Search

Numerous developmental studies have suggested that other-race effect (ORE) in face recognition emerges as early as in infancy and develops steadily throughout childhood. However, there is very limited research on the neural mechanisms underlying this developmental ORE. The present study used Granger causality analysis (GCA) to examine the development of children's cortical networks in processing own- and other-race faces. Children were between 3 and 13 years. An old-new paradigmwas used to assess their own- and other-race face recognition with ETG-4000 (HitachiMedical Co., Japan) acquiring functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data. After preprocessing, for each participant and under each face condition, we obtained the causal map by calculating the weights of causal relations between the time courses of [oxy-Hb] of each pair of channels using GCA. To investigate further the differential causal connectivity for own-race faces and other-race faces at the group level, a repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the GCA weights for each pair of channels with the face race task (own-race face vs. other-race face) as the within-subject variable and the age as a between-subject factor (continuous variable).We found an age-related increase in functional connectivity, paralleling a similar age-related improvement in behavioral face processing ability. More importantly, we found that the significant differences in neural functional connectivity between the recognition of own-race faces and that of other-race faces were modulated by age. Thus, like the behavioral ORE, the neural ORE emerges early and undergoes a protracted developmental course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When preschoolers evaluate actions and agents, they typically neglect agents' intentions and focus on action outcomes instead. By contrast, intentions count much more than outcomes for older children and adults. This phenomenon has traditionally been seen as evidence of a developmental change in children's concept of what is morally good and bad. However, a growing number of studies shows that infants are able to reason about agents' intentions and take them into account in their spontaneous sociomoral evaluations. Here we argue that this puzzling U-shaped trajectory in children's judgments is best accounted for by a model that posits developmental continuity in moral competence and emphasizes the effect of immature executive function skills on preschoolers' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neural basis of self and identity has received extensive research. However, most of these existing studies have focused on situations where the internal representation of the self is consistent with the external one. The present study used fMRI methodology to examine the neural correlates of two different types of identity conflict: identity faking and concealment. Participants were presented with a sequence of names and asked to either conceal their own identity or fake another one. The results revealed that the right insular cortex and bilaterally inferior frontal gyrus were more active for identity concealment compared to the control condition, whereas identity faking elicited a significantly larger percentage signal increase than the control condition in the right superior frontal gyrus, left calcarine, and right caudate. These results suggest that different neural systems associated with both identity processing and deception were involved in identity concealment and faking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]