No abstract

Individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) have a cognitive style that privileges local over global or gestalt details. While not a core symptom of autism, individuals with HFA seem to reliably show this bias. Our lab has been studying a sample of children who have overcome their early ASD diagnoses, showing “optimal outcomes” (OO). This study characterizes performance by OO, HFA, and typically developing (TD) adolescents as they describe paintings under cognitive load. Analyses of detail focus in painting descriptions indicated that the HFA group displayed significantly more local focus than both OO and TD groups, while the OO and TD groups did not differ. We discuss implications for the centrality of detail focus to the autism diagnosis.

In lab settings, children are able to learn new words from overheard interactions, yet in naturalistic contexts this is often not the case. We investigated the degree to which joint attention within the overheard interaction facilitates overheard learning. Twenty two-year-olds were tested on novel words they had been exposed to in two different overhearing contexts: one in which both interlocutors were attending to the interaction, and one in which one interlocutor was not attending. Participants only learned the new words in the former condition, indicating that they did not learn when joint attention was absent. This finding demonstrates that not all overheard interactions are equally good for word learning-attentive interlocutors are crucial when learning words through overhearing.

Current neuroscientific models describe the functional neural architecture of visual working memory (VWM) as an interaction of the frontal-parietal control network and more posterior areas in the ventral visual stream (Jonides et al., 2008; D'Esposito and Postle, 2015; Eriksson et al., 2015). These models are primarily based on adult neuroimaging studies. However, VWM undergoes significant development in infancy and early childhood, and the goal of this mini-review is to examine how recent findings from neuroscientific studies of early VWM development can be reconciled with this model. We surveyed 29 recent empirical reports that present neuroimaging findings in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers (using EEG, fNIRS, rs-fMRI) and neonatal lesion studies in non-human primates. We conclude that (1) both the frontal-parietal control network and the posterior cortical storage areas are active from early infancy; (2) this system undergoes focalization and some reorganization during early development; (3) and the MTL plays a significant role in this process as well. Motivated by both theoretical and methodological considerations, we offer some recommendations for future directions for the field.

Word learning in young children requires coordinated attention between language input and the referent object. Current accounts of word learning are based on spoken language, where the association between language and objects occurs through simultaneous and multimodal perception. In contrast, deaf children acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) perceive both linguistic and non‐linguistic information through the visual mode. In order to coordinate attention to language input and its referents, deaf children must allocate visual attention optimally between objects and signs. We conducted two eye‐tracking experiments to investigate how young deaf children allocate attention and process referential cues in order to fast‐map novel signs to novel objects. Participants were deaf children learning ASL between the ages of 17 and 71 months. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 30) were presented with a novel object and a novel sign, along with a referential cue that occurred either before or after the sign label. In Experiment 2, a new group of participants (n = 32) were presented with two novel objects and a novel sign, so that the referential cue was critical for identifying the target object. Across both experiments, participants showed evidence for fast‐mapping the signs regardless of the timing of the referential cue. Individual differences in children's allocation of attention during exposure were correlated with their ability to fast‐map the novel signs at test. This study provides first evidence for fast‐mapping in sign language, and contributes to theoretical accounts of how word learning develops when all input occurs in the visual modality.