Social

When Preschoolers Follow their Eyes and Older Children Follow their Noses: Visuo-Olfactory Social Affective Matching in Childhood

Recognition of emotional facial expressions is a crucial skill for adaptive behavior that most often occurs in a multi--sensory context. Affective matching tasks have been used across development to investigate how people integrate facial information …

You Smell Dangerous: Communicating Fight Responses Through Human Chemosignals of Aggression

The ability to detect conspecifics that represent a potential harm for an individual represents a high survival benefit. Humans communicate socially relevant information using all sensory modalities, including the chemosensory systems. In study 1, we …

Facilitation of Action Planning in Children with Autism The Contribution of the Maternal Body Odor

Imitation is a key socio-cognitive skill impaired in individuals with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). It is known that the familiarity with an actor facilitates the appearance of imitative abilities. Here, we explore whether a highly familiar and …

Body Odors Promote Automatic Imitation in Autism

_Background_ Autism spectrum disorders comprise a range of neurodevelopmental pathologies characterized, among other symptoms, by impaired social interactions. Individuals with this diagnosis are reported to often identify people by repetitively …

Subliminally Perceived Odours Modulate Female Intrasexual Competition An Eye Movement Study

_Background_ Evidence suggests that subliminal odorants influence human perception and behavior. It has been hypothesized that the human sex-steroid derived compound 4,16-androstadien-3-one (androstadienone) functions as a human chemosignal. The most …

Profiles of Autonomic Activity in Autism Spectrum Disorder with and without Anxiety

_Objective_ Anxiety disorders are common among youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both anxiety and ASD are associated with differences in physiological activity. To date, few studies have investigated the physiological profile of youth with …