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Perceiving facial expressions is an essential ability for infants. Although previous studies indicated that infants could perceive emotion from expressive facial movements, the developmental change of this ability remains largely unknown.... more
Perceiving facial expressions is an essential ability for infants. Although previous studies indicated that infants could perceive emotion from expressive facial movements, the developmental change of this ability remains largely unknown. To exclusively examine infants’ processing of facial movements, we used point-light displays (PLDs) to present emotionally expressive facial movements. Specifically, we used a habituation and visual paired comparison (VPC) paradigm to investigate whether 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds could discriminate happy versus fear PLDs after being habituated with a happy PLD (happy-habituation condition) or a fear PLD (fear-habituation condition). Three-month-olds discriminated between the happy and fear PLDs in both the happy- and fear-habituation conditions. Six- and nine-month-olds showed discrimination only in the happy- but not the fear-habituation condition. These results indicated a developmental change in processing expressive facial movements. Younger inf...
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Visual preference for faces at birth is the product of a multimodal sensory experience experienced by the fetus even during the gestational period. The ability to recognize faces allows an ecologically advantageous interaction with the... more
Visual preference for faces at birth is the product of a multimodal sensory experience experienced by the fetus even during the gestational period. The ability to recognize faces allows an ecologically advantageous interaction with the social environment. However, perinatal events such as premature birth, may adversely affect the adequate development of this capacity. In this study, we evaluated the preference for facial stimuli in preterm infants within the first few hours after birth. This is a cross-sectional observational study of 59 newborns, 28 preterm and 31 full-term infants. The babies were assessed in the first hours of life, with two white boards in the shape of a head and neck: one with the drawing of a face similar to the human face (natural face), and one with the drawing of misaligned eyes, mouth and nose (distorted face). After the newborn fixated the eyes on the presented stimulus, it was slowly moved along the visual field. The recognition of the stimulus was consi...
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Research Interests: Humanities and Art
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Research Interests: Psychology and Annals
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1. Provides a critical analysis of studies on the 3 most common explanatory dichotomies for functional asymmetry:(1) verbal and spatial,(2) analytic and global, and (3) serial and parallel. The first term in the dichotomies describes the... more
1. Provides a critical analysis of studies on the 3 most common explanatory dichotomies for functional asymmetry:(1) verbal and spatial,(2) analytic and global, and (3) serial and parallel. The first term in the dichotomies describes the manner by which the left ...
... I risultati emersi dall'Esperimento 1, nel quale è stata utilizzata la tecnica dell'abituazione, dimostrano che le abilità visive del neonato sono sufficientemente sviluppate da consentire la discriminazione dei singoli... more
... I risultati emersi dall'Esperimento 1, nel quale è stata utilizzata la tecnica dell'abituazione, dimostrano che le abilità visive del neonato sono sufficientemente sviluppate da consentire la discriminazione dei singoli elementi che compongono la configurazione. ...
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... Chapter 15 Person Recognition by Young Children: Configural, Featural, and Paraphernalia Processing Ale jo Freire McMaster University, Canada Rang Lee ... of the facial gestalt, sometimes referred to as holistic processing (eg, Tanaka... more
... Chapter 15 Person Recognition by Young Children: Configural, Featural, and Paraphernalia Processing Ale jo Freire McMaster University, Canada Rang Lee ... of the facial gestalt, sometimes referred to as holistic processing (eg, Tanaka & Farah, 1993; Young, Hellawell, & Hay ...
... perception. and intelligence. 1n RJ Stemherg (Ed.). Handhook of human intelligence (pp. 123-169). ... Auditory inspection time and intelligence: What is the causal direction? DevelopmentalPsychology. 31. 237-250. Deese. J. (1993).... more
... perception. and intelligence. 1n RJ Stemherg (Ed.). Handhook of human intelligence (pp. 123-169). ... Auditory inspection time and intelligence: What is the causal direction? DevelopmentalPsychology. 31. 237-250. Deese. J. (1993). Human ahilities versus intelligence. ...
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Scientific Reports 6: Article number: 26395; published online: 20 May 2016; updated: 18 July 2016 The original version of this Article contained an error in the spelling of the author Maria Luisa Scattoni which was incorrectly given as... more
Scientific Reports 6: Article number: 26395; published online: 20 May 2016; updated: 18 July 2016 The original version of this Article contained an error in the spelling of the author Maria Luisa Scattoni which was incorrectly given as Scattoni Maria Luisa. These errors have now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.
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Riassunto. Alla nascita, la preferenza visiva per i volti è stata attribuita alla tendenza dei neonati a guardare più a lungo stimoli che presentano un maggior numero di elementi nella porzione superiore (Simion et al., 2002; Turati et... more
Riassunto. Alla nascita, la preferenza visiva per i volti è stata attribuita alla tendenza dei neonati a guardare più a lungo stimoli che presentano un maggior numero di elementi nella porzione superiore (Simion et al., 2002; Turati et al., 2002). Nel presente studio si è verificato se la preferenza per i volti a 3 mesi di vita e negli adulti sia ascrivibile allo stesso fenomeno. Attraverso la registrazione del tempo di fissazione oculare realizzata con un apparato a raggi infrarossi (eye-tracker), è stato dimostrato che entrambe le fasce di età ...
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... Chiara Turati (Università di Padova) Eloisa Valenza (Università di Padova) Francesca Simion (Università di Padova) Eraldo Nicotra (Università di Padova) ... per i seguenti motivi: 26 hanno cambiato stato nel corso della prova (stato... more
... Chiara Turati (Università di Padova) Eloisa Valenza (Università di Padova) Francesca Simion (Università di Padova) Eraldo Nicotra (Università di Padova) ... per i seguenti motivi: 26 hanno cambiato stato nel corso della prova (stato 3, dormiveglia o stato 5, veglia agitata-pianto ...
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... VIOLA MACCHI CASSIA E FRANCESCA SIMION ... In primo luogo, infatti, il comportamento di suzione ?? facilmente elicitabile nel neonato in qualsiasi momento eccetto che negli stati di sonno profondo o di veglia agitata e pianto, ossia... more
... VIOLA MACCHI CASSIA E FRANCESCA SIMION ... In primo luogo, infatti, il comportamento di suzione ?? facilmente elicitabile nel neonato in qualsiasi momento eccetto che negli stati di sonno profondo o di veglia agitata e pianto, ossia differisce da altre variabili comportamentali ...
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Three groups of healthy full term neonates, differing in delivery modalities (elective caesarean section, labor of greater than or less than 7 hours) were investigated during sleep to evaluate postnatal adaptation. Adaptation modalities... more
Three groups of healthy full term neonates, differing in delivery modalities (elective caesarean section, labor of greater than or less than 7 hours) were investigated during sleep to evaluate postnatal adaptation. Adaptation modalities were assessed by NBAS, using the cluster of the decrements. It was found that neonatal responses change during sleep in relation to delivery modalities and to type of stimuli applied.
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Alla nascita, la preferenza visiva per i volti è stata attribuita alla tendenza dei neonati a guardare più a lungo stimoli che presentano un maggior numero di elementi nella porzione superiore (Simion et al., 2002; Turati et al., 2002).... more
Alla nascita, la preferenza visiva per i volti è stata attribuita alla tendenza dei neonati a guardare più a lungo stimoli che presentano un maggior numero di elementi nella porzione superiore (Simion et al., 2002; Turati et al., 2002). Nel presente studio si è verificato se la preferenza per i volti a 3 mesi di vita e negli adulti sia ascrivibile allo stesso fenomeno. Attraverso la registrazione del tempo di fissazione oculare realizzata con un apparato a raggi infrarossi (eye-tracker), è stato dimostrato che entrambe le fasce di età ...
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We report a series of ten experiments aimed to investigate the newborn's ability to discriminate the components of a visual pattern and to process the visual information that specifies the global configuration of a stimulus. The... more
We report a series of ten experiments aimed to investigate the newborn's ability to discriminate the components of a visual pattern and to process the visual information that specifies the global configuration of a stimulus. The results reveal that: (i) newborn babies are able to distinguish individual elements of a stimulus (experiments 1A, IB, 1C, and ID); (ii) they can group individual elements into a holistic percept on the basis of Gestalt principles (experiments 2A and 3A); (iii) their spontaneous preferences cannot be easily modified by habituation (experiments 2B and 3B); and (iv) when horizontal stimuli are paired with vertical stimuli, they prefer the horizontal ones (experiments 4A and 4B).
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Day-old domestic chicks approach the larger of two groups of identical objects, but in a 3 vs 4 comparison, their performance is random. Here we investigated whether adding individually distinctive features to each object would facilitate... more
Day-old domestic chicks approach the larger of two groups of identical objects, but in a 3 vs 4 comparison, their performance is random. Here we investigated whether adding individually distinctive features to each object would facilitate such discrimination. Chicks reared with 7 objects were presented with the operation 1 + 1 + 1 vs 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. When objects were all identical, chicks performed randomly, as expected (Experiment 1). In the remaining experiments, objects differed from one another due to additional features. Chicks succeeded when those features were differently oriented segments (Experiment 2) but failed when the features were arranged to depict individually different face-like displays (Experiment 3). Discrimination was restored if the face-like stimuli were presented upside-down, disrupting global processing (Experiment 4). Our results support the claim that numerical discrimination in 3 vs 4 comparison benefits from the presence of distinctive features that enhan...