Many neurological, neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and psychosomatic disorders are characterized by impairments in visual social cognition, body language reading, and facial assessment of a social counterpart. Yet a wealth of research indicates that individuals with Williams syndrome exhibit remarkable concern for social stimuli and face fascination. Here individuals with Williams syndrome were presented with a set of Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). The primary advantage of these images is that single components do not explicitly trigger face-specific processing, whereas in face images commonly used for investigating face perception (such as photographs or depictions), the mere occurrence of typical cues already implicates face presence. In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Strikingly, individuals with Williams syndrome exhibited profound deficits in recognition of the Face-n-Food images as a face: they did not report seeing a face on the images, which typically developing controls effortlessly recognized as a face, and gave overall fewer face responses. This suggests atypical face tuning in Williams syndrome. The outcome is discussed in the light of a general pattern of social cognition in Williams syndrome and brain mechanisms underpinning face processing.

Culture shapes social cognition in many ways. Yet cultural impact on face tuning remains largely unclear. Here typically developing females and males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland were presented with a set of Arcimboldo-like Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face. The outcome had been compared with previous findings obtained in young adults of the South-West Germany. In that study, males exhibit higher thresholds for face tuning on the Face-n-Food task than females. In Swiss participants, no gender differences exist in face tuning. Strikingly, males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland possess higher sensitivity to faces than their German peers, whereas no difference in face tuning occurs between females. The outcome indicates that even relatively subtle cultural differences as well as culture by gender interaction can modulate social cognition. Clarification of the nature of cultural impact on face tuning as well as social cognition at large is of substantial value for understanding a wide range of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions.

Background Williams syndrome (WS) is characterised by severe deficits in visual–spatial abilities in contrast to relatively well‐developed language abilities. There is very limited knowledge about visual–motor integration (VMI) in people with WS. Method Twenty‐six participants with WS aged 6 to 41 years were assessed with all three tests of the Beery‐VMI test, namely the VMI test, the visual perception test (VP) and the motor coordination test (MC). Their results were compared with those of 154 typically developing children (TD) aged 4 to 12. Results No influence of age on the three tested abilities was found amongst the participants with WS in comparison with the TD children. The participants with WS scored similarly to the 5‐year‐old TD children in all three tasks; their scores on the VMI correlated with the results on the VP and MC tests, which were similar to those of the TD children. Finally, the scores on the non‐verbal intelligence test (Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices) were highly predictive of the scores in the VMI and VP tests and partially explain the variance in the MC scores. Conclusions The present study is the first to use all three tasks of the Beery‐VMI test. For the TD children, the performances on the three subtests did not show the same developmental trajectory. In contrast, the participants with WS did not show the same developmental trajectory. The participants with WS exhibited poor performances on all tasks with scores comparable with the 5‐year‐old TD children. As high correlations between these abilities were observed, improving VP and MC could help the development of VMI, which in turn could improve visual–spatial abilities in individuals with WS.

Individuals with WS showed a significant leftward deviation in the SSA task. This bias of the body's longitudinal axe representation could have a negative impact on the use of an egocentric reference system, which could be the cause for their difficulties in defining spatial relations (e.g. location and orientation) necessary for performing spatial tasks.

Background Recently, a study using the subjective straight-ahead task showed that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) present a bias in the representation of body perception. The aim of the present study is to examine the horizontal midline body representation in WS participants using the bisection line task, which is an important benchmark for an egocentric frame of reference. Method Fifteen WS participants (mean age = 21.7 ± 9.5 years) were compared with two typical development control groups: one composed of 15 participants matched on chronological age and one composed of 15 children matched on mental age. The task consisted of dividing each line in a series of 18 lines into two equal halves by drawing a vertical mark with a pencil in the centre of the line. Results Individuals with WS presented a significant leftward bias in comparison to mental age and chronological age groups. Conclusions The leftward deviation in WS could be linked to the body representation bias and difficulties in the development of the egocentric reference system. An early detection of such deviation should help in the development of targeted interventions for WS individuals to improve visual-spatial skills and learning. A. Saj et al. • Line Bisection AND Williams syndrome

Results demonstrate that despite difficulties in the spontaneous use of allocentric and egocentric frames of reference, some Williams Syndrome participants show flexibility in the use of an allocentric frame of reference when an explicit instruction is provided.

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