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Il volume offre un panorama aggiornato dei modelli teorici che la psicologia ha elaborato per spiegare le cause e i meccanismi che determinano lo sviluppo della mente umana. Dopo aver affrontato nella prima parte le teorie classiche, le autrici passano in rassegna, nella seconda parte, i modelli più recenti relativi allo sviluppo cognitivo, sottolineandone gli aspetti interdisciplinari. È così illustrato con chiarezza il fondamentale ruolo che questo filone di ricerca svolge nell’indagine sull’architettura e sul funzionamento della mente umana.

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. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.

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.

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.

A critical question in Cognitive Science concerns how knowledge of speciWc domains emerges during development. Here we examined how limitations of the visual system during the Wrst 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 Wrst empirical support of a low spatial frequency advantage in individual face recognition at birth and suggest that early in life low-level, non-speciWc perceptual constraints aVect the development of the face processing system

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 face composite illusion has been demonstrated almost 20 years ago (Young et al., 1987), and is generally considered as the most compelling evidence that facial features are integrated into a holistic representation. Here, we recorded eye movements during the face composite effect, i.e. when the top and the bottom parts of a composite face stimulus are integrated into a single holistic face representation. The behavioral results showed a strong face composite effect when subjects maintained fixation to the top part of the face stimulus. 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 behavior. These findings reinforce the view that holistic representations of individual faces can be extracted early on from low spatial frequency analysis, 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.

This study was aimed at investigating the face preference phenomenon and its underlying mechanisms at 3 months of age. Using an eye-tracker apparatus, Experiment 1 demonstrated that 3-month-olds prefer natural face images to unnatural ones, replicating and extending previous evidence obtained with schematic facelike stimuli. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the general mechanisms that induce face preference in newborns could not explain the same phenomenon at 3 months of age, when infants are attracted by perceptual cues more specific to faces. This suggests that signs of a process of cognitive specialization are already present in 3-month-olds' visual behavior toward faces. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This study examined newborns' face preference using images of natural and scrambled faces in which the location of the inner features was distorted. The results demonstrate that newborns' face preference is not confined to schematic configurations, but can be obtained also with veridical faces. Moreover, this phenomenon is not produced by a specific bias toward the face geometry, but derives from a domain-general bias toward configurations with more elements in the upper than in the lower half (i.e., top-heavy patterns). These results suggest that it may be unnecessary to assume the existence of a prewired tendency to orient toward the face geometry, and support the idea that faces do not possess a special status in newborns' visual world.

Molte ricerche dimostrano che le differenze individuali nella durata della fissazione visiva nella prima infanzia sono riconducibili alla tendenza da parte dei soggetti a selezionare le informazioni di livello globale o locale contenute nello stimolo. Nella presente ricerca, la tecnica dell’object-examining (Ruff et al., 1992) è stata utilizzata allo scopo di verificare se, anche nel caso della modalità visuo-manipolatoria, esista una relazione tra la durata del comportamento esplorativo e la natura, locale o globale, dell'informazione estratta dall'oggetto. I dati emersi da uno studio pilota confermano la validità dell'examining come misura dei processi attentivi implicati nella selezione dell'informazione durante l'esplorazione visuo-manipolatoria degli oggetti. I risultati della ricerca presentata dimostrano che le differenze individuali nella durata dell’attività esplorativa riflettono la tendenza da parte del soggetto a selezionare informazioni di livello differente: i bambini che producono episodi di examining di breve durata selezionano principalmente le proprietà globali degli oggetti, mentre i bambini che esplorano gli oggetti per lunghi periodi selezionano soprattutto gli aspetti di livello locale. In linea con la letteratura, i risultati suggeriscono l'esistenza di forti analogie tra le misure della fissazione visiva e le misure dell'examining, intese entrambe come indici dei processi di elaborazione dell'informazione messi in atto dal bambino, ed estendono la convergenza tra le due misure al dominio delle differenze individuali.

Much evidence has shown that individual differences in the duration of visual fixation in infancy are related to processing of wholistic versus featural properties of the stimuli. In the present study, an object-examining technique was used with 8-month-old infants to test the hypothesis that infants who display differential attention durations to visuo-manually presented stimuli will vary in their processing of wholistic vs featural aspects of the stimuli. The results confirmed the hypothesis, indicating that, after being familiarized with an object comprised of both global and local properties, long examiners attended more to an object comprised of new-local rather than new-global aspects, whereas short examiners attended more to the new-global rather than the new-local object. These findings provide support to the contention of the existence of close similarities between visual fixation and object-examining measures as indexes of infant information processing, extending the convergences between the two measures to the domain of individual differences.

Two experiments were carried out to demonstrate the existence of a global precedence effect in newborns, as it was found in adults and in 3-4 month old infants. The results demonstrated that, when the two levels of visual information are equally discriminable, newborns showed an asymmetric interference between the two levels. This finding provides evidence for a processing dominance of global over local information.

Sono stati condotti tre esperimenti al fine di dimostrare che il neonato è in grado di imporre un'organizzazione strutturale all'informazione visiva contenuta nello stimolo sulla base del principio gestaltico della vicinanza. I risultati emersi dall'Esperimento 1, nel quale è stata utilizzata la tecnica dell'abituazione, dimostrano che le abilità visive del neonato sono sufficientemente sviluppate da consentire la discriminazione dei singoli elementi che compongono la configurazione. I risultati dell'Esperimento 2, nel quale è stata utilizzata la tecnica della preferenza visiva, mostrano che i neonati generalizzano la preferenza spontanea per bande orientate in senso orizzontale piuttosto che verticale (Esperimento 2a) anche a scacchiere formate da singole componenti raggruppabili in colonne verticali e righe orizzontali (Esperimento 2b). Ciò dimostra che i neonati sono in grado raggruppare tali componenti, organizzandole in unità percettive di ordine superiore.

The aim of the present study is to review the existing literature on Nonnutritive Sucking (NNS ) as a tool for investigating neonatal capabilities. Three research areas where NNS was utilized with newborn and infants are considered: regulation of states, visual scanning, attentional processes. In the light of new reported data concerning the relation between NNS and processing of visual and acoustic information at birth, a comprehensive interpretative framework is presented to explain the apparently contradictory results emerging from the three outlined research fields.

Lifecycle assessment (LCA) modeling provides a quantitative statement about resource issues and environmental issues in waste management useful in evaluating alternative management systems and in mapping where major loads and savings take place within existing systems. Chapter 3.1 describes the concepts behind LCA modeling and Chapter 3.2 gives an overview of existing models and shows examples of their application. A recent comprehensive review of publicly available LCA studies (WRAP, 2006) concluded that, on a material basis, LCA modeling in general confirms the validity of the waste hierarchy and shows that recycling is superior to incineration with energy recovery, which again is better than landfilling. Cleary (2010) reviewed 20 waste management scenarios assessed in 11 studies published in the period 2002–2008 and concluded that, due to lack of transparency regarding boundary conditions and exchange with the energy systems, a comparison of results was hampered on a system level. In addition, differences in waste composition may affect the LCA results. This chapter provides results of LCA modeling of 40 waste management scenarios handling the same municipal waste (MSW) and using different combinations of waste recycling, biological treatment, incineration, mechanical–biological treatment and landfilling. The purpose is to compare waste management on a system level and to indentify the steps and treatments within the system contributing the most to the environmental performance of waste management systems. The study focuses on Europe in terms of waste composition and exchange with the energy system. The waste management systems modeled are described with respect to waste composition, waste management technologies, mass flows and energy exchange in the systems. Results are first presented with respect to Global Warming contributions (kg of CO2-eq./t of waste). These data are identical to those presented in Christensen et al. (2009). Finally also results for other

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 non-facelike stimuli, congruency induces a preference of the same strength of 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 non-facelike stimuli displaying more elements in the upper portion.

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.

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.

The present study investigated, using the habituation technique, what perceptual cues are used by newborns in the process of recognition of a stranger's face. Evidence showed that newborns are able to discriminate and recognize a face when all the facial features are visible (exp. 1), and when only the inner (exp. 2) or the other features are present (exp. 3).

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 (Exp.1), but the outer part of the face enjoys an advantage over the inner part (Exp. 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 (Exp. 3). The results enhance our picture of what information newborns actually process and encode when they discriminate, learn and recognize faces.

The present study was aimed at investigating whether, because of a differential sensitivity between the upper and the lower visual fields, in a visual preference task newborns would orient more frequently and look longer at patterns with a great number of high-contrast areas in the upper or lower visual field Newborns were presented with three pairs of geometrical stimuli, each composed of a pattern with a greater number of elements in the upper part or a pattern with more elements in the lower part, The results showed a reliable preference for the stimuli that had more elements in the upper than in the lower part. The evidence obtained suggests the possibility that, at birth, the visibility of a stimulus depends not only on its sensory properties, but also on its structural characteristics

The goal of the study was to provide a direct comparison of newborns' ability to process and store, over a 2min delay, the shape of the internal local elements of schematic facelike and non-facelike patterns. Two experiments were carried out using a visual habituation technique with an infant control procedure. The results demonstrate that newborns discriminated between two schematic facelike and non-facelike configurations that differed exclusively for the shape of the internal local elements (Expt 1), and they maintained this discriminative ability even when recognition was tested after a 2min retention interval (Expt 2). The results are consistent with the existence of a general pattern learning mechanism that mediates newborns' ability to acquire information about any pattern, including faces (de Schonen Mancini, 1995; de Schonen, Mancini, Liegeois 1998; Johnson, 1997)

Six experiments are reported that were aimed at demonstrating the presence in newborns of a perceptual dominance of global over local visual information in hierarchical patterns, similar to that observed in adults (D. Navon, 1977, 198 1). The first four experiments showed that, even though both levels of visual information were detectable by the newborn (Experiments 1A and 1B), global cues enjoyed some advantage over local cues (Experiments 2 and 3). Experiments 4A and 4B demonstrated that the global bias was strictly dependent on the low spatial frequency content of the stimuli and vanished after selective removal of low spatial frequencies. The results are interpreted as suggesting parallels between newborns' visual processing and processing later in development

It has been proposed that newborns' preferential orienting to faces is solely controlled by a subcortically mediated orienting mechanism (i.e., Conspec). In contrast preferential-looking tasks show that face preference at birth manifests itself also with measures that index fixation duration. It is possible, however, that orienting and fixation duration are confounded and only orienting matters. The present study used a revised version of the preferential-looking technique, in which the same stimulus (i.e., a facelike or a nonfacelike pattern) was simultaneously presented to both sides of the visual field. Results showed that longer total fixation times on the facelike stimuli resulted from the sum of a greater number of brief fixations, rather than from the sum of a small number of long fixations. These findings support the hypothesis that, for facelike patterns, the duration of infant's fixation on the stimulus is determined by the nature of the pattern that impinges on the periphery of the visual field, more than by the nature of the pattern that is being looked at.

Many studies demonstrated that newborns prefer upright faces over upside-down faces. Based on this evidence, some have suggested that faces represent a special class of stimuli for newborns and there is a qualitative difference between the processes involved in perception of facelike and non-facelike patterns (i.e., structural hypothesis). Others suggest that there is no reason to suppose that faces are different from other patterns, because faces, like any other classes of visual stimuli, are subject to filtering by the properties of the visual system (i.e., sensory hypothesis). The core question that will be adressed in the present paper is whether, to manifest itself, face preference requires the unique structure of the face, represented by the relative spatial location of its internal features, or rather some more general properties that other stimuli may also possess. Evidence will be presented supporting the idea that newborns do not respond to facelike stimuli by "facedness" but, rather, by some general structural characteristics that best satisfy the constraints of the immature visual system.

Four experiments are reported that were aimed at elucidating some of the controversial issues concerning the preference for facelike patterns in newborns. The experiments were devised to contrast the original and the revised versions of the sensory hypothesis and the structural hypothesis as accounts of face preference in newborns, Experiments 1A and 1B supported the structural hypothesis by showing a visual preference for the stimulus for which components were located in the correct arrangement for a human face, Experiment 2 supported the sensory hypothesis by showing a visual preference for stimuli that were designed to have the optimal spatial frequency components for the newborn visual system. Experiment 3 showed that babies directed attention to a facelike pattern also when it was presented simultaneously with a nonfacelike stimulus with optimal spatial frequency for the newborn visual system