Early visual deprivation caused by bilateral congenital cataracts produces deficits in discriminating faces that differ in the spacing of features, but not in feature shape (Le Grand et al. [2001] Nature 410: 810). We investigated whether these deficits are specific to human faces by testing patients' ability to discriminate between stimuli differing only in feature spacing in human and monkey faces (Experiment 1) and in houses (Experiment 2). Patients, as a group, showed deficits on only one task: they had lower accuracy than normal in discriminating feature spacing in human faces. In contrast, they were normal in discriminating feature spacing in monkey faces and in houses. The results suggest that early visual experience is necessary to set up (or preserve) the neural architecture used for processing human faces, but not for processing objects in general. ß 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 52: 775-781, 2010.
In adults, facial identity is coded by opponent processes relative to an average face or norm, as evidenced by the face identity aftereffect: adapting to a face biases perception towards the opposite identity, so that a previously neutral face (e.g. the average) resembles the identity of the computationally opposite face. We investigated whether children as young as 8 use adaptive norm-based coding to represent faces, a question of interest because 8-year-olds are less accurate than adults at recognizing faces and do not show the adult neural markers of face expertise. We found comparable face identity aftereffects in 8-year-olds and adults: perception of identity in both groups shifted in the direction predicted by norm-based coding. This finding suggests that, by 8 years of age, the adaptive computational mechanisms used to code facial identity are like those of adults and hence that children's immaturities in face processing arise from another source.
An individual's socioeconomic status (SES) is often viewed as a proxy for a host of environmental influences. SES disparities have been linked to variance in brain structures particularly the hippocampus, a neural substrate of learning and memory. However, it is unclear whether the association between SES and hippocampal volume is similar in children and adults. We investigated the relationship between hippocampal volume and SES in a group of children (n = 31, age 8-12 years) and a group of young adults (n = 32, age 18-25 years). SES was assessed with four indicators that loaded on a single factor, therefore a composite SES scores was used in the main analyses. Hippocampal volume was measured using manual demarcation on high resolution structural images. SES was associated with hippocampal volume in the children, but not in adults, suggesting that in childhood, but not adulthood, SES-related environmental factors influence hippocampal volume. In addition, hippocampal volume, but not SES, was associated with scores on a memory task, suggesting that net effects of postnatal environmental factors, captured by SES, are more distal determinants of memory performance than hippocampal volume. Longitudinal investigation of the association between SES, hippocampal volume and cognitive functioning may further our understanding of the putative neural mechanisms underlying SES-related environmental effects on cognitive development.
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