Self-face processing in relation to self-referential tasks in 24-month-old infants: A study through eye movements and pupillometry measures.

The aim of the current study was to investigate visual scan patterns for the self-face in infants with the ability to recognize themselves with a photograph. 24-month-old infants (N = 32) were presented with faces including the self-face in the upright or inverted orientation. We also measured infants' ability to recognize oneself in a mirror and with a photograph.

Preverbal infants expect agents exhibiting counterintuitive capacities to gain access to contested resources.

Claims to supernatural power have been used as a basis for authority in a wide range of societies, but little is known about developmental origins of the link between supernatural power and worldly authority. Here, we show that 12- to 16-month-old infants expect agents exhibiting counterintuitive capacities to win out in a two-way standoff over a contested resource. Infants watched two agents gain a reward using either physically intuitive or physically counterintuitive methods, the latter involving simple forms of levitation or teleportation.

Self-face perception in 12-month-old infants: A study using the morphing technique.

The present study investigated self-face perception in 12-month-old infants using the morphing technique. Twenty-four 12-month-old infants participated in both the main and control experiments. In the main experiment, we used the participant's own face, an unfamiliar infant's face (age- and gender-matched), and a morphed face comprising 50 % each of the self and unfamiliar faces as stimuli.

Space and rank: infants expect agents in higher position to be socially dominant.

Social hierarchies exist throughout the animal kingdom, including among humans. Our daily interactions inevitably reflect social dominance relationships between individuals. How do we mentally represent such concepts? Studies show that social dominance is represented as vertical space (i.

Overt congruent facial reaction to dynamic emotional expressions in 9-10-month-old infants.

The current study aimed to extend the understanding of the early development of spontaneous facial reactions toward observed facial expressions. Forty-six 9- to 10-month-old infants observed video clips of dynamic human facial expressions that were artificially created with morphing technology. The infants' facial responses were recorded, and the movements of the facial action unit 12 (e.

Phonological loop affects children's interpretations of explicit but not ambiguous questions: Research on links between working memory and referent assignment.

Understanding the referent of other's utterance by referring the contextual information helps in smooth communication. Although this pragmatic referential process can be observed even in infants, its underlying mechanism and relative abilities remain unclear. This study aimed to comprehend the background of the referential process by investigating whether the phonological loop affected the referent assignment.

Observing Third-Party Attentional Relationships Affects Infants' Gaze Following: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Not only responding to direct social actions toward themselves, infants also pay attention to relevant information from third-party interactions. However, it is unclear whether and how infants recognize the structure of these interactions. The current study aimed to investigate how infants' observation of third-party attentional relationships influence their subsequent gaze following.

Pointing behavior in infants reflects the communication partner's attentional and knowledge states: a possible case of spontaneous informing.

Inferring the epistemic states of others is considered to be an essential requirement for humans to communicate; however, the developmental trajectory of this ability is unclear. The aim of the current study was to determine developmental trends in this ability by using pointing behavior as a dependent measure. Infants aged 13 to 18 months (n = 32, 16 females) participated in the study.

Development of reference assignment in children: a direct comparison to the performance of cognitive shift.

The referent of a deictic embedded in a particular utterance or sentence is often ambiguous. Reference assignment is a pragmatic process that enables the disambiguation of such a referent. Previous studies have demonstrated that receivers use social-pragmatic information during referent assignment; however, it is still unclear which aspects of cognitive development affect the development of referential processing in children.

Minocycline, a microglial inhibitor, reduces 'honey trap' risk in human economic exchange.

Recently, minocycline, a tetracycline antibiotic, has been reported to improve symptoms of psychiatric disorders and to facilitate sober decision-making in healthy human subjects. Here we show that minocycline also reduces the risk of the 'honey trap' during an economic exchange. Males tend to cooperate with physically attractive females without careful evaluation of their trustworthiness, resulting in betrayal by the female.

Minocycline modulates human social decision-making: possible impact of microglia on personality-oriented social behaviors.

Background: Microglia, one of the glial cells, play important roles in various brain pathologies including psychiatric disorders. In addition, microglia have recently been proved to monitor synaptic reactions via direct-touching even in normal brain. Human microglia may modulate various social/mental functions, while microglial social/mental roles remain unresolved especially in healthy humans.

A non-humanoid robot in the "uncanny valley": experimental analysis of the reaction to behavioral contingency in 2-3 year old children.

Infants' sensitivity to social or behavioral contingency has been examined in the field of developmental psychology and behavioral sciences, mainly using a double video paradigm or a still face paradigm. These studies have shown that infants distinguish other individuals' contingent behaviors from non-contingent ones. The present experiment systematically examined if this ability extends to the detection of non-humanoids' contingent actions in a communicative context.

Preference for consonant music over dissonant music by an infant chimpanzee.

It has been shown that humans prefer consonant sounds from the early stages of development. From a comparative psychological perspective, although previous studies have shown that birds and monkeys can discriminate between consonant and dissonant sounds, it remains unclear whether nonhumans have a spontaneous preference for consonant music over dissonant music as humans do. We report here that a five-month-old human-raised chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) preferred consonant music.

Detection of the relevant type of locomotion in infancy: crawlers versus walkers.

Human infants show a preference for individuals who are similar to them. Using point-light displays of human walkers and crawlers as stimuli, we examined whether infants' preference for the motions of crawling and walking changes between, before, and after the onset of bipedal walking. The results show that crawling and walking infants prefer the types of locomotion that are similar to their own, respectively.

Preference for peers in infancy.

Previous findings suggest that infants prefer other infants from among individuals of various ages. There are two explanations for this: one is that like adults, infants prefer babyish characteristics; the other is that infants prefer individuals who are similar to themselves. We examined whether infants respond differently to same-age infants from among older or younger infants.