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Recent theories of socio-moral development assume that humans evolved a capacity to evaluate others' social actions in different kinds of interactions. Prior infant studies found both reaching and visual preferences for the prosocial over the antisocial agents. However, whether the attribution of either positive or negative valence to agents' actions involved in an aggressive chasing interaction can be inferred by both reaching behaviors and visual attention deployment (i.e., disengagement of visual attention) is still an open question. Here we presented 7-month-old infants (N = 92) with events displaying an aggressive chasing interaction. By using preferential reaching and an attentional task (i.e., overlap paradigm), we assessed whether and how infants evaluate aggressive chasing interactions. The results demonstrated that young infants prefer to reach the victim over the aggressor, but neither agent affects visual attention. Moreover, such reaching preferences emerged only when dynamic cues and emotional face-like features were congruent with agents' social roles. Overall, these findings suggested that infants' evaluations of aggressive interactions are based on infants' sensitivity to some kinematic cues that characterized agents' actions and, especially, to the congruency between such motions and the face-like emotional expressions of the agents., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Purpose: Controversy exists on the best fixation for total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Non-cemented fixation has been theorized to improve patient outcomes and longevity of implantation but no study has focused on comparison between cemented or cementless posterior-stabilized implants despite being the most commonly or second most frequently utilized implant in most total knee replacement registries., Methods: Inclusion criteria with observational and interventional papers, and review articles that focused on patients with cementless and cemented PS TKAs were used to analyze outcomes such as implant survivorship, complication, or revision rates. Using a combination of keywords, a systematic search was performed on Medline (PubMed), Embase, and Cochrane Library for Meta-Analysis., Results: When using the specified criteria, only 8 studies were selected for full-text analysis and meta-analysis after eliminating screening duplicates, titles, and abstracts without full-text access. These eight studies contain 1652 patients, 693 in the non-cemented Group, and 959 in the cemented total knee prosthesis Group. The meta-analysis revealed the advantage of cementless fixation over cemented fixation in implant survivorship, with 0.6% and 2.6% of aseptic loosening in each Group. The cumulative survival at 12 years was 97.4% for the cementless Group and 89.2% for the cemented Group. The subgroup with a stem showed a positive outcome for cementless fixation over cemented fixation regarding implant survivorship. No differences between the cemented and cementless TKAs were observed in patient-reported outcomes, revision rates, or radiolucent line development., Conclusion: We observed comparable rates for cemented and cementless posterior-stabilized TKAs over a medium-term follow-up period., (© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2024.)

Few month old human infants are able to detect the social roles of artificial agents and consistently choose the object behaving as 'approacher' rather than 'repulser'. This preference has been considered evidence of a pre-linguistic and pre-cultural origin of the social mind. Similar preferences have not been described in other species, though comparative data could help clarify the nature of this phenomenon and its evolutionary origin. In this study, we investigated sensitivity to the social role of an artificial agent in domestic chicks. Birds offer an excellent model to study the evolutionary roots of cognitive abilities, since they separated from mammals over 300 Ma. Moreover, the investigation of newly hatched chicks allows control for previous experience. After being exposed to computer-presented animations depicting an interaction among two agents, chicks underwent a free choice test among those same objects. While no initial evidence of a clear preference emerged from the planned analysis, chicks in the experimental condition showed a preference for the 'approacher' when controlling for side bias, mirroring human infants behaviour. This suggests the existence of an early ability to discriminate agents from their interactions, independent from any social experience., Competing Interests: We declare we have no competing interests., (© 2023 The Authors.)

Perceiving facial expressions is an essential ability for infants. Although previous studies indicated that infants could perceive emotion from expressive facial movements, the developmental change of this ability remains largely unknown. To exclusively examine infants' processing of facial movements, we used point-light displays (PLDs) to present emotionally expressive facial movements. Specifically, we used a habituation and visual paired comparison (VPC) paradigm to investigate whether 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds could discriminate between happy and fear PLDs after being habituated with a happy PLD (happy-habituation condition) or a fear PLD (fear-habituation condition). The 3-month-olds discriminated between the happy and fear PLDs in both the happy- and fear-habituation conditions. The 6- and 9-month-olds showed discrimination only in the happy-habituation condition but not in the fear-habituation condition. These results indicated a developmental change in processing expressive facial movements. Younger infants tended to process low-level motion signals regardless of the depicted emotions, and older infants tended to process expressions, which emerged in familiar facial expressions (e.g., happy). Additional analyses of individual difference and eye movement patterns supported this conclusion. In Experiment 2, we concluded that the findings of Experiment 1 were not due to a spontaneous preference for fear PLDs. Using inverted PLDs, Experiment 3 further suggested that 3-month-olds have already perceived PLDs as face-like stimuli., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Despite its adaptive value for social life, the emergence and the development of the ability to detect agents that cause aversive interactions and distinguish them from potentially affiliative agents (approachers) has not been investigated. We presented infants with a simple interaction involving two agents: one of them (the "repulser") moved toward and pushed the other (the "approacher") which reacted by simply moving toward the repulser without contacting it. We found that 8-month-olds (N = 28) looked longer at the approacher than at the repulser (Experiment 1), whereas 4-month-olds (N = 30) exhibited no preference (Experiment 2). To control for low-level cues (such as the preference for the agent that moved after the contact), two new groups of 4- and 8-month-old infants were presented with a series of interactions in which the agents inverted their social roles. Older infants (N = 30) manifested no preference for either agent (Experiment 3), while younger infants (N = 30) looked longer at the first agent to move (Experiment 4). Our results indicated that 8-month-olds' preferences for the approacher over the repulser depended on social information and were finely tuned to agents that display prosocial rather than antisocial behavior. We discuss these findings in light of the development and adaptive value of the ability to negatively evaluate repulsers, to avoid choosing them as partners., (© 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Recent research revealed that infants attend to agents' intentions when they evaluate helping actions. The current study investigated whether infants also consider agents' intentions when they evaluate distributive actions. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants were first shown two failed attempts to perform a distribution. In the "failed equal distribution," the distributor first tried to reach one of the recipients to deliver an apple, failed, and then attempted to reach the other possible recipient to deliver a different apple and also failed. In the "failed unequal distribution," a different distributor always tried unsuccessfully to reach the same beneficiary. Then, in the test phase, infants were presented with the two distributors side by side, and infants' spontaneous preferential looking and reaching actions were recorded. We found a reliable preference for the equal distributor in both the visual and manual responses. Experiments 2 and 3 helped to rule out alternative explanations based on perceptual cues and affiliative biases. Overall, these findings suggest that infants' ability to evaluate distributive actions relies not only on the outcomes but also on the distributors' intentions., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Despite an increasing interest in detecting early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), the pathogenesis of the social impairments characterizing ASD is still largely unknown. Atypical visual attention to social stimuli is a potential early marker of the social and communicative deficits of ASD. Some authors hypothesized that such impairments are present from birth, leading to a decline in the subsequent typical functioning of the learning-mechanisms. Others suggested that these early deficits emerge during the transition from subcortically to cortically mediated mechanisms, happening around 2-3 months of age. The present study aimed to provide additional evidence on the origin of the early visual attention disturbance that seems to characterize infants at high risk (HR) for ASD. Four visual preference tasks were used to investigate social attention in 4-month-old HR, compared to low-risk (LR) infants of the same age. Visual attention differences between HR and LR infants emerged only for stimuli depicting a direct eye-gaze, compared to an adverted eye-gaze. Specifically, HR infants showed a significant visual preference for the direct eye-gaze stimulus compared to LR infants, which may indicate a delayed development of the visual preferences normally observed at birth in typically developing infants. No other differences were found between groups. Results are discussed in the light of the hypotheses on the origins of early social visual attention impairments in infants at risk for ASD., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

The human visual system can discriminate between animate beings vs. inanimate objects on the basis of some kinematic cues, such as starting from rest and speed changes by self-propulsion. The ontogenetic origin of such capability is still under debate. Here we investigate for the first time whether newborns manifest an attentional bias toward objects that abruptly change their speed along a trajectory as contrasted with objects that move at a constant speed. To this end, we systematically manipulated the motion speed of two objects. An object that moves with a constant speed was contrasted with an object that suddenly increases (Experiment 1) or with one that suddenly decreases its speed (Experiment 2). When presented with a single speed change, newborns did not show any visual preference. However, newborns preferred an object that abruptly increases and then decreases its speed (Experiment 3), but they did not show any visual preference for the reverse sequence pattern (Experiment 4). Overall, results are discussed in line with the hypothesis of the existence of attentional biases in newborns that trigger their attention towards some visual cues of motion that characterized animate perception in adults.

Day-old domestic chicks approach the larger of two groups of identical objects, but in a 3 vs 4 comparison, their performance is random. Here we investigated whether adding individually distinctive features to each object would facilitate such discrimination. Chicks reared with 7 objects were presented with the operation 1 + 1 + 1 vs 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. When objects were all identical, chicks performed randomly, as expected (Experiment 1). In the remaining experiments, objects differed from one another due to additional features. Chicks succeeded when those features were differently oriented segments (Experiment 2) but failed when the features were arranged to depict individually different face-like displays (Experiment 3). Discrimination was restored if the face-like stimuli were presented upside-down, disrupting global processing (Experiment 4). Our results support the claim that numerical discrimination in 3 vs 4 comparison benefits from the presence of distinctive features that enhance object individuation due to individual processing. Interestingly, when the distinctive features are arranged into upright face-like displays, the process is susceptible to global over local interference due to configural processing. This study was aimed at assessing whether individual object processing affects numerical discrimination. We hypothesise that in humans similar strategies aimed at improving performance at the non-symbolic level may have positive effects on symbolic mathematical abilities.

Already in uterus the hand moves with the typical accelerated-decelerated kinematics of goal-directed actions and, from the twenty-second week of pregnancy, the unborn shows the ability to modulate the velocity of the movement depending on the nature of the target. According to the direct matching hypothesis, this motor knowledge may be sufficient to attune neonates' motion perception-like adults'-to biological kinematics. Using dots configuration motions which varied with respect to the kinematics of goal-directed actions, we observed that two-day-old human newborns did not show any spontaneous preference for either biological accelerated-decelerated motion or non-biological constant velocity motion when these were simultaneously presented in a standard preferential looking paradigm. In contrast, newborns preferred the biological kinematics after the repeated visual presentation of the different motions in a standard infant-control visual habituation paradigm. We propose that present results indicate that the relationship between perception and action does not require only action development but also the accumulation of sufficient perceptual experience. They also suggest a fast plasticity of the sensorimotor system in linking an already acquired motor knowledge with a newly experienced congruent visual stimulation., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Humans attend to different positions in the space either by moving their eyes or by moving covertly their attention. The development of covert attention occurs during the first year of life. According to Colombo's model of attention (2001), within the first years there is a significant change in infants' visuo-spatial orienting mechanisms, from a predominantly overt form to a covert orienting starting from 4 to 5 months of life. The use of non-invasive brain imaging techniques can shed light on the origin of such mechanisms. In particular, EEG and ERP studies can directly investigate the neural correlates of covert attention in young infants. The present study investigated the neural correlates of covert attention employing a visuo-spatial cueing paradigm in 3-month-old infants. Infants were presented with a central point-light walker (PLD) followed by a single peripheral target. The target appeared randomly at a position either congruent or incongruent with the walking direction of the cue. We examined infants' target-locked P1 component and the saccade latencies toward the peripheral target. Results showed that the P1 component was larger in response to congruent than to incongruent targets and saccade latencies were faster for congruent rather than incongruent trials. Moreover, the facilitation in processing sensory information (priming effects) presented at the cued spatial location occurs even before the onset of the oculomotor response, suggesting that covert attention is present before 4 months of age. Overall, this study highlights how ERPs method could help researchers at investigating the neural basis of attentional mechanisms in infants., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Humans represent numbers on a mental number line with smaller numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right side. A left-to-right oriented spatial-numerical association, (SNA), has been demonstrated in animals and infants. However, the possibility that SNA is learnt by early exposure to caregivers' directional biases is still open. We conducted two experiments: in Experiment 1, we tested whether SNA is present at birth and in Experiment 2, we studied whether it depends on the relative rather than the absolute magnitude of numerousness. Fifty-five-hour-old newborns, once habituated to a number (12), spontaneously associated a smaller number (4) with the left and a larger number (36) with the right side (Experiment 1). SNA in neonates is not absolute but relative. The same number (12) was associated with the left side rather than the right side whenever the previously experienced number was larger (36) rather than smaller (4) (Experiment 2). Control on continuous physical variables showed that the effect is specific of discrete magnitudes. These results constitute strong evidence that in our species SNA originates from pre-linguistic and biological precursors in the brain., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The ability to detect social signals represents a first step to enter our social world. Behavioral evidence has demonstrated that 6-month-old infants are able to orient their attention toward the position indicated by walking direction, showing faster orienting responses toward stimuli cued by the direction of motion than toward uncued stimuli. The present study investigated the neural mechanisms underpinning this attentional priming effect by using a spatial cueing paradigm and recording EEG (Geodesic System 128 channels) from 6-month-old infants. Infants were presented with a central point-light walker followed by a single peripheral target. The target appeared randomly at a position either congruent or incongruent with the walking direction of the cue. We examined infants' target-locked event-related potential (ERP) responses and we used cortical source analysis to explore which brain regions gave rise to the ERP responses. The P1 component and saccade latencies toward the peripheral target were modulated by the congruency between the walking direction of the cue and the position of the target. Infants' saccade latencies were faster in response to targets appearing at congruent spatial locations. The P1 component was larger in response to congruent than to incongruent targets and a similar congruency effect was found with cortical source analysis in the parahippocampal gyrus and the anterior fusiform gyrus. Overall, these findings suggest that a type of biological motion like the one of a vertebrate walking on the legs can trigger covert orienting of attention in 6-month-old infants, enabling enhancement of neural activity related to visual processing of potentially relevant information as well as a facilitation of oculomotor responses to stimuli appearing at the attended location., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Humans share with a variety of animal species the spontaneous ability to detect the numerical correspondence between limited quantities of visual objects and discrete auditory events. Here, we explored how such mental representation is generated in the visual modality by monitoring a parieto-occipital ERP component, N2pc, whose amplitude covaries with the number of visual targets in explicit enumeration. Participants listened to an auditory sequence of one to three tones followed by a visual search display containing one to three targets. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to respond based on the numerical correspondence between tones and visual targets. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to ignore the tones and detect a target presence in the search display. The results of Experiment 1 showed an N2pc amplitude increase determined by the number of visual targets followed by a centroparietal ERP component modulated by the numerical correspondence between tones and visual targets. The results of Experiment 2 did not show an N2pc amplitude increase as a function of the number of visual targets. However, the numerical correspondence between tones and visual targets influenced N2pc amplitude. By comparing a subset of amplitude/latency parameters between Experiment 1 and 2, the present results suggest N2pc reflects two modes for representing the number of visual targets. One mode, susceptible to subjective control, relies on visual target segregation for exact target individuation, whereas a different mode, likely enabling spontaneous cross-modal matching, relies on the extraction of rough information about number of targets from visual input., (© 2018 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Amodal (redundant) and arbitrary cross-sensory feature associations involve the context-insensitive mapping of absolute feature values across sensory domains. Cross-sensory associations of a different kind, known as correspondences, involve the context-sensitive mapping of relative feature values. Are such correspondences in place at birth (like amodal associations), or are they learned from subsequently experiencing relevant feature co-occurrences in the world (like arbitrary associations)? To decide between these two possibilities, human newborns (median age = 44 hr) watched animations in which two balls alternately rose and fell together in space. The pitch of an accompanying sound rose and fell either congruently with this visual change (pitch rising and falling as the balls moved up and down), or incongruently (pitch rising and falling as the balls moved down and up). Newborns' looking behavior was sensitive to this congruence, providing the strongest indication to date that cross-sensory correspondences can be in place at birth., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Only a small percentage of the separately collected plastic is recycled. The mechanical selection process of source segregated plastic materials generates considerable amounts of residues that are commonly named as Plasmix. By means of a life cycle assessment (LCA) modelling, the environmental performances of the main Plasmix management options (thermal treatment, energy recovery, and landfilling) were compared. Six treatment scenarios, with different pre-treatment alternatives, were evaluated. Landfilling after waste washing and Plasmix substitution of coke in a blast furnace represent the most favorable options, since the performances of thermal treatment and energy recovery are worsened by specific emissions of a variety of toxic compounds and heavy metals within plastic materials as additives., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Self-propelled motion is a powerful cue that conveys information that an object is animate. In this case, animate refers to an entity's capacity to initiate motion without an applied external force. Sensitivity to this motion cue is present in infants that are a few months old, but whether this sensitivity is experience-dependent or is already present at birth is unknown. Here, we tested newborns to examine whether predispositions to process self-produced motion cues underlying animacy perception were present soon after birth. We systematically manipulated the onset of motion by self-propulsion (Experiment 1) and the change in trajectory direction in the presence or absence of direct contact with an external object (Experiments 2 and 3) to investigate how these motion cues determine preference in newborns. Overall, data demonstrated that, at least at birth, the self-propelled onset of motion is a crucial visual cue that allowed newborns to differentiate between self- and non-self-propelled objects (Experiment 1) because when this cue was removed, newborns did not manifest any visual preference (Experiment 2), even if they were able to discriminate between the stimuli (Experiment 3). To our knowledge, this is the first study aimed at identifying sensitivity in human newborns to the most basic and rudimentary motion cues that reliably trigger perceptions of animacy in adults. Our findings are compatible with the hypothesis of the existence of inborn predispositions to visual cues of motion that trigger animacy perception in adults., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objective: Visual preference for faces at birth is the product of a multimodal sensory experience experienced by the fetus even during the gestational period. The ability to recognize faces allows an ecologically advantageous interaction with the social environment. However, perinatal events such as premature birth, may adversely affect the adequate development of this capacity. In this study, we evaluated the preference for facial stimuli in preterm infants within the first few hours after birth., Methods: This is a cross-sectional observational study of 59 newborns, 28 preterm and 31 full-term infants. The babies were assessed in the first hours of life, with two white boards in the shape of a head and neck: one with the drawing of a face similar to the human face (natural face), and one with the drawing of misaligned eyes, mouth and nose (distorted face). After the newborn fixated the eyes on the presented stimulus, it was slowly moved along the visual field. The recognition of the stimulus was considered present when the baby had eye or head movements toward the stimulus., Results: The preterm infants, in addition to showing a lower occurrence of orientation movements for both stimuli, on average (1.8±1.1 to natural faces and 2.0±1.2 for distorted ones) also showed no preference for any of them (p=0.35). Full-term newborns showed a different behavior, in which they showed a preference for natural faces (p=0.002) and a higher number of orientations for the stimulus, for both natural (3.2±0.8) and distorted faces (2.5±0.9)., Conclusion: Preterm newborns recognize facial stimuli and disclose no preference for natural faces, different from full-term newborns., (Copyright © 2016 Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.)

Some key behavioural traits of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have been hypothesized to be due to impairments in the early activation of subcortical orienting mechanisms, which in typical development bias newborns to orient to relevant social visual stimuli. A challenge to testing this hypothesis is that autism is usually not diagnosed until a child is at least 3 years old. Here, we circumvented this difficulty by studying for the very first time, the predispositions to pay attention to social stimuli in newborns with a high familial risk of autism. Results showed that visual preferences to social stimuli strikingly differed between high-risk and low-risk newborns. Significant predictors for high-risk newborns were obtained and an accurate biomarker was identified. The results revealed early behavioural characteristics of newborns with familial risk for ASD, allowing for a prospective approach to the emergence of autism in early infancy.

The present study investigates whether the walking direction of a biological motion point-light display can trigger visuo-spatial attention in 6-month-old infants. A cueing paradigm and the recording of eye movements in a free viewing condition were employed. A control group of adults took part in the experiment. Participants were presented with a central point-light display depicting a walking human, followed by a single peripheral target. In experiment 1, the central biological motion stimulus depicting a walking human could be upright or upside-down and was facing either left or right. Results revealed that the latency of saccades toward the peripheral target was modulated by the congruency between the facing direction of the cue and the position of the target. In infants, as well as in adults, saccade latencies were shorter when the target appeared in the position signalled by the facing direction of the point-light walker (congruent trials) than when the target appeared in the contralateral position (incongruent trials). This cueing effect was present only when the biological motion cue was presented in the upright condition and not when the display was inverted. In experiment 2, a rolling point-light circle with unambiguous direction was adopted. Here, adults were influenced by the direction of the central cue. However no effect of congruency was found in infants. This result suggests that biological motion has a priority as a cue for spatial attention during development., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

From birth it is critical for our survival to identify social agents and conspecifics. Among others stimuli, faces provide the required information. The present paper will review the mechanisms subserving face detection and face recognition, respectively, over development. In addition, the emergence of the functional and neural specialization for face processing as an experience-dependent process will be documented. Overall, the present work highlights the importance of both inborn predispositions and the exposure to certain experiences, shortly after birth, to drive the system to become functionally specialized to process faces in the first months of life.

Despite evidence supporting an early attraction to human faces, the nature of the face representation in neonates and its development during the first year after birth remain poorly understood. One suggestion is that an early preference for human faces reflects an attraction toward human eyes because human eyes are distinctive compared with other animals. In accord with this proposal, prior empirical studies have demonstrated the importance of the eye region in face processing in adults and infants. However, an attraction for the human eye has never been shown directly in infants. The current study aimed to investigate whether an attraction for human eyes would be present in newborns and older infants. With the use of a preferential looking time paradigm, newborns and 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month-olds were simultaneously presented with a pair of nonhuman primate faces (chimpanzees and Barbary macaques) that differed only by the eyes, thereby pairing a face with original nonhuman primate eyes with the same face in which the eyes were replaced by human eyes. Our results revealed that no preference was observed in newborns, but a preference for nonhuman primate faces with human eyes emerged from 3months of age and remained stable thereafter. The findings are discussed in terms of how a preference for human eyes may emerge during the first few months after birth., (Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Inversion effect in biological motion perception has been recently attributed to an innate sensitivity of the visual system to the gravity-dependent dynamic of the motion. However, the specific cues that determine the inversion effect in naïve subjects were never investigated. In the present study, we have assessed the contribution of the local gravity-dependent motion (i.e., the orientation of individual dot trajectories) and the global configuration (i.e., the vertical location of the dots representing the feet within the display) in determining the inversion effect for biological motion in humans at birth. Results showed that 2-day-old newborns, at their 1st exposure to point-light displays, preferred a biological motion stimulus representing the legs of a walking animal compared with an identical display in which individual dot trajectories were locally inverted so that the motion violates the gravity force (Experiment 1). Interestingly, the global configuration affected the analysis of the gravity-dependent profile of dots motion. Indeed, the spontaneous preference disappeared when the local dots representing feet were embedded in a more complex global display and all the dots representing feet were located on the ground below the rest of the body (Experiment 2). Finally, results revealed that the orientation of the global configuration per se is not a crucial factor in determining newborns' preference (Experiment 3). These results suggest that humans possess an inborn predisposition about the direction of the gravity force that imprints biological motion and supports the hypothesis that a mechanism for the detection of biological motion is already at work before visual experience., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.)

Behentrimonium chloride (BTC) is a straight-chain alkyltrimonium chloride compound commonly used as an antistatic, hair conditioning, emulsifier, or preservative agent in personal care products. Although the European Union recently restricted the use of alkyltrimonium chlorides and bromides as preservatives to ≤0.1%, these compounds have been safely used for many years at ≤5% in hundreds of cosmetic products for other uses than as a preservative. In vitro, clinical, and controlled consumer usage tests in barrier-impaired individuals were conducted to determine if whole body, leave-on skin care products containing 1-5% BTC cause dermal irritation or any other skin reaction with use. BTC-containing formulations were predicted to be non-irritants by the EpiDerm® skin irritation test and the bovine corneal opacity and permeability (BCOP)/chorioallantoic membrane vascular assay (CAMVA) ocular irritation test battery. No evidence of allergic contact dermatitis or cumulative dermal irritation was noted under the exaggerated conditions of human occlusive patch tests. No clinically assessed or self-reported adverse reactions were noted in adults or children with atopic, eczematous, and/or xerotic skin during two-week and four-week monitored home usage studies. These results were confirmed by post-marketing data for five body lotions, which showed only 0.69 undesirable effects (mostly skin irritation) reported per million shipped consumer units during 2006-2011; a value consistent with a non-irritating body lotion. No serious undesirable effects were reported during in-market use of the products. Therefore, if formulated in appropriate conditions at 1-5%, BTC will not cause dermal irritation or delayed contact sensitization when used in a whole-body, leave-on product., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Perception of mechanical (i.e. physical) causality, in terms of a cause-effect relationship between two motion events, appears to be a powerful mechanism in our daily experience. In spite of a growing interest in the earliest causal representations, the role of experience in the origin of this sensitivity is still a matter of dispute. Here, we asked the question about the innate origin of causal perception, never tested before at birth. Three experiments were carried out to investigate sensitivity at birth to some visual spatiotemporal cues present in a launching event. Newborn babies, only a few hours old, showed that they significantly preferred a physical causality event (i.e. Michotte's Launching effect) when matched to a delay event (i.e. a delayed launching; Experiment 1) or to a non-causal event completely identical to the causal one except for the order of the displacements of the two objects involved which was swapped temporally (Experiment 3). This preference for the launching event, moreover, also depended on the continuity of the trajectory between the objects involved in the event (Experiment 2). These results support the hypothesis that the human system possesses an early available, possibly innate basic mechanism to compute causality, such a mechanism being sensitive to the additive effect of certain well-defined spatiotemporal cues present in the causal event independently of any prior visual experience., (© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

The ability to detect and prefer a face when embedded in complex visual displays was investigated in 3- and 6-month-old infants, as well as in adults, through a modified version of the visual search paradigm and the recording of eye movements. Participants (N=43) were shown 32 visual displays that comprised a target face among 3 or 5 heterogeneous objects as distractors. Results demonstrated that faces captured and maintained adults' and 6-month-olds' attention, but not 3-month-olds' attention. Overall, the current study contributes to knowledge of the capacity of social stimuli to attract and maintain visual attention over other complex objects in young infants as well as in adults., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The present study investigates the human-specificity of the orienting system that allows neonates to look preferentially at faces. Three experiments were carried out to determine whether the face-perception system that is present at birth is broad enough to include both human and nonhuman primate faces. The results demonstrate that the newborns did not show any spontaneous visual preference for the human face when presented simultaneously with a monkey face that shared the same features, configuration, and low-level perceptual properties (Experiment 1). The newborns were, however, able to discriminate between the 2 faces belonging to the 2 different species (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the newborns were found to prefer looking at an upright, compared with an inverted, monkey face, as they do for human faces. Overall, the results demonstrate that newborns perceive monkey and human faces in a similar way. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the system underlying face preference at birth is broad enough to bias newborns' attention toward both human and nonhuman primate faces.

Alpha-hydroxy acids (AHAs), primarily glycolic and lactic acids, are widely used in cosmetics to alleviate dyspigmentation, photodamage, and other aging skin conditions and as pH adjusters. Glycolic acid reportedly enhances skin damage after repeated ultraviolet light exposure, e.g., increased sunburn cell formation. This study assessed potential in vitro skin penetration of lactic acid and malic acid incorporated into rinse-off personal care products, compared with rinse-off and leave-on exposures to glycolic acid (10%, pH 3.5) in a reference lotion. Radiolabeled AHA-fortified shampoo, conditioner, and lotion were evenly applied as single doses to human epidermal membranes mounted in static diffusion cells (not occluded). Exposures were 1-3 min (rinse-off) or 24 h (leave-on). Epidermal penetration of malic acid and lactic acid from the rinse-off shampoo and conditioner, respectively, was negligible, with >99% removed by rinsing, a negligible portion remaining in the stratum corneum (≤0.15%), and even less penetrating into the viable epidermis (≤0.04%). Glycolic acid penetration from the leave-on reference lotion was 1.42 μg equiv./cm2/h, with total absorbable dose recovery (receptor fluid plus epidermis) of 2.51%, compared to 0.009%, 0.003%, and 0.04% for the rinse-off reference lotion, shampoo (malic acid), and conditioner (lactic acid) exposures, respectively. Dermal penetration of AHAs into human skin is pH-, concentration-, and time-dependent. Alpha-hydroxy acids in rinse-off shampoos and conditioners are almost entirely removed from the skin within minutes by rinsing (resulting in negligible epidermal penetration). This suggests that ultraviolet radiation-induced skin effects of AHA-containing rinse-off products are negligible., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The long-term variation, nature and correlations of outdoor (222)Rn and (220)Rn progeny concentrations measured during the period 1994-2009 were investigated. The time series of data were obtained within the framework of the monitoring program performed by the Environmental Radioactivity Monitoring Station (ERMS) Bacău, a component part of the National Environmental Radioactivity Survey Network (NERSN), coordinated by National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA). The measuring method is based on the total beta measurements of atmospheric aerosol filters, using a low background total beta counter and ((90)Sr/Y) reference standard. Analysis of the time series of progeny concentrations in the low atmosphere makes evident different patterns of variation of these concentrations: diurnal, seasonal and annual. A possible relationship of progeny concentration increase with global warming is emphasized. In order to find the dominant frequency of the physical processes determining progeny concentration variability the power spectrum has been used. The deterministic nature of the time series of concentrations has been studied making use of the autocorrelation function and stationarity of the original data and of their phase randomized time series. Also, the correlations with meteorological parameters have been investigated using Pearson's correlation coefficient with corresponding level of significance., (2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The central role of sensory-motor representations in cognitive functions is almost universally accepted. However, determining the link between motor execution and its sensory counterpart and when, during ontogenesis, this link originates are still under investigation. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether at birth this link is already present and 2-day-old newborns are able to discriminate between visual cues indicating goal-directed or non-goal-directed actions. Here, with a preferential looking technique, a hand grasping a ball was the observed movement and we orthogonally manipulated the three factors necessary to successfully reach the goal: (a) presence of the ball, (b) direction of the arm movement, and (c) hand shaping. Results indicated that newborns orient more frequently and look longer at a hand shape for whole hand prehension but only when the movement is directed away from the body and toward the external world. In addition, newborns prefer the away from the body movement only when the object is present. We argue that newborns prefer a movement directed toward the external world only when it may develop into a purposeful movement because of the presence of the to-be-grasped object. Overall, our results support the existence of primitive sensory-motor associations since the first days after birth., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Personal care product manufacturers have used a broad spectrum of alternative ocular irritation assays during the past two decades because these tests do not require the use of live animals, they provide reliable predictive data, and they are relatively inexpensive to conduct. To complement these assays, the ex vivo Porcine Corneal Opacity Reversibility Assay (PorCORA) was recently developed using a corneal culture model to predict reversibility of ocular irritants. Three commercially available consumer products (a shampoo, a hair color glaze, and a hair colorant system containing 12% hydrogen peroxide) were each tested in two PorCORA study replicates in order to assess potential ocular damage reversibility for surfactant-, propylene carbonate-, and peroxide-based formulations, respectively. Under the exaggerated, in vitro study conditions, the surfactant-based shampoo may cause irreversible porcine corneal damage (histological changes in the epithelial squamous cell and/or basal cell layers), whereas the hair color glaze and 12% hydrogen peroxide product caused fully reversible ocular irritation (microscopic changes only in the superficial squamous cell layer). The hair color glaze and peroxide product results correlate with established in vivo data for similar compounds, but the shampoo results contradicted previous BCOP results (expected to be only a mild irritant). Therefore, although the PorCORA protocol shows promise in predicting the extent and reversibility of potential ocular damage caused by accidental consumer eye exposure to personal care products, the contradictory results for the surfactant-based shampoo indicate that more extensive validation testing of the PorCORA is necessary to definitively establish the protocol's reliability as a Draize test replacement., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The Chorioallantoic Membrane Vascular Assay (CAMVA) and Bovine Corneal Opacity and Permeability (BCOP) test are widely used to predict ocular irritation potential for consumer-use products. These in vitro assays do not require live animals, produce reliable predictive data for defined applicability domains compared to the Draize rabbit eye test, and are rapid and inexpensive. Data from 304 CAMVA and/or BCOP studies (319 formulations) were surveyed to determine the feasibility of predicting ocular irritation potential for various formulations. Hair shampoos, skin cleansers, and ethanol-based hair styling sprays were repeatedly predicted to be ocular irritants (accuracy rate=0.90-1.00), with skin cleanser and hair shampoo irritation largely dependent on surfactant species and concentration. Conversely, skin lotions/moisturizers and hair styling gels/lotions were repeatedly predicted to be non-irritants (accuracy rate=0.92 and 0.82, respectively). For hair shampoos, ethanol-based hair stylers, skin cleansers, and skin lotions/moisturizers, future ocular irritation testing (i.e., CAMVA/BCOP) can be nearly eliminated if new formulations are systematically compared to those previously tested using a defined decision tree. For other tested product categories, new formulations should continue to be evaluated in CAMVA/BCOP for ocular irritation potential because either the historical data exhibit significant variability (hair conditioners and mousses) or the historical sample size is too small to permit definitive conclusions (deodorants, make-up removers, massage oils, facial masks, body sprays, and other hair styling products). All decision tree conclusions should be made within a conservative weight-of-evidence context, considering the reported limitations of the BCOP test for alcohols, ketones, and solids., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The present study addresses the hypothesis that detection of biological motion is an intrinsic capacity of the visual system guided by a non-species-specific predisposition for the pattern of vertebrate movement and investigates the role of global vs. local information in biological motion detection. Two-day-old babies exposed to a biological motion point-light display (depicting a walking hen) and a non-biological motion display (a rotating rigid object) preferentially looked at the biological display (Experiment 1). A new group of newborns showed themselves to be capable of discriminating, following habituation, a biological motion display from a spatially scrambled version of it (Experiment 2). However, a third group of newborns, at their first exposure to such displays, did not show any preference between them (Experiment 3). Results confirm and extend previous comparative and developmental data, supporting an inborn predisposition to attend to biological motion in humans. This ability is presumably part of an evolutionarily ancient and non-species-specific system predisposing animals to preferentially attend to other animals.

There are several lines of evidence which suggests that, since birth, the human system detects social agents on the basis of at least two properties: the presence of a face and the way they move. This chapter reviews the infant research on the origin of brain specialization for social stimuli and on the role of innate mechanisms and perceptual experience in shaping the development of the social brain. Two lines of convergent evidence on face detection and biological motion detection will be presented to demonstrate the innate predispositions of the human system to detect social stimuli at birth. As for face detection, experiments will be presented to demonstrate that, by virtue of nonspecific attentional biases, a very coarse template of faces become active at birth. As for biological motion detection, studies will be presented to demonstrate that, since birth, the human system is able to detect social stimuli on the basis of their properties such as the presence of a semi-rigid motion named biological motion. Overall, the empirical evidence converges in supporting the notion that the human system begins life broadly tuned to detect social stimuli and that the progressive specialization will narrow the system for social stimuli as a function of experience., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Holistic face processing was investigated in newborns, 3-month-old infants, and adults through a modified version of the composite face paradigm and the recording of eye movements. After familiarization to the top portion of a face, participants (N = 70) were shown 2 aligned or misaligned faces, 1 of which comprised the familiar top part. In the aligned condition, no visual preference was found at any group age. In the misaligned condition, 3-month-olds preferred the face stimulus with the familiar top part, adults preferred the face stimulus with the novel one, and newborns did not manifest any visual preference. Results revealed that both infants' and adults' eye movements may be affected by holistic face information and demonstrated holistic face processing in 3-month-olds., (© 2010 The Authors. Child Development © 2010 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

Previous studies have shown that infants, including newborns, can match previously unseen and unheard human faces and vocalizations. More recently, it has been reported that infants as young as 4 months of age also can match the faces and vocalizations of other species raising the possibility that such broad multisensory perceptual tuning is present at birth. To test this possiblity, we investigated whether newborns can match monkey facial and vocal gestures. Using a paired preference procedure, in Experiment 1 we presented pairs of different visible monkey calls in silence and then in the presence of one or the other corresponding audible call and compared preferences across the silent and in-sound conditions. In Experiment 2, we presented the same monkey visible calls but this time together with a tone analog of the natural calls in the in-sound trials. We found that newborns looked longer at the matching visible call in the in-sound condition than in the silent condition in both experiments. These findings indicate that multisensory perceptual tuning is so broad at birth that it enables newborns to integrate the facial and vocal gestures of other primates and that integration is based on newborns' detection of audio-visual temporal synchrony relations., (Copyright © International Society on Infant Studies (ISIS).)

The aim of this study is to investigate whether newborns detect a face on the basis of a Gestalt representation based on first-order relational information (i.e., the basic arrangement of face features) by using Mooney stimuli. The incomplete 2-tone Mooney stimuli were used because they preclude focusing both on the local features (i.e., the fine details of the individual features) and on the second-order relational information (i.e., the distance between the internal elements); therefore, face detection can rely only on a Gestalt representation of a face. Two experiments were carried out by using a preferential looking procedure. Experiment 1 demonstrated that newborns prefer upright Mooney faces to inverted Mooney faces (180° rotated). Experiment 2 showed that newborns prefer a Mooney face as compared to a Mooney-like object equated for the number of elements in the upper part. Overall, the results indicate that newborns bind and organize the fragmentary parts of the Mooneized face stimulus into a whole and detect the first-order relations of a face on the basis of holistic processing., (2009 International Society on Infant Studies.)

Global warming factors (kg CO(2)-eq.-tonne(-1) of waste) have been modelled for 40 different municipal waste management scenarios involving a variety of recycling systems (paper, glass, plastic and organics) and residual waste management by landfilling, incineration or mechanical-biological waste treatment. For average European waste composition most waste management scenarios provided negative global warming factors and hence overall savings in greenhouse gas emissions: Scenarios with landfilling saved 0-400, scenarios with incineration saved 200-700, and scenarios with mechanical-biological treatment saved 200- 750 kg CO(2)-eq. tonne(- 1) municipal waste depending on recycling scheme and energy recovery. Key parameters were the amount of paper recycled (it was assumed that wood made excessive by paper recycling substituted for fossil fuel), the crediting of the waste management system for the amount of energy recovered (hard-coal-based energy was substituted), and binding of biogenic carbon in landfills. Most other processes were of less importance. Rational waste management can provide significant savings in society's emission of greenhouse gas depending on waste composition and efficient utilization of the energy recovered.

The present study was aimed at exploring newborns' ability to recognize configural changes within real face images by testing newborns' sensitivity to the Thatcher illusion. Using the habituation procedure, newborns' ability to discriminate between an unaltered face image and the same face with the eyes and the mouth 180 degrees rotated (i.e. thatcherized) was investigated. Newborns were able to discriminate an unaltered from the thatcherized version of the same face when stimuli were presented in the canonical upright orientation (Experiment 1), but failed to discriminate the same stimuli when they were presented upside-down (Experiment 2). The results indicate that sensitivity to fine spatial information (defined as second-order relational information) in processing upright faces is already present at birth.

The aim of the present study was to investigate how perceptual binding and selective attention operate during infants' and adults' visual search of an illusory figure. An eye-tracker system was used to test adults and infants in two conditions: illusory and non-illusory (real). In the illusory condition, a Kanizsa triangle was embedded among distractor pacmen which did not generate illusory contours. In the non-illusory condition, a real triangle was included in the same pacmen's display. The results showed that adults detected both the Kanizsa and the real figure automatically and without focal attention (experiment 1). In contrast, 6-month-old infants showed a pop-out effect only for the real figure (experiment 2). The failure of the illusory figure to trigger infants' attention was not due to infants' inability to perceive the illusory figure per se, as infants preferred the illusory figure over a non-illusory control stimulus in a classical preferential-looking task (experiment 3). Overall, these findings indicate that the illusory Kanizsa triangle triggers visual attention in adults, but not in infants, supporting evidence that at 6 months of age the binding processes involved in the perception of a Kanizsa figure do not operate in an adult-like manner.

Past research has shown that top-heaviness is a perceptual property that plays a crucial role in triggering newborns' preference toward faces. The present study examined the contribution of a second configural property, congruency, to newborns' face preference. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when embedded in nonfacelike stimuli, congruency induces a preference of the same strength as that induced by facedness. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the attentional biases toward facedness and congruency produce a cumulative effect on newborns' visual preferences according to an additive model. These findings were extended by those of Experiment 5, showing that the additive model holds true when congruency is added to top-heaviness in nonfacelike stimuli displaying more elements in the upper portion.

People tend to perceive identical top halves (i.e., above the nose) of two face stimuli as being different when they are aligned with distinct bottom halves. This composite face illusion is generally considered as the most compelling evidence that facial features are integrated into a holistic representation. Here, we recorded eye-movements during the composite face illusion in a delayed matching task of top halves of faces. Behavioural results showed a strong composite face effect, participants making more mistakes and taking longer time to match two identical top halves of faces when they were aligned (vs. misaligned) with different bottom halves. Importantly, fixation sites and eye-movements were virtually identical when the top and bottom parts were aligned (composite illusion) or misaligned (no illusion), indicating that holistic face processing can be independent of gaze behaviour. These findings reinforce the view that holistic representations of individual faces can be extracted early on from information at a relatively coarse scale, independently of overt attention.

The study investigated the origins of the ability to recognize faces despite rotations in depth. Four experiments are reported that tested, using the habituation technique, whether 1-to-3-day-old infants are able to recognize the invariant aspects of a face over changes in viewpoint. Newborns failed to recognize facial perceptual invariances between profile and full-face poses (Experiment 1), and profile and 3/4 poses (Experiment 3). Conversely, newborns recognized the identity of a face through full-face and 3/4 poses (Experiment 2). This result cannot be explained as a consequence of newborns' inability to discriminate between the full-face and 3/4 points of view (Experiment 4). Overall, evidence was provided that newborns are able to derive a representation of an unfamiliar face that is resilient to a certain degree of rotation in depth, from full-face to 3/4 and vice versa.

An inborn predisposition to attend to biological motion has long been theorized, but had so far been demonstrated only in one animal species (the domestic chicken). In particular, no preference for biological motion was reported for human infants of <3 months of age. We tested 2-day-old babies' discrimination after familiarization and their spontaneous preferences for biological vs. nonbiological point-light animations. Newborns were shown to be able to discriminate between two different patterns of motion (Exp. 1) and, when first exposed to them, selectively preferred to look at the biological motion display (Exp. 2). This preference was also orientation-dependent: newborns looked longer at upright displays than upside-down displays (Exp. 3). These data support the hypothesis that detection of biological motion is an intrinsic capacity of the visual system, which is presumably part of an evolutionarily ancient and nonspecies-specific system predisposing animals to preferentially attend to other animals.

A critical question in Cognitive Science concerns how knowledge of specific domains emerges during development. Here we examined how limitations of the visual system during the first days of life may shape subsequent development of face processing abilities. By manipulating the bands of spatial frequencies of face images, we investigated what is the nature of the visual information that newborn infants rely on to perform face recognition. Newborns were able to extract from a face the visual information lying from 0 to 1 cpd (Experiment 1), but only a narrower 0-0.5 cpd spatial frequency range was successful to accomplish face recognition (Experiment 2). These results provide the first empirical support of a low spatial frequency advantage in individual face recognition at birth and suggest that early in life low-level, non-specific perceptual constraints affect the development of the face processing system.

The present chapter deals with the topic of the ontogeny and development of face processing in the first months of life and is organized into two sections concerning face detection and face recognition. The first section focuses on the mechanisms underlying infants' visual preference for faces. Evidence is reviewed supporting the contention that newborns' face preferences is due to a set of non-specific constraints that stem from the general characteristics of the human visuo-perceptual system, rather than to a representational bias for faces. It is shown that infants' response to faces becomes more and more tuned to the face category over the first 3 months of life, revealing a gradual progressive specialization of the face-processing system. The second section sought to determine the properties of face recognition at birth. In particular, a series of experiments are presented to examine whether the inner facial part is processed and encoded when newborns recognize a face, and what kind of information--featural or configural--newborns' face recognition rely on. Overall, results are consistent with the existence of general constraints present at birth that tune the system to become specialized for faces later during development.

Despite decades of studies of human infants, a still open question concerns the role of visual experience in the development of the ability to perceive complete shapes over partial occlusion. Previous studies show that newborns fail to manifest this ability, either because they lack the visual experience required for perceptual completion or because they fail to detect the pattern of motion. To distinguish these possibilities, newborns' perception of a center-occluded object was tested, using stroboscopic motion. Infants (mean age of 72 hr) perceived the object as a connected unit, providing the first evidence that the newborn is capable of filling in gaps in the visible surface layout when the relevant visual information can be detected by his or her immature visual system.

Existing data indicate that newborns are able to recognize individual faces, but little is known about what perceptual cues drive this ability. The current study showed that either the inner or outer features of the face can act as sufficient cues for newborns' face recognition (Experiment 1), but the outer part of the face enjoys an advantage over the inner part (Experiment 2). Inversion of the face stimuli disrupted recognition when only the inner portion of the face was shown, but not when the whole face was fully visible or only the outer features were presented (Experiment 3). The results enhance our picture of what information newborns actually process and encode when they discriminate, learn, and recognize faces.

Assays of moisturizer efficacy have traditionally focused on a moisturizer's ability to alleviate dry skin. More recently, a moisturizer's ability to prevent primary irritation has been recognized. To assess and compare the ability of moisturizers to alleviate skin dryness and primary irritation, as well as prevent their return, four controlled-application clinical (in vivo) studies were carried out: hand-wash test, regression test, reduction in pre-existing irritation study, and prevention-of-irritation studies. Overall conclusions were confirmed in a home-use clinical (validation) study of people suffering from mild eczema. The controlled in vivo studies demonstrate that: (a) a moisturizer can alleviate skin dryness and irritation, and prevent their return; and (b) the efficacy of different moisturizers can be differentiated, based on their composition. The home-use study results demonstrated that the most effective moisturizer identified by the controlled-application studies was highly effective against the signs of eczema. In vivo modeling of moisturizer efficacy enables assessment and optimization of different benefits separately, while predicting the quantitative and perceived (observed) relevance of the benefits the moisturizer delivers to consumers.