Abstract. The visual preferences of human infants for faces that varied in their attractiveness and in their symmetry about the midline were explored. The aim was to establish whether infants' visual preference for attractive faces may be mediated by the vertical symmetry of the face. Chimeric faces, made from photographs of attractive and unattractive female faces, were produced by computer graphics. Babies looked longer at normal and at chimeric attractive faces than at normal and at chimeric unattractive faces. There were no developmental differences between the younger and older infants: all preferred to look at the attractive faces. Infants as young as 4 months showed similarity with adults in the 'aesthetic perception' of attractiveness and this preference was not based on the vertical symmetry of the face.
We report two studies examining the effects of nicotine on memory in minimally deprived smokers. In experiment 1, semantically related words were recalled significantly better than unrelated words following nicotine, even when volunteers were explicitly instructed to target the unrelated word set for recall. Experiment 2 examined the effect of nicotine on two different types of lexical association: association by joint category membership (semantically related items), and association by derived meaning ("encapsulated" word pairs). Nicotine-induced improvements in recall were observed only for category associates and not for encapsulated word pairs. This implies that explicit, effortful processing of material in the presence of nicotine is necessary for improved recall performance to be observed.
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between pointing production in infants and two types of event perception factors: spatial localization (e.g. eccentricity of visual events with respect to an initial fixation point) and salience of targets (addition to visual events of sound or object translation through space). Three experiments revealed that target characteristics, such as internal movement, sound, vanishing and translation through space (including disappearance) significantly influenced the incidence and latency of pointing, whereas the main effect of target localization was to determine which hand does the gesture. In particular, there was an advantage to the right side of the visual field in eliciting pointing when there is competition between targets. Finally, for events involving auditory‐visual stimulation females made more right‐handed points than males. The general advantage of the right hand for pointing may offer further evidence for a specific link between pointing, cerebral dominance and the transition to speech.
In the studies reported here, we investigated the effects of nicotine on memory for unrelated word lists. Nicotine was delivered through cigarette smoking, and memory performance was assessed using both intentional and incidental recall tasks, and employing an additional, indirect measure of memory. We report the results of four experiments in which we manipulated 1) the intake of nicotine using nicotine-containing and nicotine-free cigarettes, 2) the associative aspects of the word-sets, by unrelated words and category words and by instructing subjects to use an associative mnemonic strategy, 3) the opportunity for rehearsal between the presentation and recall, and 4) the time of nicotine administration, post- or pre-trial. We found a positive effect of post-trial nicotine on memory in the incidental recall task, as indicated by enhanced repetition priming, but no effect of nicotine on either immediate recall or pronunciation times (experiments 1 and 2). In experiment 3 we examined the effects of post-trial nicotine using associative and unrelated word-lists, when volunteers were instructed to use an associative mnemonic strategy. We found no main effect of nicotine, but when volunteers were distracted from rehearsal, related words were recalled better than unrelated words. Experiment 4 was a positive control for the timing of nicotine administration within our experimental design, and this showed that pre-trial nicotine not only improved free recall but differentially enhanced the recall of category words over unrelated words.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.