TY  - JOUR
A1  - Jeschonek, Susanna
A1  - Marinovic, Vesna
A1  - Hoehl, Stefanie
A1  - Elsner, Birgit
A1  - Pauen, Sabina
T1  - Do animals and furniture items elicit different brain responses in human infants?
N2  - One of the earliest categorical distinctions to be made by preverbal infants is the animate-inanimate distinction. To explore the neural basis for this distinction in 7-8-month-olds, an equal number of animal and furniture pictures was presented in an ERP-paradigm. The total of 118 pictures, all looking different from each other, were presented in a semi-randomized order for 1000 ms each. Infants' brain responses to exemplars from both categories differed systematically regarding the negative central component (Nc: 400-600 ms) at anterior channels. More specifically, the Nc was enhanced for animals in one subgroup of infants, and for furniture items in another subgroup of infants. Explorative analyses related to categorical priming further revealed category-specific differences in brain responses in the late time window (650-1550 ms) at right frontal channels: Unprimed stimuli (preceded by a different-category item) elicited a more positive response as compared to primed stimuli (preceded by a same-category item). In sum, these findings suggest that the infant's brain discriminates exemplars from both global domains. Given the design of our task, we conclude that processes of category identification are more likely to account for our findings than processes of on-line category formation during the experimental session.
Y1  - 2010
SN  - 0387-7604
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Elsner, Birgit
A1  - Jeschonek, Susanna
A1  - Pauen, Sabina
T1  - Event-related potentials for 7-month-olds' processing of animals and furniture items
JF  - Developmental cognitive neuroscience : a journal for cognitive, affective and social developmental neuroscience
N2  - Event-related potentials (ERPs) to single visual stimuli were recorded in 7-month-old infants. In a three-stimulus oddball paradigm, infants watched one frequently occurring standard stimulus (either an animal or a furniture item) and two infrequently occurring oddball stimuli, presenting one exemplar from the same and one from the different super-ordinate category as compared to the standard stimulus. Additionally, visual attributes of the stimuli were controlled to investigate whether infants focus on category membership or on perceptual similarity when processing the stimuli. Infant ERPs indicated encoding of the standard stimulus and discriminating it from the two oddball stimuli by larger Nc peak amplitude and late-slow-wave activity for the infrequent stimuli. Moreover, larger Nc latency and positive-slow-wave activity indicated increased processing for the different-category as compared to the same-category oddball. Thus, 7-month-olds seem to encode single stimuli not only by surface perceptual features, but they also regard information of category membership, leading to facilitated processing of the oddball that belongs to the same domain as the standard stimulus.
KW  - Category identification
KW  - Infants (age: 7 months)
KW  - Event-related potentials
KW  - Visual stimulus processing
KW  - Recognition memory
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2012.09.002
SN  - 1878-9293
VL  - 3
IS  - 1
SP  - 53
EP  - 60
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  -