From the moment infants are born, they seem to prefer orienting to social stimuli, over objects and nonsocial stimuli. This preference lasts throughout adulthood and is believed to play a crucial role in social-communicative development. By following up a group of infants at the age of 6, 8, and 12 months, this study explored the role of social orienting in the early development of joint attent...

The concept of the orienting reflex is discussed from the historical perspective. The following conclusions are proposed: (1) in accordance with the spirit of Pavlov's concept the orienting reflex is a response to a stimulus unexpected in a given situation; (2) the reflex consists of targeting, arousal and perceptual components; (3) the reflex has three stages, which in the targeting component ...

Is orienting of spatial attention dependent on normal functioning of the ocular motor system? We investigated the role of motor pathways in covert orienting (attentional orienting without performing eye movements) by studying three patients suffering from Duane Retraction Syndrome-a congenital impairment in executing horizontal eye movements restricted to specific gaze directions. Patients show...

Alerting, orienting and executive control of attention are investigated in five adult cases of dyslexia. In comparison with a control group, alerting and executive control were found to be generally intact for each case. Two spatial cueing tasks were employed. For the task requiring target detection, orienting difficulties were evident only in peripheral locations. While orienting attention to ...

Hemispheric specializations for language perception constitute one of the classic topic in cognitive neuroscience. Evidence has accumulated to suggest that lateralized acoustic processing is not restricted to humans but is also found in numerous animal species. One of the methods used to track such lateralization is the orienting-asymmetry paradigm, a simple, noninvasive means to study laterali...

Human emotions are considered here to be founded on motivational circuits in the brain that evolved to protect (defensive) and sustain (appetitive) the life of individuals and species. These circuits are phylogenetically old, shared among mammals, and involve the activation of both subcortical and cortical structures that mediate attention, perception, and action. Circuit activation begins with...

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE The purpose of the present study was to examine deficits in the alerting, orienting and executive components of attention in individuals who have recently suffered a concussion. RESEARCH DESIGN A group design was used in which the performance by individuals with concussion was compared to control subjects matched for age, height, weight and activity level. METHODS AND PROC...

Recent work suggests that a subcortical visual route may mediate rapid orienting towards faces in the visual periphery. We now demonstrate that this orienting bias towards faces shows a temporal-nasal visual field asymmetry of responses, supporting the view that it is mediated by extrageniculate pathways. Upright schematic face-like pattern elicited faster behavioural responses than inverted on...