ORCID Profile
0000-0002-9655-3667
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In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Cognitive Science | Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, | Cognitive Science not elsewhere classified | Linguistic Processes (Incl. Speech Production And Comprehension)
Nervous system and disorders | Special education | Behavioural and cognitive sciences | Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences |
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.BBR.2013.03.020
Abstract: During bimanual load lifting, the brain not only contends with muscle activations in the load-lifting arm, but also has to pre-emptively modulate muscle activations in the load-bearing arm with temporal precision in order to minimize upward arm deflection. Premature or late inhibition in the load-bearing arm activity would result in augmented arm deflection. Little is currently known about the timing operation of motor systems subserving coordinated, bimanual actions. In this study, we measured neuromagnetic brain activity with whole-head magnetoencephalography while 15 participants performed a bimanual load-lifting task. To investigate neural processes prior to load lifting, a beamformer was applied to 6 contiguous 200 ms time epochs spanning the entire premovement phase of the motor task. The sequence of neural activations, following a signal to lift the weight, was chronologically ordered: firstly, the primary motor cortex contralateral to the load-lifting arm was activated, then the cerebellum, and lastly, the basal ganglia, thalamus and primary- re- motor areas contralateral to the load-bearing arm. The current data extend our understanding of the neural underpinnings of bimanual coordination. A model is proposed to account for the central organization of volitional and anticipatory motor control in bimanual load lifting.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 16-03-2023
Abstract: There is mounting evidence for predictive coding theory from computational, neuroimaging, and psychological research. However, there remains a lack of research exploring how predictive brain function develops across childhood. To address this gap, we used pediatric magnetoencephalography to record the evoked magnetic fields of 18 younger children (M = 4.1 years) and 19 older children (M = 6.2 years) as they listened to a 12-min auditory oddball paradigm. For each child, we computed a mismatch field “MMF”: an electrophysiological component that is widely interpreted as a neural signature of predictive coding. At the sensor level, the older children showed significantly larger MMF litudes relative to the younger children. At the source level, the older children showed a significantly larger MMF litude in the right inferior frontal gyrus relative to the younger children, P & 0.05. No differences were found in 2 other key regions (right primary auditory cortex and right superior temporal gyrus) thought to be involved in mismatch generation. These findings support the idea that predictive brain function develops during childhood, with increasing involvement of the frontal cortex in response to prediction errors. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the brain function underpinning child cognitive development.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROIMAGE.2012.10.042
Abstract: During bimanual load lifting, the brain must anticipate the effects of unloading upon the load-bearing arm. Little is currently known about the neural networks that coordinate these anticipatory postural adjustments. We measured neuromagnetic brain activity with whole-head magnetoencephalography while participants performed a bimanual load-lifting task. Anticipatory adjustments were associated with reduction in biceps brachii muscle activity of the load-bearing arm and pre-movement desynchronization of the cortical beta rhythm. Beamforming analyses localized anticipatory brain activity to the precentral gyrus, basal ganglia, supplementary motor area, and thalamus, contralateral to the load-bearing arm. To our knowledge this is the first human neuroimaging study to directly investigate anticipatory postural adjustments and to explicitly partition the anticipatory and volitional aspects of brain activity in bimanual load lifting. These data contribute to our understanding of the neural systems supporting anticipatory postural adjustments in healthy adults.
Publisher: American Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
Date: 2017
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 13-11-2010
DOI: 10.1007/S00221-010-2470-5
Abstract: Even the simplest volitional movements must be precisely coordinated with anticipatory postural adjustments. Little is currently known about the neural networks that coordinate these adjustments in healthy adults. We measured brain activity prior to movement during a bimanual load-lifting task, designed to elicit anticipatory adjustments in a restricted and well-defined set of musculature in the arm. Electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography brain measurements were obtained from eleven participants while they performed a bimanual load-lifting task that required precise inter-limb coordination. Anticipatory biceps brachii inhibition in the loaded arm was associated with a robust desynchronization of the beta rhythm. Beamforming analyses localized beta band responses to the parietal lobules, pre- and post-central gyri, middle and medial frontal gyri, basal ganglia and thalamus. The current study shows that premovement brain activity in a bimanual load-lifting task can be imaged with magnetoencephalography. Future experiments will partition out brain activity associated with anticipatory postural adjustments and volitional movements. The experimental paradigm will also be useful in the study of motor function in patients with developmental or degenerative disorders.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2014
DOI: 10.1016/J.JNEUMETH.2013.11.020
Abstract: Previous magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have failed to find a facesensitive, brain response-M170 in children. If this is the case, this suggests that the developmental trajectory of the M170 is different from that of its electrical equivalent, the N170. We investigated the alternative possibility that the child M170 may not be detectable in conventional adult-sized MEG systems. Brain responses to pictures of faces and well controlled stimuli were measured from the same four-year-old child with a custom child MEG system and an adult-sized MEG system. The goodness of fit of the child's head was about the same over the occipital head surface in both systems, but was much worse over all other parts of the head surface in the adult MEG system compared to the child MEG system. The face-sensitive M170 was measured from the child in both MEG systems, but was larger in litude, clearer in morphology, and had a more accurate source localization when measured in the child MEG system. The custom-sized child MEG system is superior for measuring the face-sensitive M170 brain response in children than the conventional adult MEG system. The present results show that the face-sensitive M170 brain response can be elicited in a four-year-old child. This provides new evidence for early maturation of face processing brain mechanisms in humans, and offers new opportunities for the study of neurodevelopmental disorders that show atypical face processing capabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA.2012.12.015
Abstract: We examined central auditory processing in typically- and atypically-developing readers. Concurrent EEG and MEG brain measurements were obtained from a group of 16 children with dyslexia aged 8-12 years, and a group of 16 age-matched children with normal reading ability. Auditory responses were elicited using 500ms duration broadband noise. These responses were strongly lateralized in control children. Children with dyslexia showed significantly less lateralisation of auditory cortical functioning, and a different pattern of development of auditory lateralization with age. These results provide further evidence that the core neurophysiological deficit of dyslexia is a problem in the balance of auditory function between the two hemispheres.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 20-09-2017
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.3819
Abstract: In recent years, with the emergence of relatively inexpensive and accessible virtual reality technologies, it is now possible to deliver compelling and realistic simulations of human-to-human interaction. Neuroimaging studies have shown that, when participants believe they are interacting via a virtual interface with another human agent, they show different patterns of brain activity compared to when they know that their virtual partner is computer-controlled. The suggestion is that users adopt an “intentional stance” by attributing mental states to their virtual partner. However, it remains unclear how beliefs in the agency of a virtual partner influence participants’ behaviour and subjective experience of the interaction. We investigated this issue in the context of a cooperative “joint attention” game in which participants interacted via an eye tracker with a virtual onscreen partner, directing each other’s eye gaze to different screen locations. Half of the participants were correctly informed that their partner was controlled by a computer algorithm (“Computer” condition). The other half were misled into believing that the virtual character was controlled by a second participant in another room (“Human” condition). Those in the “Human” condition were slower to make eye contact with their partner and more likely to try and guide their partner before they had established mutual eye contact than participants in the “Computer” condition. They also responded more rapidly when their partner was guiding them, although the same effect was also found for a control condition in which they responded to an arrow cue. Results confirm the influence of human agency beliefs on behaviour in this virtual social interaction context. They further suggest that researchers and developers attempting to simulate social interactions should consider the impact of agency beliefs on user experience in other social contexts, and their effect on the achievement of the application’s goals.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROIMAGE.2014.11.029
Abstract: There are two competing theories concerning the development of face perception: a late maturation account and an early maturation account. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) neuroimaging holds promise for adjudicating between the two opposing accounts by providing objective neurophysiological measures of face processing, with sufficient temporal resolution to isolate face-specific brain responses from those associated with other sensory, cognitive and motor processes. The current study used a customized child MEG system to measure M100 and M170 brain responses in 15 children aged three to six years while they viewed faces, cars and their phase-scrambled counterparts. Compared to adults tested using the same stimuli in a conventional MEG system, children showed significantly larger and later M100 responses. Children's M170 responses, derived by subtracting the responses to phase-scrambled images from the corresponding images (faces or cars) were delayed in latency but otherwise resembled the adult M170. This component has not been obtained in previous studies of young children tested using conventional adult MEG systems. However children did show a markedly reduced M170 response to cars in comparison to adults. This may reflect children's lack of expertise with cars relative to faces. Taken together, these data are in accord with recent behavioural and neuroimaging data that support early maturation of the basic face processing functions.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-10-2010
DOI: 10.1111/J.1365-2788.2010.01340.X
Abstract: Previous research suggests that in iduals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a reduced preference for viewing social stimuli in the environment and impaired facial identity recognition. Here, we directly tested a link between these two phenomena in 13 ASD children and 13 age-matched typically developing (TD) controls. Eye movements were recorded while participants passively viewed visual scenes containing people and objects. Participants also completed independent matching tasks for faces and objects. Behavioural data showed that participants with ASD were impaired on both face- and object-matching tasks relative to TD controls. Eye-tracking data revealed that both groups showed a strong bias to orient towards people. TD children spent proportionally more time looking at people than objects however, there was no difference in viewing times between people and objects in the ASD group. In the ASD group, an in idual's preference for looking first at the people in scenes was associated with level of face recognition ability. Further research is required to determine whether a causal relationship exists between these factors.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 11-06-2017
DOI: 10.7287/PEERJ.PREPRINTS.3018V1
Abstract: In recent years, with the emergence of relatively inexpensive and accessible virtual reality technologies, it is now possible to deliver compelling and realistic simulations of human-to-human interaction. Neuroimaging studies have shown that, when participants believe they are interacting via a virtual interface with another human agent, they show different patterns of brain activity compared to when they know that their virtual partner is computer-controlled. The suggestion is that users adopt an “intentional stance” by attributing mental states to their virtual partner. However, it remains unclear how beliefs in the agency of a virtual partner influence participants’ behaviour and subjective experience of the interaction. We investigated this issue in the context of a cooperative “joint attention” game in which participants interacted via an eye tracker with a virtual onscreen partner, directing each other’s eye gaze to different screen locations. Half of the participants were correctly informed that their partner was controlled by a computer algorithm (“Computer” condition). The other half were misled into believing that the virtual character was controlled by a second participant in another room (“Human” condition). Those in the “Human” condition were slower to make eye contact with their partner and more likely to try and guide their partner before they had established mutual eye contact than participants in the “Computer” condition. They also responded more rapidly when their partner was guiding them, although the same effect was also found for a control condition in which they responded to an arrow cue. Results confirm the influence of human agency beliefs on behaviour in this virtual social interaction context. They further suggest that researchers and developers attempting to simulate social interactions should consider the impact of agency beliefs on user experience in other social contexts, and their effect on the achievement of the application’s goals.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROIMAGE.2014.12.041
Abstract: Joint attention is a fundamental cognitive ability that supports daily interpersonal relationships and communication. The Parallel Distributed Processing model (PDPM) postulates that responding to (RJA) and initiating (IJA) joint attention are predominantly supported by posterior-parietal and frontal regions respectively. It also argues that these neural networks integrate during development, supporting the parallel processes of self- and other-attention representation during interactions. However, direct evidence for the PDPM is limited due to a lack of ecologically valid experimental paradigms that can capture both RJA and IJA. Building on existing interactive approaches, we developed a virtual reality paradigm where participants engaged in an online interaction to complete a cooperative task. By including tightly controlled baseline conditions to remove activity associated with non-social task demands, we were able to directly contrast the neural correlates of RJA and IJA to determine whether these processes are supported by common brain regions. Both RJA and IJA activated broad frontotemporoparietal networks. Critically, a conjunction analysis identified that a subset of these regions were common to both RJA and IJA. This right-lateralised network included the dorsal portion of the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), middle temporal gyrus (MTG), precentral gyrus, posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and precuneus. Additional activation was observed in this network for IJA relative to RJA at MFG, IFG, TPJ and precuneus. This is the first imaging study to directly investigate the neural correlates common to RJA and IJA engagement, and thus support the assumption that a broad integrated network underlies the parallel aspects of both initiating and responding to joint attention.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 22-09-2010
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 07-10-2022
DOI: 10.1101/2022.10.03.510718
Abstract: Predictive coding accounts of autism suggest that autistic perception is characterised by ergent precision weighting. The precise nature of this ergence, however, is debated. Here, we sought to disentangle competing predictive coding accounts of autism by testing them at a neural level. To this end, we used paediatric magnetoencephalography to record the auditory evoked fields of 10 young autistic children ( M = 6.2 years, range = 4.2– 8.6) and 63 neurotypical children ( M = 6.1 years, range = 3.0– 9.8) as they listened to a roving auditory oddball paradigm. For each participant, we subtracted the evoked responses to the ‘standard’ from the ‘deviant’ pure tones to calculate the mismatch field ‘MMF’: an electrophysiological component that is widely interpreted as a neural signature of predictive coding. We found no significant differences between the two groups’ MMF litudes, p .05. An exploratory analysis indicated larger MMF litudes in most of the autistic children compared to their average-age-matched neurotypical counterparts, p .05. We interpret these findings as preliminary evidence in support of the ‘inflexibly high prior and sensory precision’ account, and against the ‘inflexibly low prior-relative-to-sensory precision’ accounts of autistic perception. We used paediatric MEG to compare autistic and neurotypical MMFs litudes. Exploratory case-cohort analyses revealed mostly larger MMFs in autistic cases. Larger MMFs support the notion of precise, inflexible prediction errors in autism.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUBIOREV.2016.12.022
Abstract: Social interactions are, by their nature, dynamic and reciprocal - your behaviour affects my behaviour, which affects your behaviour in return. However, until recently, the field of social cognitive neuroscience has been dominated by paradigms in which participants passively observe social stimuli from a detached "third person" perspective. Here we consider the unique conceptual and methodological challenges involved in adopting a "second person" approach whereby social cognitive mechanisms and their neural correlates are investigated within social interactions (Schilbach et al., 2013). The key question for researchers is how to distil a complex, intentional interaction between two in iduals into a tightly controlled and replicable experimental paradigm. We explore these issues within the context of recent investigations of joint attention - the ability to coordinate a common focus of attention with another person. We review pioneering neurophysiology and eye-tracking studies that have begun to address these issues offer recommendations for the optimal design and implementation of interactive tasks, and discuss the broader implications of interactive approaches for social cognitive neuroscience.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1068/P6953
Abstract: Enhanced visual search is widely reported in autism. Here we note a similar advantage for university students self-reporting higher levels of autism-like traits. Contrary to prevailing theories of autism, performance was not associated with perceptual-discrimination thresholds for the same stimuli, but was associated with inspection-time threshold—a measure of speed of perceptual processing. Enhanced visual search in autism may, therefore, at least partially be explained by faster speed of processing.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 31-03-2013
DOI: 10.1007/S10803-013-1805-Z
Abstract: Atypical auditory perception is a widely recognised but poorly understood feature of autism. In the current study, we used magnetoencephalography to measure the brain responses of 10 autistic children as they listened passively to dichotic pitch stimuli, in which an illusory tone is generated by sub-millisecond inter-aural timing differences in white noise. Relative to control stimuli that contain no inter-aural timing differences, dichotic pitch stimuli typically elicit an object related negativity (ORN) response, associated with the perceptual segregation of the tone and the carrier noise into distinct auditory objects. Autistic children failed to demonstrate an ORN, suggesting a failure of segregation however, comparison with the ORNs of age-matched typically developing controls narrowly failed to attain significance. More striking, the autistic children demonstrated a significant differential response to the pitch stimulus, peaking at around 50 ms. This was not present in the control group, nor has it been found in other groups tested using similar stimuli. This response may be a neural signature of atypical processing of pitch in at least some autistic in iduals.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 25-02-2014
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.261
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 30-08-2016
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-10-2018
DOI: 10.1111/EJN.13694
Abstract: The auditory processing atypicalities experienced by many in iduals on the autism spectrum disorder might be understood in terms of difficulties parsing the sound energy arriving at the ears into discrete auditory 'objects'. Here, we asked whether autistic adults are able to make use of two important spatial cues to auditory object formation - the relative timing and litude of sound energy at the left and right ears. Using electroencephalography, we measured the brain responses of 15 autistic adults and 15 age- and verbal-IQ-matched control participants as they listened to dichotic pitch stimuli - white noise stimuli in which interaural timing or litude differences applied to a narrow frequency band of noise typically lead to the perception of a pitch sound that is spatially segregated from the noise. Responses were contrasted with those to stimuli in which timing and litude cues were removed. Consistent with our previous studies, autistic adults failed to show a significant object-related negativity (ORN) for timing-based pitch, although their ORN was not significantly smaller than that of the control group. Autistic participants did show an ORN to litude cues, indicating that they do not experience a general impairment in auditory object formation. However, their P400 response - thought to indicate the later attention-dependent aspects of auditory object formation - was missing. These findings provide further evidence of atypical auditory object processing in autism with potential implications for understanding the perceptual and communication difficulties associated with the condition.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 19-01-2014
Abstract: The discipline of cognitive neuropsychology has been important for informing theories of cognition and describing the nature of acquired cognitive disorders, but its applicability in a developmental context has been questioned. Here, we revisit this issue, asking whether the cognitive neuropsychological approach can be helpful for exploring the nature and causes of developmental disorders and, if so, how. We outline the key features of the cognitive neuropsychological approach, and then consider how some of the major challenges to this approach from a developmental perspective might be met. In doing so, we distinguish between challenges to the methods of cognitive neuropsychology and those facing its deeper conceptual underpinnings. We conclude that the detailed investigation of patterns of both associations and dissociations, and across both developmental and acquired cases, can assist in describing the cognitive deficits within developmental disorders and in delineating possible causal pathways to their acquisition.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-2010
DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2010.490207
Abstract: Adults experiencing face recognition difficulties in the absence of known brain injury are described as cases of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), under the assumption that specific face recognition impairments have always been present. However, only five childhood cases of DP have been reported, and the majority had additional socio-communicative impairments consistent with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We tested face recognition skills of six 4- to 8-year-old children, who were suspected of having DP, and tested for ASD using established diagnostic tools. Two children met criteria for ASD. One child did not exhibit consistent face recognition impairments. The remaining three children were severely impaired on multiple tasks of unfamiliar face recognition despite normal cognitive functioning and no evidence of ASD. Two of these children were also impaired at object recognition suggesting more general visual recognition problems. The final child showed normal object recognition demonstrating apparently specific problems with facial identity recognition.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 20-04-2018
Abstract: Joint attention – the ability to coordinate attention with a social partner – is critical for social communication, learning and the regulation of interpersonal relationships. Infants and young children with autism demonstrate impairments in both initiating and responding to joint attention bids in naturalistic settings. However, little is known about joint attention abilities in adults with autism. Here, we tested 17 autistic adults and 17 age- and nonverbal intelligence quotient–matched controls using an interactive eye-tracking paradigm in which participants initiated and responded to joint attention bids with an on-screen avatar. Compared to control participants, autistic adults completed fewer trials successfully. They were also slower to respond to joint attention bids in the first block of testing but performed as well as controls in the second block. There were no group differences in responding to spatial cues on a non-social task with similar attention and oculomotor demands. These experimental results were mirrored in the subjective reports given by participants, with some commenting that they initially found it challenging to communicate using eye gaze, but were able to develop strategies that allowed them to achieve joint attention. Our study indicates that for many autistic in iduals, subtle difficulties using eye-gaze information persist well into adulthood.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 29-05-2012
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-02-2015
DOI: 10.1002/HBM.22762
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-2011
DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2011.603052
Abstract: Empirical data regarding the extent of face recognition abnormalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is inconsistent. Here, 27 ASD and 47 typically developing (TD) children completed an immediate two-alternative forced-choice identity matching task. We contrasted recognition of own- and other-race faces, and, counter to prediction, we found a typical advantage for recognizing own- over other-race faces in both the ASD and TD groups. In addition, ASD and TD groups responded similarly to stimulus manipulations (use of identical or different photographs for identity matching and cropping stimuli to remove hair information). However, age-standardized scores varied widely within the ASD s le, and a subgroup of ASD participants with impaired face recognition did not exhibit a significant own-race recognition advantage. An explanation regarding early experience with faces is considered, and implications for research of in idual variation within ASD are discussed.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 06-2008
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X08004354
Abstract: By conceiving of autism and psychosis as diametrically opposite phenotypes of underactive and overactive mentalizing, respectively, Crespi & Badcock (C& B) commit themselves to a continuum view of intercorrelated mentalizing functions. This view fails to acknowledge dissociations between mentalizing functions and that psychotic people show a mixture of both hypo- and hyper-mentalizing.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2010
DOI: 10.1068/P6727
Abstract: As faces become familiar, recognition becomes easier but the style of processing also changes. Here, twenty-one typically developing (TD) children and twenty-one children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were familiarised with 6 identities over 3 days. Next, they completed a 4-alternative forced-choice matching test in which targets were the 6 familiarised faces and 6 unfamiliar faces. The TD group showed a significant advantage for familiarised faces when matching whole faces and both internal and external facial regions. The ASD group showed similar familiarisation effects for whole and external faces, but not for internal regions. The ASD group was also impaired at matching eyes and mouths of familiarised faces. Results suggest the process of acquiring familiarity with faces differs from ASD and TD children.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 26-06-2014
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.466
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-05-2016
DOI: 10.1111/DESC.12328
Abstract: It has been proposed that language impairments in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) stem from atypical neural processing of speech and/or nonspeech sounds. However, the strength of this proposal is compromised by the unreliable outcomes of previous studies of speech and nonspeech processing in ASD. The aim of this study was to determine whether there was an association between poor spoken language and atypical event-related field (ERF) responses to speech and nonspeech sounds in children with ASD (n = 14) and controls (n = 18). Data from this developmental population (ages 6-14) were analysed using a novel combination of methods to maximize the reliability of our findings while taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the ASD population. The results showed that poor spoken language scores were associated with atypical left hemisphere brain responses (200 to 400 ms) to both speech and nonspeech in the ASD group. These data support the idea that some children with ASD may have an immature auditory cortex that affects their ability to process both speech and nonspeech sounds. Their poor speech processing may impair their ability to process the speech of other people, and hence reduce their ability to learn the phonology, syntax, and semantics of their native language.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 17-01-2017
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.2899
Abstract: The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties—including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In the Search task, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In the NoSearch task, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measurable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.CLINPH.2015.07.038
Abstract: This study investigated auditory cortical processing of linguistically-relevant temporal modulations in the developing brains of young children. Auditory envelope following responses to white noise litude modulated at rates of 1-80 Hz in healthy children (aged 3-5 years) and adults were recorded using a paediatric magnetoencephalography (MEG) system and a conventional MEG system, respectively. For children, there were envelope following responses to slow modulations but no significant responses to rates higher than about 25 Hz, whereas adults showed significant envelope following responses to almost the entire range of stimulus rates. Our results show that the auditory cortex of preschool-aged children has a sharply limited capacity to process rapid litude modulations in sounds, as compared to the auditory cortex of adults. These neurophysiological results are consistent with previous psychophysical evidence for a protracted maturational time course for auditory temporal processing. The findings are also in good agreement with current linguistic theories that posit a perceptual bias for low frequency temporal information in speech during language acquisition. These insights also have clinical relevance for our understanding of language disorders that are associated with difficulties in processing temporal information in speech.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 19-06-2015
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 30-07-2015
No related organisations have been discovered for Jon Brock.
Start Date: 2009
End Date: 12-2014
Amount: $422,285.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2017
End Date: 12-2022
Amount: $367,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity