Empowering Self-Care: Caring Things in Alice Dunbar-Nelson's 1890s "New Woman" Short Fiction

Alice Dunbar-Nelson is mostly remembered as a poet, activist, and ex-wife of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her volume The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories (1899) has been largely overshadowed as a result. Yet, the collection contains a portfolio of heroines analogous and contemporaneous to the famed New Woman figure of the fin de siècle. In this article, I consider Dunbar-Nelson's heroines in light of their New Woman-esque agency and autonomy as they find remedies and power in objects and materials steeped in New Orleans's cultural heritage. Ceded neither social nor political self-governance nor domestic comfort, this article reads these transcendental, metaphysical objects as sources of self-care. With close analysis of "The Goodness of St. Rocque," "Tony's Wife," and "Little Miss Sophie," I argue that Dunbar-Nelson's protagonists exert influence over their lives, specifically in the negotiation of romantic relationships, through voodoo charms, Catholic candles, tarot cards, sewing machines, and knitting needles. Covering courtship, break-ups, and unhappy marriages, I demonstrate the ways in which these empowering spiritual objects respond to health concerns, including malnutrition and domestic violence, in turn, situating them as alternatives to patriarchal and historically racist medical institutions. Valorizing the cultural milieu of New Orleans and the customs of the Caribbean and European heritage, and thereby conveying Dunbar-Nelson's resistance to white and male supremacist ideologies in late-nineteenth-century Southern America, the article ultimately assesses the parallels with (predominantly white) New Woman fiction, through shared themes of fraught heterosexual dynamics and women's declining health.

Scene context is predictive of unconstrained object similarity judgments

What makes objects alike in the human mind? Computational approaches for characterizing object similarity have largely focused on the visual forms of objects or their linguistic associations. However, intuitive notions of object similarity may depend heavily on contextual reasoning-that is, objects may be grouped together in the mind if they occur in the context of similar scenes or events. Using large-scale analyses of natural scene statistics and human behavior, we found that a computational model of the associations between objects and their scene contexts is strongly predictive of how humans spontaneously group objects by similarity. Specifically, we learned contextual prototypes for a diverse set of object categories by taking the average response of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to the scene contexts in which the objects typically occurred. In behavioral experiments, we found that contextual prototypes were strongly predictive of human similarity judgments for a large set of objects and rivaled the performance of models based on CNN representations of the objects themselves or word embeddings for their names. Together, our findings reveal the remarkable degree to which the natural statistics of context predict commonsense notions of object similarity.

Objects are selected for attention based upon meaning during passive scene viewing

While object meaning has been demonstrated to guide attention during active scene viewing and object salience guides attention during passive viewing, it is unknown whether object meaning predicts attention in passive viewing tasks and whether attention during passive viewing is more strongly related to meaning or salience. To answer this question, we used a mixed modeling approach where we computed the average meaning and physical salience of objects in scenes while statistically controlling for the roles of object size and eccentricity. Using eye-movement data from aesthetic judgment and memorization tasks, we then tested whether fixations are more likely to land on high-meaning objects than low-meaning objects while controlling for object salience, size, and eccentricity. The results demonstrated that fixations are more likely to be directed to high meaning objects than low meaning objects regardless of these other factors. Further analyses revealed that fixation durations were positively associated with object meaning irrespective of the other object properties. Overall, these findings provide the first evidence that objects are, in part, selected by meaning for attentional selection during passive scene viewing.

Intentional Understanding Through Action Coordination in Early Triadic Interactions

The ability to understand the behaviour of other people in intentional terms has been traditionally explained by resorting to inferential mechanisms that would allow individuals to access the internal mental states of others. In recent years, the second-person perspective has established itself as a theoretical alternative to traditional models. It argues that intentional understanding is an embodied, natural, and immediate process that occurs in situations such as face-to-face early dyadic interactions between adults and infants. In this article, we argue that the way in which the second-person perspective regards body and object is problematic. Based on psychological evidence that demonstrates the constitutive role of the body and objects for cognitive development, we propose the foundations of an ecological-enactive, semiotic and pragmatic model of intentional understanding. We argue that intentional understanding should be conceived as the skilful coordination of behaviours that subjects come to enact in interactive settings, following the dynamics of bodily and material practices that have acquired normative force over time.

Damage to the human dentate gyrus impairs the perceptual discrimination of complex, novel objects

The hippocampus (HPC), and the dentate gyrus (DG) subregion in particular, is purported to be a pattern separator, orthogonally representing similar information so that distinct memories may be formed. The HPC may also be involved in complex perceptual discrimination. It is unclear if this role is limited to spatial/scene stimuli or extends to the discrimination of objects. Also unclear is whether the DG itself contributes to pattern separation beyond memory. BL, an individual with bilateral DG lesions, was previously shown to have poor discrimination of similar, everyday objects in memory. Here, we demonstrate that BL's deficit extends to complex perceptual discrimination of novel objects. Specifically, BL was presented with closely matched possible and impossible objects, which give rise to fundamentally different 3D perceptual representations despite being visually similar. BL performed significantly worse than controls when asked to select an odd object (e.g., impossible) amongst three identical counterpart objects (e.g., possible) presented at different rotations. His deficit was also evident in an atypical eye fixation pattern during this task. In contrast, BL's performance was indistinguishable from that of controls on other tasks involving the same objects, indicating that he could visually differentiate the object pairs, that he perceived the objects holistically in 3D, and that he has only a mild weakness in categorizing object possibility. Furthermore, his performance on standardized neuropsychological measures indicated intact mental rotation, visual-spatial attention, and working memory (visual and auditory). Collectively, these results provide evidence that the DG is necessary for complex perceptual discrimination of novel objects, indicating that the DG might function as a generic pattern separator of a wide range of stimuli within high-level perception, and that its role is not limited to memory.

Context sensitivity and the semantics of count nouns in the evaluation of partial objects by children and adults

Previous research has documented that children count spatiotemporally-distinct partial objects as if they were whole objects. This behavior extends beyond counting to inclusion of partial objects in assessment and comparisons of quantities. Multiple accounts of this performance have been proposed: children and adults differ qualitatively in their conceptual representations, children lack the processing skills to immediately individuate entities in a given domain, or children cannot readily access relevant linguistic alternatives for the target count noun. We advance a new account, appealing to theoretical proposals about underspecification in nominal semantics and the role of the discourse context. Our results demonstrate that there are limits to which children allow partial objects to serve as wholes, and that under certain conditions, adult performance resembles that of children by allowing in partial objects. We propose that children's behavior is in fact licensed by the inherent context dependence of count nouns.

Domain-specific connectivity drives the organization of object knowledge in the brain

The goal of this chapter is to review neuropsychological and functional MRI findings that inform a theory of the causes of functional specialization for semantic categories within occipito-temporal cortex-the ventral visual processing pathway. The occipito-temporal pathway supports visual object processing and recognition. The theoretical framework that drives this review considers visual object recognition through the lens of how "downstream" systems interact with the outputs of visual recognition processes. Those downstream processes include conceptual interpretation, grasping and object use, navigating and orienting in an environment, physical reasoning about the world, and inferring future actions and the inner mental states of agents. The core argument of this chapter is that innately constrained connectivity between occipito-temporal areas and other regions of the brain is the basis for the emergence of neural specificity for a limited number of semantic domains in the brain.

Visuomotor control in mice and primates

We conduct a comparative evaluation of the visual systems from the retina to the muscles of the mouse and the macaque monkey noting the differences and similarities between these two species. The topics covered include (1) visual-field overlap, (2) visual spatial resolution, (3) V1 cortical point-image [i.e., V1 tissue dedicated to analyzing a unit receptive field], (4) object versus motion encoding, (5) oculomotor range, (6) eye, head, and body movement coordination, and (7) neocortical and cerebellar function. We also discuss blindsight in rodents and primates which provides insights on how the neocortex mediates conscious vision in these species. This review is timely because the field of visuomotor neurophysiology is expanding beyond the macaque monkey to include the mouse; there is therefore a need for a comparative analysis between these two species on how the brain generates visuomotor responses.

The multimodality of infant's rhythmic movements as a modulator of the interaction with their caregivers

Children's rhythmic movements during the first year of life possess a meaningful predictive validity for later communicative development. However, their role within adult-child interactions is still underexplored. In this study, we examined whether children's rhythmic movements were significantly responded by adults and the role of multimodality and object use in this process. We observed 22 dyads of 9-month-olds and their parents in natural play interactions. Infants' multimodal rhythmic movements increased the probability of adult responding. Adults offered different types of responses and significantly followed the child's focus of attention. These dynamics could support communicative development by promoting joint attention frameworks.

The objects, agents, and tools of Chinese co-governance on air pollution: a review

The social and economic development in China has not only made a series of great achievements but also suffered from increasingly serious air pollution. It is of great significance to explore the co-governance mechanism of air pollution in order to promote high-quality development and the construction of "beautiful China." Based on an analysis using the concept of co-governance, this paper reviews the research from four aspects: the multi-object relationships, multi-agent framework, and the co-governance technical tools and policy tools. The results show that the current research has many deficiencies: a lack of research on the size, direction, and driving factors of the correlation of objects; the construction of the multi-agent framework focused only on concepts and lacking the design of core mechanisms; evaluating only the effect of tools but ignoring the optimal combination of governance tools, and paying attention only to the traditional pollutants and disregarding the latest air pollution. Accordingly, this paper finds that the research should be expanded from four aspects, which include taking into account the co-governance of new air pollution, clarifying the relationship between the various types of air pollutants and the driving factors, building a multi-disciplinary research framework for co-governance, and optimizing the combination of governance policies and technical tools in order to realize high-quality development of China.

2D or not 2D? An fMRI study of how dogs visually process objects

Given humans' habitual use of screens, they rarely consider potential differences when viewing two-dimensional (2D) stimuli and real-world versions of dimensional stimuli. Dogs also have access to many forms of screens and touchpads, with owners even subscribing to dog-directed content. Humans understand that 2D stimuli are representations of real-world objects, but do dogs? In canine cognition studies, 2D stimuli are almost always used to study what is normally 3D, like faces, and may assume that both 2D and 3D stimuli are represented in the brain the same way. Here, we used awake fMRI in 15 dogs to examine the neural mechanisms underlying dogs' perception of two- and three-dimensional objects after the dogs were trained on either two- or three-dimensional versions of the objects. Activation within reward processing regions and parietal cortex of the dog brain to 2D and 3D versions of objects was determined by their training experience, as dogs trained on one dimensionality showed greater differential activation within the dimension on which they were trained. These results show that dogs do not automatically generalize between two- and three-dimensional versions of object stimuli and suggest that future research consider the implicit assumptions when using pictures or videos.

Temporal dynamics of visual representations in the infant brain

Tools from computational neuroscience have facilitated the investigation of the neural correlates of mental representations. However, access to the representational content of neural activations early in life has remained limited. We asked whether patterns of neural activity elicited by complex visual stimuli (animals, human body) could be decoded from EEG data gathered from 12-15-month-old infants and adult controls. We assessed pairwise classification accuracy at each time-point after stimulus onset, for individual infants and adults. Classification accuracies rose above chance in both groups, within 500 ms. In contrast to adults, neural representations in infants were not linearly separable across visual domains. Representations were similar within, but not across, age groups. These findings suggest a developmental reorganization of visual representations between the second year of life and adulthood and provide a promising proof-of-concept for the feasibility of decoding EEG data within-subject to assess how the infant brain dynamically represents visual objects.

An investigation of the effect of temporal contiguity training on size-tolerant representations in object-selective cortex

The human visual system has a remarkable ability to reliably identify objects across variations in appearance, such as variations in viewpoint, lighting and size. Here we used fMRI in humans to test whether temporal contiguity training with natural and altered image dynamics can respectively build and break neural size tolerance for objects. Participants (N ​= ​23) were presented with sequences of images of "growing" and "shrinking" objects. In half of the trials, the object also changed identity when the size change happened. According to the temporal contiguity hypothesis, and studies with a similar paradigm in monkeys, this training process should alter size tolerance. After the training phase, BOLD responses to each of the object images were measured in the scanner. Neural patterns in LOC and V1 contained information on size, similarity and identity. In LOC, the representation of object identity was partially invariant to changes in size. However, temporal contiguity training did not affect size tolerance in LOC. Size tolerance in human object-selective cortex is more robust to variations in input statistics than expected based on prior work in monkeys supporting the temporal contiguity hypothesis.

A dataset for evaluating one-shot categorization of novel object classes

With the advent of deep convolutional neural networks, machines now rival humans in terms of object categorization. The neural networks solve categorization with a hierarchical organization that shares a striking resemblance to their biological counterpart, leading to their status as a standard model of object recognition in biological vision. Despite training on thousands of images of object categories, however, machine-learning networks are poorer generalizers, often fooled by adversarial images with very simple image manipulations that humans easily distinguish as a false image. Humans, on the other hand, can generalize object classes from very few samples. Here we provide a dataset of novel object classifications in humans. We gathered thousands of crowd-sourced human responses to novel objects embedded either with 1 or 16 context sample(s). Human decisions and stimuli together have the potential to be re-used (1) as a tool to better understand the nature of the gap in category learning from few samples between human and machine, and (2) as a benchmark of generalization across machine learning networks.

One-shot categorization of novel object classes in humans

One aspect of human vision unmatched by machines is the capacity to generalize from few samples. Observers tend to know when novel objects are in the same class despite large differences in shape, material or viewpoint. A major challenge in studying such generalization is that participants can see each novel sample only once. To overcome this, we used crowdsourcing to obtain responses from 500 human observers on 20 novel object classes, with each stimulus compared to 1 or 16 related objects. The results reveal that humans generalize from sparse data in highly systematic ways with the number and variance of the samples. We compared human responses to 'ShapeComp', an image-computable model based on >100 shape descriptors, and 'AlexNet', a convolution neural network that roughly matches humans at recognizing 1000 categories of real-world objects. With 16 samples, the models were consistent with human responses without free parameters. Thus, when there are a sufficient number of samples, observers rely on shallow but efficient processes based on a fixed set of features. With 1 sample, however, the models required different feature weights for each object. This suggests that one-shot categorization involves more sophisticated processes that actively identify the unique characteristics underlying each object class.

Retrospective Attention in Short-Term Memory Has a Lasting Effect on Long-Term Memory Across Age

OBJECTIVES

Declines in both short- and long-term memory are typical of healthy aging. Recent findings suggest that retrodictive attentional cues ("retro-cues") that indicate the location of to-be-probed items in short-term memory (STM) have a lasting impact on long-term memory (LTM) performance in young adults. Whether older adults can also use retro-cues to facilitate both STM and LTM is unknown.

METHOD

Young and older adults performed a visual STM task in which spatially informative retro-cues or noninformative neutral-cues were presented during STM maintenance of real-world objects. We tested participants' memory at both STM and LTM delays for objects that were previously cued with retrodictive or neutral-cues during STM order to measure the lasting impact of retrospective attention on LTM.

RESULTS

Older adults showed reduced STM and LTM capacity compared to young adults. However, they showed similar magnitude retro-cue memory benefits as young adults at both STM and LTM delays.

DISCUSSION

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate whether retro-cues in STM facilitate the encoding of objects into LTM such that they are more likely to be subsequently retrieved by older adults. Our results support the idea that retrospective attention can be an effective means by which older adults can improve their STM and LTM performance, even in the context of reduced memory capacity.

Different features are stored independently in visual working memory but mediated by object-based representations

The question of whether visual working memory (VWM) stores individual features or bound objects as basic units is actively debated. Evidence exists for both feature-based and object-based storages, as well as hierarchically organized representations maintaining both types of information at different levels. One argument for feature-based storage is that features belonging to different dimensions (e.g., color and orientations) can be stored without interference suggesting independent capacities for every dimension. Here, we studied whether the lack of cross-dimensional interference reflects genuinely independent feature storages or mediated by common objects. In three experiments, participants remembered and recalled the colors and orientations of sets of objects. We independently manipulated set sizes within each feature dimension (making colors and orientations either identical or differing across objects). Critically, we assigned to-be-remembered colors and orientations either to same spatially integrated or to different spatially separated objects. We found that the precision and recall probability within each dimension was not affected by set size manipulations in a different dimension when the features belonged to integrated objects. However, manipulations with color set sizes did affect orientation memory when the features were separated. We conclude therefore that different feature dimensions can be encoded and stored independently but the advantage of the independent storages are mediated at the object-based level. This conclusion is consistent with the idea of hierarchically organized VWM.

Visual perception of shape-transforming processes: 'Shape Scission'

Shape-deforming processes (e.g., squashing, bending, twisting) can radically alter objects' shapes. After such a transformation, some features are due to the object's original form, while others are due to the transformation, yet it is challenging to separate the two. We tested whether observers can distinguish the causal origin of different features, teasing apart the characteristics of the original shape from those imposed by transformations, a process we call 'shape scission'. Using computer graphics, we created 8 unfamiliar objects and subjected each to 8 transformations (e.g., "twisted", "inflated", "melted"). One group of participants named transformations consistently. A second group arranged cards depicting the objects into classes according to either (i) the original shape or (ii) the type of transformation. They could do this almost perfectly, suggesting that they readily distinguish the causal origin of shape features. Another group used a digital painting interface to indicate which locations on the objects appeared transformed, with responses suggesting they can localise features caused by transformations. Finally, we parametrically varied the magnitude of the transformations, and asked another group to rate the degree of transformation. Ratings correlated strongly with transformation magnitude with a tendency to overestimate small magnitudes. Responses were predicted by both the magnitude and area affected by the transformation. Together, the findings suggest that observers can scission object shapes into original shape and transformation features and access the resulting representational layers at will.

Kindergarten children's event memory: the role of action prediction in remembering

In two studies, kindergarteners participated in a series of staged events immediately preceded by pre-event interactions that were designed to identify factors relevant to improving recall. The events were based on preschool science-related activities and the experimental pre-event involved predicting actions to occur during a target event, manipulating types of cues available to support these predictive inferences. Action prediction did improve free recall, and effects may have influenced attentional processes evoked by actions generated and enacted. Although children effectively used outcome cues to predict actions, a one-to-one relation between pre-event action prediction patterns and recall did not occur. In combination with other findings, this result may suggest that increased attention during the target event may have supported the pre-event effect rather than integration of information between the pre-event and target event. Early childhood teachers engaging children in science activities should provide explicit cues to enhance usefulness of preparatory activities for recall.

Action memory and knowledge-based cuing in school-aged children: The effect of object presentation and semantic integration

Research into memory has found that declarative knowledge provides rich information about the world and improved memory performance. The present research investigates the effects of knowledge-based cues on memory for action events and on the enactment effect. Cued recall of action phrases was examined in four groups of 8-14-year-olds (410 children in total). The object cues (i.e., real vs. imaginary objects) and semantic relational cues (i.e., well-integrated vs. poorly integrated items) were manipulated in three encoding conditions: verbal tasks, experimenter-performed tasks, and subject-performed tasks. Results indicate that enacted encoding has a recall advantage over verbal encoding regardless of the cue manipulations, though presenting objects and semantic-integrated items can moderate the enactment effect. In addition, providing further information about prior knowledge can directly influence memory performance across age groups. These results are discussed in relation to the effect of knowledge-based information in facilitating memory strategies and cognitive processing in school-aged children.

Dissociable intrinsic functional networks support noun-object and verb-action processing

The processing mechanism of verbs-actions and nouns-objects is a central topic of language research, with robust evidence for behavioral dissociation. The neural basis for these two major word and/or conceptual classes, however, remains controversial. Two experiments were conducted to study this question from the network perspective. Experiment 1 found that nodes of the same class, obtained through task-evoked brain imaging meta-analyses, were more strongly connected with each other than nodes of different classes during resting-state, forming segregated network modules. Experiment 2 examined the behavioral relevance of these intrinsic networks using data from 88 brain-damaged patients, finding that across patients the relative strength of functional connectivity of the two networks significantly correlated with the noun-object vs. verb-action relative behavioral performances. In summary, we found that verbs-actions and nouns-objects are supported by separable intrinsic functional networks and that the integrity of such networks accounts for the relative noun-object- and verb-action-selective deficits.

A dissociation between small and large numbers in young children's ability to "solve for x" in non-symbolic math problems

Solving for an unknown addend in problems like 5+x=17 is challenging for children. Yet, previous work (Kibbe & Feigenson, 2015) found that even before formal math education, young children, aged 4- to 6-years, succeeded when problems were presented using non-symbolic collections of objects rather than symbolic digits. This reveals that the Approximate Number System (ANS) can support pre-algebraic intuitions. Here, we asked whether children also could intuitively "solve for x" when problems contained arrays of four or fewer objects that encouraged representations of individual objects instead of ANS representations. In Experiment 1, we first confirmed that children could solve for an unknown addend with larger quantities, using the ANS. Next, in Experiment 2a, we presented addend-unknown problems containing arrays of four or fewer objects (e.g., 1+x=3). This time, despite the identical task conditions, children were unable to solve for the unknown addend. In Experiment 2b, we replicated this failure with a new sample of children. Finally, in Experiment 3, we confirmed that children's failures in Experiments 2a and b were not due to lack of motivation to compute with small arrays, or to the discriminability of the quantities used: children succeeded at solving for an unknown sum with arrays containing four or fewer objects. Together, these results suggest that children's ability to intuitively solve for an unknown addend may be limited to problems that can be represented using the ANS.

To bind or not to bind, that's the wrong question: Features and objects coexist in visual short-term memory

In three experiments, we investigated whether features and whole-objects can be represented simultaneously in visual short-term memory (VSTM). Participants were presented with a memory set of colored shapes; we probed either for the constituent features or for the whole object, and analyzed retrieval dynamics (cumulative response time distributions). In our first experiment, we used whole-object probes that recombined features from the memory display; we found that subjects' data conformed to a kitchen-line model, showing that they used whole-object representations for the matching process. In the second experiment, we encouraged independent-feature representations by using probes that used features not present in the memory display; subjects' data conformed to the race-model inequality, showing that they used independent-feature representations for the matching process. In a final experiment, we used both types of probes; subjects now used both types of representations, depending on the nature of the probe. Combined, our three experiments suggest that both feature and whole-object representations can coexist in VSTM.

Visual high-level regions respond to high-level stimulus content in the absence of low-level confounds

High-level regions of the ventral stream exhibit strong category selectivity to stimuli such as faces, houses, or objects. However, recent studies suggest that at least part of this selectivity stems from low-level differences inherent to images of the different categories. For example, visual outdoor and indoor scenes as well as houses differ in spatial frequency, rectilinearity and obliqueness when compared to face or object images. Correspondingly, scene responsive para-hippocampal place area (PPA) showed strong preference to low-level properties of visual scenes also in the absence of high-level scene content. This raises the question whether all high-level responses in PPA, the fusiform face area (FFA), or the object-responsive lateral occipital compex (LOC) may actually be explained by systematic differences in low-level features. In the present study we contrasted two classes of simple stimuli consisting of ten rectangles each. While both were matched in visual low-level features only one class of rectangle arrangements gave rise to a percept compatible with a high-level 3D layout such as a scene or an object. We found that areas PPA, transverse occipital sulcus (TOS, also referred to as occipital place area, OPA), as well as FFA and LOC showed robust responses to the visual scene class compared to the low-level matched control. Our results suggest that visual category responsive regions are not purely driven by low-level visual features but also by the high-level perceptual stimulus interpretation.

A meta-analysis of fMRI decoding: Quantifying influences on human visual population codes

Information in the human visual system is encoded in the activity of distributed populations of neurons, which in turn is reflected in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Over the last fifteen years, activity patterns underlying a variety of perceptual features and objects have been decoded from the brains of participants in fMRI scans. Through a novel multi-study meta-analysis, we have analyzed and modeled relations between decoding strength in the visual ventral stream, and stimulus and methodological variables that differ across studies. We report findings that suggest: (i) several organizational principles of the ventral stream, including a gradient of pattern granulation and an increasing abstraction of neural representations as one proceeds anteriorly; (ii) how methodological choices affect decoding strength. The data also show that studies with stronger decoding performance tend to be reported in higher-impact journals, by authors with a higher h-index. As well as revealing principles of regional processing, our results and approach can help investigators select from the thousands of design and analysis options in an empirical manner, to optimize future studies of fMRI decoding.

Morphing technique reveals intact perception of object motion and disturbed perception of emotional expressions by low-functioning adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

A morphing procedure has been designed to compare directly the perception of emotional expressions and of moving objects. Morphing tasks were presented to 12 low-functioning teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (LF ASD) compared to 12 developmental age-matched typical children and a group presenting ceiling performance. In a first study, when presented with morphed stimuli of objects and emotional faces, LF ASD showed an intact perception of object change of state together with an impaired perception of emotional facial change of state. In a second study, an eye-tracker recorded visual exploration of morphed emotional stimuli displayed by a human face and a robotic set-up. Facing the morphed robotic stimuli, LF ASD displayed equal duration of fixations toward emotional regions and toward mechanical sources of motion, while the typical groups tracked the emotional regions only. Altogether the findings of the two studies suggest that individuals with ASD process motion rather than emotional signals when facing facial expressions.

Spatial attention enhances object coding in local and distributed representations of the lateral occipital complex

The modulation of neural activity in visual cortex is thought to be a key mechanism of visual attention. The investigation of attentional modulation in high-level visual areas, however, is hampered by the lack of clear tuning or contrast response functions. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study we therefore systematically assessed how small voxel-wise biases in object preference across hundreds of voxels in the lateral occipital complex were affected when attention was directed to objects. We found that the strength of attentional modulation depended on a voxel's object preference in the absence of attention, a pattern indicative of an amplificatory mechanism. Our results show that such attentional modulation effectively increased the mutual information between voxel responses and object identity. Further, these local modulatory effects led to improved information-based object readout at the level of multi-voxel activation patterns and to an increased reproducibility of these patterns across repeated presentations. We conclude that attentional modulation enhances object coding in local and distributed object representations of the lateral occipital complex.

Array heterogeneity prevents catastrophic forgetting in infants

Working memory is limited in adults and infants. But unlike adults, infants whose working memory capacity is exceeded often fail in a particularly striking way: they do not represent any of the presented objects, rather than simply remembering as many objects as they can and ignoring anything further (Feigenson & Carey, 2003, 2005). Here we explored the nature of this "catastrophic forgetting," asking whether stimuli themselves modulate the way in which infants' memory fails. We showed 13-month old infants object arrays that either were within or that exceeded working memory capacity--but, unlike previous experiments, presented objects with contrasting features. Although previous studies have repeatedly documented infants' failure to represent four identical hidden objects, in Experiments 1 and 2 we found that infants who saw four contrasting objects hidden, and then retrieved just two of the four, successfully continued searching for the missing objects. Perceptual contrast between objects sufficed to drive this success; infants succeeded regardless of whether the different objects were contrastively labeled, and regardless of whether the objects were semantically familiar or completely novel. In Experiment 3 we explored the nature of this surprising success, asking whether array heterogeneity actually expanded infants' working memory capacity or rather prevented catastrophic forgetting. We found that infants successfully continued searching after seeing four contrasting objects hidden and retrieving two of them, but not after retrieving three of them. This suggests that, like adults, infants were able to remember up to, but not beyond, the limits of their working memory capacity when representing heterogeneous arrays.

Picturing words? Sensorimotor cortex activation for printed words in child and adult readers

Learning to read involves associating abstract visual shapes with familiar meanings. Embodiment theories suggest that word meaning is at least partially represented in distributed sensorimotor networks in the brain (Barsalou, 2008; Pulvermueller, 2013). We explored how reading comprehension develops by tracking when and how printed words start activating these "semantic" sensorimotor representations as children learn to read. Adults and children aged 7-10 years showed clear category-specific cortical specialization for tool versus animal pictures during a one-back categorisation task. Thus, sensorimotor representations for these categories were in place at all ages. However, co-activation of these same brain regions by the visual objects' written names was only present in adults, even though all children could read and comprehend all presented words, showed adult-like task performance, and older children were proficient readers. It thus takes years of training and expert reading skill before spontaneous processing of printed words' sensorimotor meanings develops in childhood.

Is social inhibition of return due to action co-representation?

When two individuals alternate reaching responses to visual targets presented on a shared workspace, one individual is slower to respond to targets occupying the same position as their partner's previous response. This phenomenon is thought to be due to processes that inhibit the initiation of a movement to a location recently acted upon. However, two distinct forms of the inhibition account have been posited, one based on inhibition of an action, the other based on inhibition of an action and location. Furthermore, an additional recent explanation suggests the phenomenon is due to mechanisms that give rise to action congruency effects. Thus the three different theories differ in the degree to which action co-representation plays a role in the effect. The aim of the present work was to examine these competing accounts. Three experiments demonstrated that when identical actions are made, the effect is modulated by the configuration of the visual stimuli acted upon and the perceptual demands of the task. In addition, when the co-actors perform different actions to the same target, the effect is still observed. These findings support the hypothesis that this particular joint action phenomenon is generated via social cues that induce location-based inhibition of return rather than being due to shared motor co-representations.