnestic (aMCI) and non-amnestic (naMCI) mild cognitive impairment diagnosed using a comprehensive actuarial method, and relationships between activity reduction and behavioral indices.
METHOD
Twenty-nine cognitively healthy older adults (CHs) and 20 with MCI (n = 12 aMCI; n = 8 naMCI) underwent functional MRI event-related imaging, a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, and 1-year follow-up exam. During scanning, participants were shown face-name pairs 1-3 times and administered a post-scan recognition task.
RESULTS
The MCI group demonstrated less activity reduction upon repetition of face-name pairs within the MTL and other regions compared to CHs. Less activity reduction was associated with poorer Time 1 neuropsychological performance for the CH group and poorer post-scan recognition performance for the MCI group. Less activity reduction was related to poorer neuropsychological performance at Time 2 in the MCI group. Within MCIs, those with aMCI demonstrated less activity reduction upon repetition of face-name pairs than those with naMCI.
CONCLUSIONS
Distinct patterns of brain activity were identified in the MCI group compared to CHs, and aMCI compared to naMCI. Activated regions were not restricted to traditional memory circuitry, implicating a wider network of regions involved in the encoding of associative tasks. Findings add support to the hypothesis that lack of reduced BOLD activity reflects "faulty adaptation" to repeated stimuli and that reduction in activity represents successful encoding processes. They also provide further support for use of the face-name paradigm as a marker of prodromal Alzheimer's disease, and method to distinguish between MCI subtypes.
Topics: Adaptation, Psychological; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Association Learning; Cognition Disorders; Face; Female; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Names; Neuropsychological Tests; Oxygen; Recognition, Psychology; Regression Analysis
PubMed: 28655152
DOI: 10.1093/arclin/acx056 -
Molecular Autism 2016Impaired orienting to social stimuli is one of the core early symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, in contrast to faces, name processing has rarely been...
BACKGROUND
Impaired orienting to social stimuli is one of the core early symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, in contrast to faces, name processing has rarely been studied in individuals with ASD. Here, we investigated brain activity and functional connectivity associated with recognition of names in the high-functioning ASD group and in the control group.
METHODS
EEG was recorded in 15 young males with ASD and 15 matched one-to-one control individuals. EEG data were analyzed with the event-related potential (ERP), event-related desynchronization and event-related synchronization (ERD/S), as well as coherence and direct transfer function (DTF) methods. Four categories of names were presented visually: one's own, close-other's, famous, and unknown.
RESULTS
Differences between the ASD and control groups were found for ERP, coherence, and DTF. In individuals with ASD, P300 (a positive ERP component) to own-name and to a close-other's name were similar whereas in control participants, P300 to own-name was enhanced when compared to all other names. Analysis of coherence and DTF revealed disruption of fronto-posterior task-related connectivity in individuals with ASD within the beta range frequencies. Moreover, DTF indicated the directionality of those impaired connections-they were going from parieto-occipital to frontal regions. DTF also showed inter-group differences in short-range connectivity: weaker connections within the frontal region and stronger connections within the occipital region in the ASD group in comparison to the control group.
CONCLUSIONS
Our findings suggest a lack of the self-preference effect and impaired functioning of the attentional network during recognition of visually presented names in individuals with ASD.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Autistic Disorder; Brain; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Humans; Male; Names; Recognition, Psychology; Young Adult
PubMed: 27602201
DOI: 10.1186/s13229-016-0102-z -
Medical Humanities Dec 2021The word 'compassion' is ubiquitous in modern healthcare. Yet few writers agree on what the term means, and what makes it an essential trait in nursing. In this article,...
The word 'compassion' is ubiquitous in modern healthcare. Yet few writers agree on what the term means, and what makes it an essential trait in nursing. In this article, I take a historical approach to the problem of understanding compassion. Although many modern writers have assumed that compassion is a universal and unchanging trait, my research reveals that the term is extremely new to healthcare, only becoming widely used in 2009. Of course, even if compassion is a new term in nursing, the concept could have previously existed under another name. I thus consider the emotional qualities associated with the ideal nurse during the interwar period in the UK. While compassion was not mentioned in nursing guidance in this era another term, 'sympathy', made frequent appearance. The interwar concept of sympathy, however, differs significantly from the modern one of compassion. Sympathy was not an isolated concept. In the interwar era, it was most often linked to the nurse's tact or diplomacy. A closer investigation of this link highlights the emphasis laid on patient management in nursing in this period, and the way class differentials in emotion between nurse and patient were considered essential to the efficient running of hospitals. This model of sympathy is very different from the way the modern 'compassion' is associated with patient satisfaction or choice. Although contemporary healthcare policy assumes 'compassion' to be a timeless, personal characteristic rooted in the individual behaviours and choices of the nurse, this article concludes that compassionate nursing is a recent construct. Moreover, the performance of compassion relies on conditions and resources that often lie outside of the nurse's personal control. Compassion in nursing-in theory and in practice-is inseparable from its specific contemporary contexts, just as sympathy was in the interwar period.
Topics: Delivery of Health Care; Emotions; Empathy; Humans
PubMed: 32732261
DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2019-011842