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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.