The modulating effect of gestational age on attentional disengagement in toddlers.

Gestational Age (GA) at birth plays a crucial role in identifying potential vulnerabilities to long-term difficulties in cognitive and behavioral development. The present study aims to explore the influence of gestational age on the efficiency of early visual attention orienting, as a potential marker for the development of specific high-level socio-cognitive skills. We administered the Gap-Overlap task to measure the attentional orienting and disengagement performance of 16-month-olds born between the 34th and 41st weeks of gestation.

Integration of Facial Expression and Gaze Direction in Individuals with a High Level of Autistic Traits.

Background: We investigated whether individuals with high levels of autistic traits integrate relevant communicative signals, such as facial expression, when decoding eye-gaze direction.

Methods: Students with high vs. low scores on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) performed a task in which they responded to the eye directions of faces, presented on the left or the right side of a screen, portraying different emotional expressions.

What gaze adds to arrows: Changes in attentional response to gaze versus arrows in childhood and adolescence.

From early ages, gaze acts as a cue to infer the interests, behaviours, thoughts and emotions of social partners. Despite sharing attentional properties with other non-social directional stimuli, such as arrows, gaze produces unique effects. A spatial interference task revealed this dissociation.