Infancy最新文献

This pre-registered eye-tracking study assesses whether there are differences in infants' attention allocation across diverse cultural contexts while taking several social-environmental factors into account. More specifically, we assess whether 9-month-old infants (n = 338; 166 girls, 172 boys) show holistic or analytic viewing when they are presented with naturalistic images, including 32 real-world images (8 outdoor and 8 indoor scenes from two cultural contexts). Infants came from families living in Uppsala, Sweden (Swedish n = 178, Arab n = 1, Bengali n = 1, Finnish n = 1) and Harare, Zimbabwe (Shona n = 136, Karanga n = 4, Malawian n = 1, Ndebele n = 1, Chewa n = 1, Hwesa n = 1, Zambian n = 1). Results demonstrate that attention allocation is different in these cultures in infancy, but that each culture has a unique pervasive, and dynamic attentional style that includes a mix of holistic and analytic components.

The literature on alternative approaches to complementary feeding, especially Baby-Led Weaning (a complementary feeding approach in which infants participate in family meals and eat finger food independently), has gradually increased in recent years. The present study aims to investigate whether there is a relation between the complementary feeding approach chosen by parents (Baby-Led Weaning or Parent-Led Weaning, in which infants are fed puréed food on a spoon) and maternal communicative functions produced during a typical meal. We analyzed the transcripts of mother-infant interactions occurring during mealtimes of 136 12-month-old typically developing infants, by means of a validated coding scheme that allows to identify five different communicative functions (Tutorial, Didactic, Conversational, Control and Asynchronous). The results highlighted a slightly different pattern of communicative style depending on the feeding method adopted by the parents (BLW vs. PLW). In particular, mothers of infants exposed to the PLW approach used the Tutorial function more often than mothers of infants exposed to the BLW method. The two groups did not differ in their use of the other functions. The implications for the promotion of healthy eating behaviors within family interactive contexts are discussed.

Smartphones can absorb attention and abruptly interrupt social interactions, a dynamic particularly critical in early parent-infant exchanges where infants rely on emotionally available caregivers for regulation. While previous research highlights the negative effects of parental media use on parenting and infant behavior, little is known about how maternal smartphone use affects both mothers' and infants' physiological and behavioral stress responses during early interactions. Consequently, we observed 67 mothers and their 6-month-old infants during an extended still-face paradigm including five phases in total: (1) an interaction baseline, (2) a still-face interruption, (3) a subsequent reunion, (4) a smartphone interruption, and (5) a subsequent reunion. The order of interruptions was randomized. Maternal and infant heart rates were continuously recorded via electrocardiogram. Infant protest and self-regulatory behaviors, as well as maternal co-regulatory behaviors, were coded from video recordings on a frame-by-frame basis. Infants showed significantly more protest behavior, higher cardiac arousal, and reduced parasympathetic activity during maternal smartphone use compared to baseline. During smartphone use, mothers reduced social engagement, accompanied by increased parasympathetic activity and decreased physiological arousal, which remained lower during reunions. We also found that dyadic physiological coupling emerged during still-face and smartphone disruptions, whereas dyadic behavioral coupling was observed only during the baseline interaction. These findings highlight the disruptive effects of maternal smartphone use and raise important questions about the potential cumulative effects of repeated smartphone interruptions on early socioemotional development.

This study examined how social factors such as parental mental state language, sibling presence, and preschool attendance influence their expectations of fairness in 18-month-old toddlers. Fifty-four toddlers participated in a nonverbal fairness task and a picture-description task with their caregivers. We also collected questionnaire data concerning the presence of siblings and preschool attendance. The fairness task involved an animated scenario with a mouse distributing bananas to monkeys, measuring the infants' attention to equal and unequal outcomes. The picture-description task evaluated how caregivers used mental state language when discussing morally relevant illustrations with their toddlers. We found no significant link between parents' use of mental state language and toddlers' fairness expectations. Similarly, having siblings did not appear to influence these expectations. In contrast, toddlers who attended preschool demonstrated increased sensitivity to unfair outcomes. These results highlight the importance of early social interactions involving peers in preschool environments in the development of fairness expectations in toddlers.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic required face masks to be worn in public spaces, changing daily face-to-face communication. This study investigated whether infants perceived masked faces as faces during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when wearing masks in public was nearly universal in Japan. Between July 2021 and November 2022, we conducted an experiment using a novel remote method to examine infants' preferences for upright versus inverted faces under both masked and unmasked conditions. Overall, infants aged 4–5 months and 7–8 months (n = 32 in each age group) preferred upright to inverted faces in both conditions. These results suggest that Japanese infants born during the COVID-19 pandemic could recognize masked faces as faces. Furthermore, across both age groups, the preference was more pronounced in the masked-face condition than in the unmasked-face condition. These results possibly reflect the fact that infants had relatively frequent exposure to masked faces during the pandemic.

Caregivers play a critical role in infant physiological regulation. Lab-based studies show that more responsive mothers have infants that are better regulators, indexed by a decrease in infant respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during standardized stressors. However, little is known about the specific caregiving behaviors that lead to physiological regulation. This study leverages wearable sensors and ecologically valid observations of mother and infant behavior to identify how spontaneous caregiving behaviors influence real-time mother and infant parasympathetic regulation following infant distress. N = 41 mother-infant dyads (mean age 4.6 months) were recruited from an urban North American city. Infants and mothers wore ECG monitors while being video recorded participating in daily routines around their home for 1 hour. Trained RAs annotated infant crying and mothers' regulation behaviors, including holding and speaking to their infant. Contrary to laboratory findings, mothers did not respond immediately to their infant's crying in ecologically valid home interactions, with most response latencies around 10 s and some up to 2–3 min. Additionally, not all caregiving behaviors had effects on real-time physiological regulation. Mothers holding their infant, but not vocalizing, produced significant time-locked decreases in real-time mother and infant RSA, corresponding to regulation. Physical touch, but not vocalizations, may scaffold mother and infant physiological regulation in the context of unprompted infant distress. Specific caregiving behaviors actively shape in-the-moment physiological arousal and regulation “in the wild.”