It has been proposed that newborns' preferential orienting to faces is primarily controlled by a subcortical mechanism. As an index of subcortical, extrageniculate mediation, the asymmetry between the temporal and nasal hemifields was exploited. In Experiment 1, under monocular viewing conditions, newborns were presented with a pattern that had 3 blobs in the appropriate locations for the eyes and the mouth or a pattern that had an inverted position of the blobs. Results showed that newborns preferentially oriented to the facelike pattern only when it was presented in the temporal hemifield. In Experiment 2, both patterns had the blobs in the inverted position. For one pattern the blobs were black, and for the other they were striped. Newborns preferentially oriented to the striped blobs in either hemifield. The results support the hypothesis that in newborns, preference for facelike patterns reflects the activity of a subcortical mechanism.
Humans represent numbers on a mental number line with smaller numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right side. A left‐to‐right oriented spatial–numerical association, (SNA), has been demonstrated in animals and infants. However, the possibility that SNA is learnt by early exposure to caregivers’ directional biases is still open. We conducted two experiments: in Experiment 1, we tested whether SNA is present at birth and in Experiment 2, we studied whether it depends on the relative rather than the absolute magnitude of numerousness. Fifty‐five‐hour‐old newborns, once habituated to a number (12), spontaneously associated a smaller number (4) with the left and a larger number (36) with the right side (Experiment 1). SNA in neonates is not absolute but relative. The same number (12) was associated with the left side rather than the right side whenever the previously experienced number was larger (36) rather than smaller (4) (Experiment 2). Control on continuous physical variables showed that the effect is specific of discrete magnitudes. These results constitute strong evidence that in our species SNA originates from pre‐linguistic and biological precursors in the brain.
In four experiments we investigated the gap effect in infants within the first 3 days of life. Reaction times (RTs) to make a saccade to a peripheral target were measured on gap trials, in which the central fixation stimulus went off 500 ms before target presentation, and on overlap trials, in which the central fixation stimulus remained on. In every experiment the fixation stimulus was a flashing light. The target stimulus was a schematic face in Experiment 1, a flashing light shown at 20 eccentricity in Experiment 2, a flashing light shown at 30 eccentricity in Experiment 3, and an upsidedown schematic face in Experiment 4. In Experiments 1±3 a gap effect was found. That is, RT was faster on gap than on overlap trials. In contrast, the gap effect was absent in Experiment 4. These findings are consistent with the view that the superior colliculus plays a major role in producing the gap effect at birth.
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