Infancy最新文献

This study examined associations between spousal relationship quality and social support with mother-infant bonding among women in Rawalpindi, Pakistan (Intervention Arm: n = 352, M_age = 25.1, SD = 4.7; Control Arm: n = 358, M_age = 25.3, SD = 4.5). We used cross-sectional data from the Happy Mother-Healthy Baby intervention study, a randomized controlled trial conducted between 2019 and 2022. Women were enrolled at their first prenatal visit (at or before 22 weeks of gestation) and followed until 6-week postpartum. Spousal relationship quality, social support, and bonding were assessed at 6-week postpartum. Linear regression analyses found relationship quality (b = 3.85) and social support (b = 1.99) were positively associated with bonding. Analyses were adjusted for mother's education, treatment group, exposure to perinatal intimate partner violence, postpartum depressive symptoms, husband's education, husband's occupation, infant birthweight, and preterm birth. Husband's occupation (unskilled/unemployed vs. professional/skilled) significantly moderated the relationship between social support (b = 3.27 vs. b = 1.37) and relationship quality (b = 5.36 vs. b = 2.95) with bonding. Maternal age (≤ 25 years old vs. > 25 years old) significantly moderated the association between relationship quality and bonding (b = 4.96 vs. b = 2.49). Results suggest that interventions focused on improving social support and relationship quality among anxious women and their spouses could improve maternal-infant bonding. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03880032; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03880032

Social smiling is the earliest gained social communication skill, emerging around 2 months of age. From 2 to 6-months, infants primarily smile in response to caregivers. After 6 months, infants coordinate social smiles with other social cues to initiate interactions with the caregiver. Social smiling is reduced in older infants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but has rarely been studied before 6 months of life. The current study therefore aimed to understand the component parts of infant social smiles, namely look to caregiver and smile, during face-to-face interactions in 3 and 4-month-old infants at elevated (EL) and low likelihood (LL) for ASD. We found that EL and LL infants looked to their caregiver and smiled for similar amounts of time and at similar rates, suggesting that social smiling manifests similarly in both groups. A nuanced difference between groups emerged when considering temporal dynamics of looking and smiling. Specifically, 3-month-old EL infants demonstrated extended looking to the caregiver after smile offset. These findings suggest that social smiling is largely typical in EL infants in early infancy, with subtle differences in temporal coupling. Future research is needed to understand the full magnitude of these differences and their implications for social development.

While social withdrawal is a normal defense mechanism displayed by infants to regulate interactions, it can negatively impact infant development when it becomes chronic, leading to delays in motor, cognitive, and communication difficulties in later development. Infant withdrawal was associated with low levels of parental sensitivity (i.e., the capacity of a caregiver to perceive the child signals and to respond to them accurately with an appropriate timing during interactions) in mothers. Few studies have yet been conducted in fathers and even fewer have investigated these questions in both parent–infant dyads within families, so that the joint effects of maternal and paternal sensitivity on infant social withdrawal remain unknown. We investigated within- and between-dyad associations between parental sensitivity and infant withdrawal during interactions with both parents in a sample of biparental families (n = 61) and their 3-month old infant. Results showed that higher paternal sensitivity was associated with lower infant withdrawal during father–infant interactions. The same effect was weaker in mothers and only significant when the effect of paternal sensitivity on infant withdrawal during mother–infant interaction was not taken into account. These results offer new insights about the reciprocal influences between the mother–infant and the father–infant relationships.

Human infants seem to make positive social inferences about individuals who imitate others. In three preregistered experiments we test if these inferences include an expectation that imitators will be helpful, and also ask if the inferences infants make are about imitators' dispositions or primarily about their relationships. In each experiment 8- to 9-month-old infants saw one individual imitate, and another individual not imitate, the same target social partner. When the imitator and non-imitator had the opportunity to help the target individual they had previously interacted with, infants looked longer when the non-imitator helped than when the imitator helped. However, when the potential recipient of help was a new social partner, infants' looking did not differ when the imitator or non-imitator helped. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that infants perceive imitation as prosocial or affiliative and thus expect imitators to be helpful. However, these expectations are limited to inferences about a specific prosocial relationship between the imitator and their target.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, children were repeatedly confronted with people wearing facial masks. Little is known, however, about how this affected young children's interactions with their caregivers. This preregistered experimental within-participants study explored whether facial masks influence young children's initiation and response to joint attention. Using two structured tasks and one free-play task, we measured joint attention episodes in interactions of 12- to 15-month-old Swiss infants with one of their caregivers during the pandemic. In one experimental condition, the caregivers wore a facial mask; in the other, they did not. The results show no significant differences in infants' joint attention between the two conditions. Infants may have interacted with their caregivers wearing facial masks enough previously not to be influenced by masks; alternatively, even with a partially covered face, a person provides enough information via eyes and other body parts that help infants to guide their attention.

Children's ability to identify relevant object features, such as shape, plays a key role in learning object names. However, successful attention to shape (shape bias) is dependent on other factors, including children's vocabulary size as well as opportunities for object exploration. The current study explored the combined impact of both vocabulary and object exploration on attention to shape and their cascading impact on retention of object labels. Here, 336 17-to-30-month-old children completed a Novel Noun Generalization (NNG) task and were tested on retention of exemplar name-object pairings. Children in a pre-familiarization condition physically explored objects before every trial; children in a no-familiarization condition did not. Vocabulary (via MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory) significantly predicted attention to shape, and higher rates of shape-match exploration yielded a stronger shape bias. However, object exploration did not impact NNG performance or retention, and children struggled to retain word-referent mappings. Though attention to shape is thought to support learning, exploratory analyses revealed that children's NNG performance did not predict retention. The results suggest that vocabulary significantly influences word learning processes but object exploration may not offer support. Future research should consider how task demands and other cognitive abilities impact word learning.