A developmental dissociation of view-dependent and view-invariant object recognition in adolescence

Spatial generalization skills in school children aged 8-16 were studied with regard to unfamiliar objects that had been previously learned in a cross-modal priming and learning paradigm. We observed a developmental dissociation with younger children recognizing objects only from previously learnt perspectives whereas older children generalized acquired object knowledge to new viewpoints as well. Haptic and - to a lesser extent - visual priming improved spatial generalization in all but the youngest children. The data supports the idea of dissociable, view-dependent and view-invariant object representations with different developmental trajectories that are subject to modulatory effects of priming. Late-developing areas in the parietal or the prefrontal cortex may account for the retarded onset of view-invariant object recognition. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Developmental trajectories of part-based and configural object recognition in adolescence.

Three experiments assessed the development of children's part and configural (part-relational) processing in object recognition during adolescence. In total, 312 school children aged 7-16 years and 80 adults were tested in 3-alternative forced choice (3-AFC) tasks. They judged the correct appearance of upright and inverted presented familiar animals, artifacts, and newly learned multipart objects, which had been manipulated either in terms of individual parts or part relations. Manipulation of part relations was constrained to either metric (animals, artifacts, and multipart objects) or categorical (multipart objects only) changes. For animals and artifacts, even the youngest children were close to adult levels for the correct recognition of an individual part change. By contrast, it was not until 11-12 years of age that they achieved similar levels of performance with regard to altered metric part relations. For the newly learned multipart objects, performance was equivalent throughout the tested age range for upright presented stimuli in the case of categorical part-specific and part-relational changes. In the case of metric manipulations, the results confirmed the data pattern observed for animals and artifacts. Together, the results provide converging evidence, with studies of face recognition, for a surprisingly late consolidation of configural-metric relative to part-based object recognition.

Earlier development of analytical than holistic object recognition in adolescence

Background. Previous research has shown that object recognition may develop well into late childhood and adolescence. The present study extends that research and reveals novel differences in holistic and analytic recognition performance in 7-12 year olds compared to that seen in adults. We interpret our data within a hybrid model of object recognition that proposes two parallel routes for recognition (analytic vs. holistic) modulated by attention. Methodology / Principal Findings. Using a repetition-priming paradigm, we found in Experiment 1 that children showed no holistic priming, but only analytic priming. Given that holistic priming might be thought to be more ‘primitive’, we confirmed in Experiment 2 that our surprising finding was not because children’s analytic recognition was merely a result of name repetition. Conclusions / Significance. Our results suggest a developmental primacy of analytic object recognition. By contrast, holistic object recognition skills appear to emerge with a much more protracted trajectory extending into late adolescence.

Developmental dissociation of analytical and holistic object recognition in adolescence

Previous research (e.g., Jüttner et al, 2013, Developmental Psychology, 49, 161-176) has shown that object recognition may develop well into late childhood and adolescence. The present study extends that research and reveals novel di erences in holistic and analytic recognition performance in 7-11 year olds compared to that seen in adults. We interpret our data within Hummel’s hybrid model of object recognition (Hummel, 2001, Visual Cognition, 8, 489-517) that proposes two parallel routes for recognition (analytic vs. holistic) modulated by attention. Using a repetition-priming paradigm, we found in Experiment 1 that children showed no holistic priming, but only analytic priming. Given that holistic priming might be thought to be more ‘primitive’, we confirmed in Experiment 2 that our surprising finding was not because children’s analytic recognition was merely a result of name repetition. Our results suggest a developmental primacy of analytic object recognition. By contrast, holistic object recognition skills appear to emerge with a much more protracted trajectory extending into late adolescence

Developmental commonalities between object and face recognition in adolescence

In the visual perception literature, the recognition of faces has often been contrasted with that of non-face objects, in terms of differences with regard to the role of parts, part relations and holistic processing. However, recent evidence from developmental studies has begun to blur this sharp distinction. We review evidence for a protracted development of object recognition that is reminiscent of the well-documented slow maturation observed for faces. The prolonged development manifests itself in a retarded processing of metric part relations as opposed to that of individual parts and offers surprising parallels to developmental accounts of face recognition, even though the interpretation of the data is less clear with regard to holistic processing. We conclude that such results might indicate functional commonalities between the mechanisms underlying the recognition of faces and non-face objects, which are modulated by different task requirements in the two stimulus domains.

Dissociation of detection and evaluation of facial expressions in adolescence

Holistic face perception, i.e. the mandatory integration of featural information across the face, hasbeen considered to play a key role when recognizing emotional face expressions (e.g., Tanaka et al.,2002). However, despite their early onset holistic processing skills continue to improvethroughout adolescence (e.g., Schwarzer et al., 2010) and therefore might modulate theevaluation of facial expressions. We tested this hypothesis using an attentional blink (AB)paradigm to compare the impact of happy, fearful and neutral faces in adolescents (10–13 years)and adults on subsequently presented neutral target stimuli (animals, plants and objects) in a rapidserial visual presentation stream. Adolescents and adults were found to be equally reliable whenreporting the emotional expression of the face stimuli. However, the detection of emotional butnot neutral faces imposed a significantly stronger AB effect on the detection of the neutral targetsin adults compared to adolescents. In a control experiment we confirmed that adolescents ratedemotional faces lower in terms of valence and arousal than adults. The results suggest a protracteddevelopment of the ability to evaluate facial expressions that might be attributed to the latematuration of holistic processing skills.

Dissociable patterns of neural activity during response inhibition in depressed adolescents with and without suicidal behavior

Objectives - Impaired attentional control and behavioral control are implicated in adult suicidal behavior. Little is known about the functional integrity of neural circuitry supporting these processes in suicidal behavior in adolescence. Method - Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used in 15 adolescent suicide attempters with a history of major depressive disorder (ATTs), 15 adolescents with a history of depressive disorder but no suicide attempt (NATs), and 14 healthy controls (HCs) during the performance of a well-validated go-no-go response inhibition and motor control task that measures attentional and behavioral control and has been shown to activate prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and parietal cortical circuitries. Questionnaires assessed symptoms and standardized interviews characterized suicide attempts. Results - A 3 group by 2 condition (go-no-go response inhibition versus go motor control blocks) block-design whole-brain analysis (p < .05, corrected) showed that NATs showed greater activity than ATTs in the right anterior cingulate gyrus (p = .008), and that NATs, but not ATTs, showed significantly greater activity than HCs in the left insula (p = .004) to go-no-go response inhibition blocks. Conclusions - Although ATTs did not show differential patterns of neural activity from HCs during the go-no-go response inhibition blocks, ATTs and NATs showed differential activation of the right anterior cingulate gyrus during response inhibition. These findings indicate that suicide attempts during adolescence are not associated with abnormal activity in response inhibition neural circuitry. The differential patterns of activity in response inhibition neural circuitry in ATTs and NATs, however, suggest different neural mechanisms for suicide attempt versus major depressive disorder in general in adolescence that should be a focus of further study.

Investigation of dyslexia and SLI risk variants in reading- and language-impaired subjects

Dyslexia (or reading disability) and specific language impairment (or SLI) are common childhood disorders that show considerable co-morbidity and diagnostic overlaps and have been suggested to share some genetic aetiology. Recently, genetic risk variants have been identified for SLI and dyslexia enabling the direct evaluation of possible shared genetic influences between these disorders. In this study we investigate the role of variants in these genes (namely MRPL19/C20RF3, ROBO1, DCDC2, KIAA0319, DYX1C1, CNTNAP2, ATP2C2 and CMIP) in the aetiology of SLI and dyslexia. We perform case–control and quantitative association analyses using measures of oral and written language skills in samples of SLI and dyslexic families and cases. We replicate association between KIAA0319 and DCDC2 and dyslexia and provide evidence to support a role for KIAA0319 in oral language ability. In addition, we find association between reading-related measures and variants in CNTNAP2 and CMIP in the SLI families.

Temporal lobe pathology in neurodegenerative disease:a comparative study of eight disorders with special reference to the hippocampus

The temporal lobe is a major site of pathology in a number of neurodegenerative diseases. In this chapter, the densities of the characteristic pathological lesions in various regions of the temporal lobe were compared in eight neurodegenerative disorders, viz., Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Down’s syndrome (DS), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), Pick’s disease (PiD), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), and neuronal intermediate filament inclusion disease (NIFID). Temporal lobe pathology was observed in all of these disorders most notably in AD, DS, PiD, sCJD, and NIFID. The regions of the temporal lobe affected by the pathology, however, varied between disorders. In AD and DS, the greatest densities of ?-amyloid (A?) deposits were recorded in cortical regions adjacent to the hippocampus (HC), DS exhibiting greater densities of A? deposits than AD. Similarly, in sCJD, greatest densities of prion protein (PrPsc) deposits were recorded in cortical areas of the temporal lobe. In AD and PiD, significant densities of neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) and Pick bodies (PB) respectively were present in sector CA1 of the HC while in CBD, the greatest densities of tau-immunoreactive neuronal cytoplasmic inclusions (NCI) were present in the parahippocampal gyrus (PHG). Particularly high densities of PB were present in the DG in PiD, whereas NFT in AD and Lewy bodies (LB) in DLB were usually absent in this region. These data confirm that the temporal lobe is an important site of pathology in the disorders studied regardless of their molecular ‘signature’. However, disorders differ in the extent to which the pathology spreads to affect the HC which may account for some of the observed differences in clinical dementia.

Spatial patterns of neuronal cytoplasmic inclusions in the tauopathies: A comparative study of five disorders

The tauopathies are a major molecular group of neurodegenerative disorders characterised by the deposition of abnormal cellular aggregates of the microtubule associated protein (MAP) tau in the form of neuronal cytoplasmic inclusions (NCI). Recent research suggests that cell to cell propagation of pathogenic tau may be involved in the neurodegeneration of these disorders. If pathogenic tau spreads along anatomical pathways it may give rise to specific spatial patterns of the NCI in brain tissue. To test this hypothesis, the spatial patterns of NCI in cerebral cortical regions were compared in tissue sections taken from five major tauopathies: (1) argyrophilic grain disease (AGD), (2) Alzheimer's disease (AD), (3) corticobasal degeneration (CBD), (4) Pick's disease (PiD), and (5) progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). In the cerebral cortex of these disorders, NCI were frequently aggregated into clusters and the clusters were regularly distributed parallel to the pia mater. In a significant proportion of regions, the mean size of the regularly distributed clusters of NCI was in the range 400 – 800 m, measured parallel to the pia mater, approximating to the dimension of cell columns associated with the cortico-cortical anatomical pathways. Hence, the data suggest that cortical NCI in the tauopathies exhibit a spatial pattern in the cortex which could result from the spread of pathogenic tau along anatomical pathways. Treatments designed to protect the cortex from tau propagation may therefore be applicable across several different disorders within this molecular group.