Infant Behavior & Development最新文献

Infants actively initiate social interactions aiming to elicit different types of responses from other people. This study aimed to document a variety of communicative interactions initiated by 18-month-old Turkish infants from diverse SES (N = 43) with their caregivers in their natural home settings. The infant-initiated interactions such as use of deictic gestures (e.g., pointing, holdouts), action demonstrations, vocalizations, and non-specific play actions were coded from video recordings and classified into two categories as need-based and non-need-based. Need-based interactions were further classified as a) biological (e.g., feeding); b) socio-emotional (e.g., cuddling), and non-need-based interactions (i.e., communicative intentions) were coded as a) expressive, b) requestive; c) information/help-seeking; d) information-giving. Infant-initiated non-need-based (88%) interactions were more prevalent compared to need-based interactions (12%). Among the non-need-based interactions, 50% aimed at expressing or sharing attention or emotion, 26% aimed at requesting an object or an action, and 12% aimed at seeking information or help. Infant-initiated information-giving events were rare. We further investigated the effects of familial SES and infant sex, finding no effect of either on the number of infant-initiated interactions. These findings suggest that at 18 months, infants actively communicate with their social partners to fulfil their need-based and non-need-based motivations using a wide range of verbal and nonverbal behaviors, regardless of their sex and socio-economic background. This study thoroughly characterizes a wide and detailed range of infant-initiated spontaneous communicative bids in hard-to-access contexts (infants’ daily lives at home) and with a traditionally underrepresented non-WEIRD population.

Musical interactions between babies and their primary caregivers are very frequent during the early years of life and their impact on dyadic interaction and infants’ development has garnered significant attention in recent literature. However, the difficulties that natural observations entail have meant that research often carries out methodological manipulations that have a significant impact on the phenomenon studied. In order to clarify how to investigate best natural musical interactions and the information that these can provide, we have carried out a systematic review to analyze the proposed scenarios and the variables analyzed in the studies published on such interactions between main caregivers and babies under three years old. We have screened 971 articles and yielded 27. We have found a higher prevalence in the literature of studies on singing interactions, between mothers and babies under 12 months of age. We have also been able to identify two extremes in terms of methodological structuring of natural interactions. Regarding the analysis variables, a few behaviors are repeated throughout the studies, being emotions, rhythmic behaviors and characterizations of the vocal emissions common between parents and babies. Synchrony is the dyadic variable with the most weight and also one of the preferred focuses of interest in the most recent literature that has undergone a shift of focus from characterization of musical interactions to the search for the mechanisms that underlie and make them specific.

Infants initiate interactions to get their wants and needs met; but sometimes they are not effective in their communication and are misunderstood by caregivers. When this happens, they must recognize this breakdown in communication and attempt repairs. Experimental literature suggests that in neurotypically developing infants these skills develop during the first two years. However, little work has investigated communication breakdowns and repairs in populations of infants with known social communication difficulties (e.g., infants with an elevated likelihood for autism). Here we explored early social communication initiations, breakdowns, and repair strategies in naturalistic videos of 18-month-old infants (N = 64) with elevated likelihood (EL) for autism and other developmental delays (N = 49) and infants with population-level likelihood for autism (e.g., typical likelihood, TL, N = 15). EL infants, including those who later met criteria for autism (EL-AUT), initiated with caregivers, experienced breakdowns, and made repairs at similar rates to TL infants. However, the types of behaviors used differed, such that EL infants appeared to have a relative strength in making behavior regulation bids. EL-AUT infants used a large proportion of developmentally appropriate repair behaviors (i.e., addition and substitution), even though their repertoires of repair strategies were smaller. Additionally, EL-AUT infants produced a larger proportion of simplification repairs, which are less developmentally advanced and less helpful to interlocutors. Identifying patterns in how EL infants communicate with caregivers and capitalizing on their strengths could improve interventions focused on social communication.

This study investigated the impact of postural control on infants’ Focused Attention (FA). Study 1 examined whether and how sitting independently versus with support impacted 6- to 8-month-old infants’ ability to focus attention during object exploration. FA measures did not depend on support condition. However, sitting experience was significantly negatively correlated with FA measures in the supported condition, suggesting that infants with more sitting experience performed fewer exploratory movements, possibly due to faster information processing ability compared to infants with less sitting experience. These unexpected findings prompted an exploration of more subtle looking behaviors during FA in Study 2—a case study of three infants who wore a head-mounted eye-tracker during an FA task. The ability to rapidly shift visual attention was key to gathering environmental information useful for problem solving—an interpretation that is supported by prior findings of the relationship between fast looks and faster information processing.

The ability to coordinate the hands together to act on objects where each hand does something different is known as role-differentiated bimanual manipulation (RDBM). This study investigated two motor skills that may support the development of RDBM: infants’ early object skill and their early sitting skill. To evaluate these potential predictors of RDBM growth, 90 infants were examined in a lab-based longitudinal design over a 9-month period. Latent growth modeling was used to estimate RDBM growth trajectories over 9 to 14 months from infants’ object and sitting skills at 6 months, controlling for infant’s sex, mother’s education, and family income. Higher object skill, controlling for sitting skill, was related to a higher increase in RDBM over time. Sitting did not predict infants’ change in RDBM over time, controlling for object skill. The ability to manage multiple objects may support collaborative hand use by providing infants with opportunities to practice actions that will be needed later for RDBM. By comparison, sitting may free the hands in an unspecified manner for manipulation.

Infants often start pointing toward the end of their first year of life. Pointing shows a strong link to language, perhaps because parents label what infants point to. In the present study, we tested whether 9-month-olds’ pointing was related to parental sensitivity and concurrent and subsequent vocabulary scores. Observations were made of 88 9-month-old infants in free-play situations with their mothers. Less than half the infants produced at least one index-finger point. The mothers’ reactions to their infants’ behaviour were coded for sensitivity. The mothers of the infants who pointed were less directing and responded more contingently than the mothers of the infants who did not point. However, there was no difference in vocabulary scores of pointers and non-pointers, either concurrently or at 12 and 18 months of age. These results could mean that parents’ reactions play an important role in shaping pointing to be communicative.

Although a considerable literature documents associations between early mother-infant interaction and cognitive outcomes in the first years of life, few studies examine the contributions of contingently coordinated mother-infant interaction to infant cognitive development. This study examined associations between the temporal dynamics of the contingent coordination of mother-infant face-to-face interaction at 4 months and cognitive performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development at age one year in a sample of (N = 100) Latina mother-infant pairs. Split-screen videotaped interactions were coded on a one second time base for the communication modalities of infant and mother gaze and facial affect, infant vocal affect, and mother touch. Multi-level time-series models evaluated self- and interactive contingent processes in these modalities and revealed 4-month patterns of interaction associated with higher one-year cognitive performance, not identified in prior studies. Infant and mother self-contingency, the moment-to-moment probability that the individual’s prior behavior predicts the individual’s future behavior, was the most robust measure associated with infant cognitive performance. Self-contingency findings showed that more varying infant behavior was optimal for higher infant cognitive performance, namely, greater modulation of negative affect; more stable maternal behavior was optimal for higher infant cognitive performance, namely, greater likelihood of sustaining positive facial affect. Although interactive contingency findings were sparse, they showed that, when mothers looked away, or dampened their faces to interest or mild negative facial affect, infants with higher 12-month cognitive performance were less likely to show negative vocal affect. We suggest that infant ability to modulate negative affect, and maternal ability to sustain positive affect, may be mutually reinforcing, together creating a dyadic climate that is associated with more optimal infant cognitive development.

To determine if the United States reference values of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, version III motor scale are suitable for Surinamese infants, we assessed 151 healthy infants at 3, 12, 24 and 36 months of age. The mean fine motor, gross motor, and composite scores of the total group did not significantly differ from the US norms, although some significant but not clinically relevant differences were found (lower fine motor scores at 12 months, lower gross motor and total composite scores at 24 months, and higher scores for gross motor and composite scores at 3 months).

Visual working memory (VWM) emerges in the first year of life and has far-reaching implications for academic and later life outcomes. Given that caregivers play a significant role in shaping cognitive function in children, it is important to understand how they might impact VWM development as early as infancy. The current study investigated whether caregivers’ efficiency of regulating inhibitory control was associated with VWM function in their infants. Eighty-eight caregivers were presented with a Go-NoGo task to assess inhibitory control. An efficiency score was calculated using their behavioural responses. Eighty-six 6-to-10-month-old infants were presented with a preferential looking task to assess VWM function. VWM load was manipulated across one (low load), two (medium load) and three (high load) items. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy was used to record brain activation from caregivers and their infants. We found no direct association between caregiver efficiency and infant VWM behaviour. However, we found an indirect association - caregiver efficiency was linked to infant VWM through left-lateralized fronto-parietal engagement. Specifically, infants with low efficiency caregivers showed decreasing left-lateralized parietal engagement with increasing VWM performance at the medium and high loads compared to infants with high efficiency caregivers, who did not show any load- or performance-dependent modulation. Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature examining the role that caregivers play in early neurocognitive development.

Recent decades have seen a major rise in demand for daycare services for children aged 0 to 3 years, and this has increased research interest in the child-professional caregiver relationship at daycare centers: How does the relationship between children and their new caregivers develop over time? How long does it take for children to settle in at daycare? What variables can influence the settling-in process? These questions are all of the utmost salience and bear crucial implications for children, parents, and daycare practitioners. In this study, we set out to explore the relationship between infants and their new caregivers over the first two months in daycare, using the Professional Caregiver Attachment Diary. The study involved seven Italian daycare centres and 55 professional caregivers, who observed 148 children (M=17.8 months). The children’s attachment behaviors were assessed at three time-points: when the children started attending daycare (T1), one month later (T2), and two months later (T3). We found that positive attachment behaviors (Secure and Non-Distressed) increased over time, whereas insecure behaviors (Avoidant and Resistant) decreased. Most of the change took place during the first month. Furthermore, children who had attended more daycare more regularly (with fewer days of absence) displayed fewer avoidant behaviors and a more rapid decrease in resistant behaviors than did children who were absent more frequently. The findings suggest that the PCAD may be usefully deployed to observe and analyze children while they are settling into a new daycare setting, especially in relation to their exploratory behaviors.