Selective facial mimicry of native over foreign speakers in preverbal infants

Mimicry, the spontaneous copying of others’ behaviours, plays an important role in social affiliation, with adults selectively mimicking in-group over out-group members. Despite infants’ early documented sensitivity to, and preference for, in-group members, previous work suggests that it is not until 4 years of age that spontaneous mimicry is modulated by group status. Here we demonstrate that mimicry is sensitive to cues to group membership at a much earlier age, if the cues presented are more relevant to infants. 11-month-old infants observed videos of facial actions (e.g. mouth opening, eyebrow raising) performed by models who either spoke their native language or an unfamiliar foreign language, while we measured activation of their mouth and eyebrow muscle regions using electromyography to obtain an index of mimicry. We simultaneously used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying differential mimicry responses. We found that infants showed greater facial mimicry of the native compared to the foreign speaker, and that mimicry regulation was associated with activation over the left temporal parietal cortex. These findings provide the first demonstration of the modulation of facial mimicry by linguistic group status in preverbal infants, and suggest that the tendency to mimic in-group over out-group members is present from as early as the first year of life.

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Eye contact modulates facial mimicry in 4-month-old infants: an EMG and fNIRS study

10.31234/osf.io/b8jwy ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Carina de Klerk ◽

Antonia Hamilton ◽

Victoria Southgate

Keyword(s):

Social Interactions ◽

Near Infrared ◽

Mouth Opening ◽

Eye Contact ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Social Signals ◽

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽

Human Infants ◽

Facial Mimicry ◽

Direct Gaze

Mimicry, the tendency to spontaneously and unconsciously copy others’ behaviour, plays an important role in social interactions. It facilitates rapport between strangers, and is flexibly modulated by social signals, such as eye contact. However, little is known about the development of this phenomenon in infancy, and it is unknown whether mimicry is modulated by social signals from early in life. Here we addressed this question by presenting 4-month-old infants with videos of models performing facial actions (e.g. mouth opening, eyebrow raising) and hand actions (e.g. hand opening and closing, finger actions) accompanied by direct or averted gaze, while we measured their facial and hand muscle responses using electromyography to obtain an index of mimicry (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2 the infants observed the same stimuli while we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate the brain regions involved in modulating mimicry by eye contact. We found that 4-month-olds only showed evidence of mimicry when they observed facial actions accompanied by direct gaze. Experiment 2 suggests that this selective facial mimicry may have been associated with activation over posterior superior temporal sulcus. These findings provide the first demonstration of modulation of mimicry by social signals in young human infants, and suggest that mimicry plays an important role in social interactions from early in life.

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Selective facial mimicry of native over foreign speakers in preverbal infants

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology ◽

10.1016/j.jecp.2019.01.015 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 183 ◽

pp. 33-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Carina C.J.M. de Klerk ◽

Chiara Bulgarelli ◽

Antonia Hamilton ◽

Victoria Southgate

Keyword(s):

Facial Mimicry ◽

Foreign Speakers ◽

Preverbal Infants

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Investigating Early Pre-implant Predictors of Language and Cognitive Development in Children with Cochlear Implants

The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies in Learning and Cognition ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190054045.013.3 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 45-59

Author(s):

Mary K. Fagan ◽

Laurie S. Eisenberg ◽

Karen C. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Cochlear Implants ◽

Demographic Variables ◽

Cognitive Outcomes ◽

First Year ◽

Relevant Research ◽

Behavioral Measures ◽

First Year Of Life ◽

And Behavior ◽

Preverbal Infants ◽

Infant Learning

Pre-implant predictors of language and cognitive outcomes in children with cochlear implants have been mostly limited to residual hearing and demographic variables. These variables have accounted for a limited portion of variance in outcomes and for the most part only in children who received cochlear implants from 3 to 5 years of age and later. With cochlear implantation now regularly occurring in the first year of life, there is new interest in identifying pre-implant variables with greater predictive value, including pre-implant measures of infant learning and behavior in the first 12 months. The search for pre-implant variables in the first year has been limited by the challenges inherent in assessing preverbal infants with little or no access to signed or spoken language. This review includes research on pre-implant predictors from a longitudinal study, behavioral measures in infants implanted at 12 months of age, and relevant research on early learning in hearing infants.

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Functional connectivity in the first year of life in infants at-risk for autism: a preliminary near-infrared spectroscopy study

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnhum.2013.00444 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

Cited By ~ 59

Author(s):

Brandon Keehn ◽

Jennifer B. Wagner ◽

Helen Tager-Flusberg ◽

Charles A. Nelson

Keyword(s):

At Risk ◽

Infrared Spectroscopy ◽

Functional Connectivity ◽

Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽

Near Infrared ◽

First Year ◽

Spectroscopy Study ◽

First Year Of Life

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The Temporal Dimensions in the First Year of Life

Timing & Time Perception ◽

10.1163/22134468-00002093 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (3-4) ◽

pp. 280-296 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Maria Dolores de Hevia ◽

Yu-Na Lee ◽

Arlette Streri

Keyword(s):

Information Processing ◽

Sensory Information ◽

First Year ◽

Temporal Delay ◽

Time Intervals ◽

Temporal Dimension ◽

Sensory Modalities ◽

Temporal Dimensions ◽

First Year Of Life ◽

Preverbal Infants

Time is a multifaceted concept that is critical in our cognitive lives and can refer, among others, to the period that lapses between the initial encounter with a stimulus and its posterior recognition, as well as to the specific duration of a certain event. In the first part of this paper, we will review studies that explain the involvement of the temporal dimension in the processing of sensory information, in the form of a temporal delay that impacts the accuracy of information processing. We will review studies that investigate the time intervals required to encode, retain, and remember a stimulus across sensory modalities in preverbal infants. In the second part, we will review studies that examine preverbal infants’ ability to encode the duration and distinguish events. In particular, we will discuss recent studies that show how the ability to recognize the timing of events in infants and newborns parallels, and is related to, their ability to compute other quantitative dimensions, such as number and space.

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Neighborhood racial demographics predict infants’ neural responses to people of different races

10.31234/osf.io/rsqht ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hyesung Grace Hwang ◽

Ranjan Debnath ◽

Marlene Meyer ◽

Virginia C. Salo ◽

Nathan Fox ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Environment ◽

First Year ◽

Mu Rhythm ◽

Neural Responses ◽

Racially Diverse ◽

Social Bias ◽

Alpha Asymmetry ◽

First Year Of Life ◽

Preverbal Infants ◽

Racial Demographics

Early in life, greater exposure to diverse people can change the tendency to prefer one’s own social group. For instance, infants from racially diverse environments show less preference for their own-race (ingroup) over other-race (outgroup) faces than infants from racially homogeneous environments. Yet how social environment changes ingroup versus outgroup demarcation in infancy is unclear. A commonly held assumption is that early emerging ingroup preference is based on an affective process: feeling more comfortable with familiar ingroup than unfamiliar outgroup members. However, other processes may also underlie ingroup preference: Infants may attend more to ingroup than outgroup members and/or mirror the actions of ingroup over outgroup individuals. By aggregating 7- to 12-month-old infants’ electroencephalography (EEG) activity across three studies, we disambiguate these different processes in the EEG oscillations of preverbal infants according to social environment. White infants from more racially diverse neighborhoods exhibited greater frontal theta oscillation (an index of top-down attention) and more mu rhythm desynchronization (an index of motor system activation and potentially neural mirroring) to racial outgroup individuals than White infants from less racially diverse neighborhoods. Neighborhood racial demographics did not relate to White infants’ frontal alpha asymmetry (a measure of approach-withdrawal motivation) toward racial outgroup individuals. Racial minority infants showed no effects of neighborhood racial demographics in their neural responses to racial outgroup individuals. These results indicate that neural mechanisms that may underlie social bias and prejudices are related to neighborhood racial demographics in the first year of life.

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Changes in Prefrontal Cortical Activity During Walking and Cognitive Functions Among Patients With Parkinson's Disease

Frontiers in Neurology ◽

10.3389/fneur.2020.601686 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

Author(s):

Maud Ranchet ◽

Isabelle Hoang ◽

Maxime Cheminon ◽

Romain Derollepot ◽

Hannes Devos ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Near Infrared ◽

Early Stage ◽

Cortical Activity ◽

Cognitive Outcomes ◽

Clinical Population ◽

Group Status ◽

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽

Dorsolateral Prefrontal

Background: Walking becomes more and more degraded as Parkinson's Disease (PD) progresses. Previous research examined factors contributing to this deterioration. Among them, changes in brain cortical activity during walking have been less studied in this clinical population.Objectives: This study aimed to: (1) investigate changes in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activation during usual walking and dual-task walking conditions in patients with PD; (2) examine the association between cortical activity and behavioral/cognitive outcomes; and (3) explore which factors best predict increased activation of the DLPFC during usual walking.Methods: Eighteen patients with early stage PD and 18 controls performed 4 conditions: (1) standing while subtracting, (2) usual walking, (3) walking while counting forward, and (4) walking while subtracting. Cortical activity in DLPFC, assessed by changes in oxy-hemoglobin (ΔHbO2) and deoxy-hemoglobin (ΔHbR), was measured using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Gait performance was recorded using wearables sensors. Cognition was also assessed using neuropsychological tests, including the Trail Making Test (TMT).Results: DLPFC activity was higher in patients compared to controls during both usual walking and walking while subtracting conditions. Patients had impaired walking performance compared to controls only during walking while subtracting task. Moderate-to-strong correlations between ΔHbO2 and coefficients of variation of all gait parameters were found for usual walking and during walking while counting forward conditions. Part-B of TMT predicted 21% of the variance of ΔHbO2 during usual walking after adjustment for group status.Conclusions: The increased DLPFC activity in patients during usual walking suggests a potential compensation for executive deficits. Understanding changes in DLPFC activity during walking may have implications for rehabilitation of gait in patients with PD.

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The Development of Swallowing Respiratory Coordination

Perspectives on Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders (Dysphagia) ◽

10.1044/sasd18.1.19 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 19-24

Author(s):

Maggie-Lee Huckabee

Keyword(s):

Cortical Activation ◽

First Year ◽

Healthy Children ◽

Nasal Airflow ◽

Single Session ◽

Primary Finding ◽

Patterns Of Behavior ◽

Cortical Modulation ◽

First Year Of Life ◽

Swallowing Apnea

Abstract Research exists that evaluates the mechanics of swallowing respiratory coordination in healthy children and adults as well and individuals with swallowing impairment. The research program summarized in this article represents a systematic examination of swallowing respiratory coordination across the lifespan as a means of behaviorally investigating mechanisms of cortical modulation. Using time-locked recordings of submental surface electromyography, nasal airflow, and thyroid acoustics, three conditions of swallowing were evaluated in 20 adults in a single session and 10 infants in 10 sessions across the first year of life. The three swallowing conditions were selected to represent a continuum of volitional through nonvolitional swallowing control on the basis of a decreasing level of cortical activation. Our primary finding is that, across the lifespan, brainstem control strongly dictates the duration of swallowing apnea and is heavily involved in organizing the integration of swallowing and respiration, even in very early infancy. However, there is evidence that cortical modulation increases across the first 12 months of life to approximate more adult-like patterns of behavior. This modulation influences primarily conditions of volitional swallowing; sleep and naïve swallows appear to not be easily adapted by cortical regulation. Thus, it is attention, not arousal that engages cortical mechanisms.

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