Effect of person on nervous,stable and crossbred pointer dogs

Through selective mating and line breeding of pointer dogs we have developed and continued two strains which are fairly behaviorally distinct. We now have data accumulating from the crossing of these two lines. Although the offspring from the crosses are still young, it can be seen that some stable male parents have had nonenvironmental, i.e., genetic, effects. The offspring are in many respects like their nervous mothers, but in some behavior, notably social behavior, they can be mistaken for the stable strain of dog. Heart rates have mimicked those of the nervous mothers and seem in no way influenced by the stable ancestry in “Effect of Person” tests. There is a marked difference between stable and unstable dogs in the effect of “Person” on heart rate: the unstable dogs show practically no cardiac response to “Person” (petting), whereas the normal dogs show the usual marked bradycardia to petting.     

Infant's psychophysiological profile and temperament at 3 and 12 months

This study is intended to analyze (1) differences in infant temperament at 3 and 12 months according to infants’ psychophysiological profiles: “withdrawn” “extroverted”, and “underaroused” and (2) changes in infant temperament from 3 to 12 months, namely according to the infant psychophysiological profile and the quality of mother-infant interaction. Ninety-four 8-week-old infants were assessed using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS, Brazelton & Nugent, 1995) and the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB, Guedeney & Fermanian, 2001). Saliva samples were collected at 8-12 weeks old, both before and after a routine inoculation for cortisol reactivity measurement. Mother-infant interaction was evaluated at 12-16 weeks, using the Global Rating Scales (GRS, Murray, Fiori-Cowley, Hooper, & Cooper, 1996). Mothers’ reports on infant temperament at 3 and 12 months were collected using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ, Rothbart, 1981). Significant differences in mothers’ perception of infant temperament were found at both 3 and 12 months in infants with distinct psychophysiological profiles. Stability was observed in most of the temperament's dimensions from 3 to 12 months old; still, there were changes in mothers’ perception of infant temperament in terms of level of distress, cuddliness, sadness and approach. Infant psychophysiological profile and mother-infant interaction both influence with the pattern of those changes. The results corroborate that infant's characteristics early in life as well as contextual factors influence with mothers’ perception of infant temperament and with changes across the 1st year of life.     

Long-term memory and retrieval at ages 2, 3, 4

Two experiments are reported examining the contents and accessibility of a subset of the knowledge represented in long-term memory by very young children. In Experiment 1, children aged 2 to 4 were asked in a production task to name items commonly found in particular rooms in a house, and then to verify the appropriate locations of a set of miniature replicas of household items in a dollhouse. In Experiment 2, object context was manipulated to observe if further external context improves or changes production. Children 3 and 4 years old were asked to produce appropriate room items under one of three conditons: either presented no room objects as in the first experiment, or given room objects highly- or less-frequently associated in the first study.Very young children revealed considerable knowledge in this domain, and even at the youngest ages, core defining information was retrieved. It was equally clear, however, that young children know much more than they can produce, that there is noticeable improvement in ability to retrieve information over this age range, and that additional external object context does not necessarily facilitate retrieval from long-term memory.     

A longitudinal investigation of the still‐face effect at 6 months and joint attention at 12 months

An understanding of intentionality is thought to underlie developing joint attention. Similarly, early social‐communicative behaviours have been argued to reflect an appreciation of adult intentionality. This study explored the relation between social‐communicative behaviours during the still‐face effect at 6 months and joint attention at 12 months in a longitudinal sample of 42 infants. Three types of joint attention were investigated: coordinated joint attention (infant alternates looks between an adult and objects), initiating joint attention (infant uses communicative gestures to engage or direct adult attention) and attention following (infant follows an adult's line of gaze and pointing towards an object). The still‐face effect was correlated with later attention following, but not coordinated or initiating joint attention. Initiating joint attention was correlated with coordinated joint attention. We propose that the former association reflects a lower‐level detection of adult intentionality rather than a higher‐level interpretation of an agent's intentions towards outside entities. The findings support two bodies of research – one advocating for a distinction between types of joint attentional ability and a second proposing that infants can detect intentional actions without understanding or attributing mental states to objects.     

Infant sustained attention but not joint attention to objects at 9 months predicts vocabulary at 12 and 15 months

Vocabulary differences early in development are highly predictive of later language learning as well as achievement in school. Early word learning emerges in the context of tightly coupled social interactions between the early learner and a mature partner. In the present study, we develop and apply a novel paradigm—dual head‐mounted eye tracking—to record momentary gaze data from both parents and infants during free‐flowing toy‐play contexts. With fine‐grained sequential patterns extracted from continuous gaze streams, we objectively measure both joint attention and sustained attention as parents and 9‐month‐old infants played with objects and as parents named objects during play. We show that both joint attention and infant sustained attention predicted vocabulary sizes at 12 and 15 months, but infant sustained attention in the context of joint attention, not joint attention itself, is the stronger unique predictor of later vocabulary size. Joint attention may predict word learning because joint attention supports infant attention to the named object.     

Joint visual attention and social triangular engagement at 3 and 6 months

Two experiments document infants' ability to detect breaks of contact in an ongoing dyadic interaction and to use the joint attention mechanism for social triangular communication purposes. In Experiment 1, the ability of 3- and 6-month-olds to show joint attention when an adult turned to face another person in sight, and to react when both adults conversed in a reciprocal manner, was measured. In Experiment 2, 3-month-olds were tested in two joint attention conditions: a Person-Person-Object condition (PPO) and a Person-Person-Person condition (PPP). Results showed that both 3- and 6-month-olds' gazed backwards and forwards between the two adults and produced socially directed behaviors towards the adults, thus initiating a social triangular coordinated interaction. Three-month-olds replicated this pattern in the PPP condition but not in the PPO condition. The social context with three persons may be particularly facilitative for infant early communication and sharing within the family.     

Stability of teacher temperament ratings over 6 and 12 months

Six and 12-month stability of teacher ratings of temperament was studied in four samples. For the two samples retested after a 6-month interval, the same teacher provided the original and retest ratings. For the two samples retested after a 12-month interval, different teachers provided the retest ratings than provided the original ratings. Four indices of stability were investigated for each sample: (a) cross-rank stability, (b) within-person stability (c) absolute score stability, and (d) factorial stability. Factorial stability was demonstrated for all samples. For the other three indices of stability, 6-month stability was moderate to high, and significantly higher than the 12-month stability. The general pattern of results is comparable to temperament rating data from parents, with specific coefficients being somewhat higher.     

Genetic and environmental mechanisms underlying stability and change in problem behaviors at ages 3, 7, 10, and 12

Maternal ratings on internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) behaviors were collected in a large, population-based longitudinal sample. The numbers of participating twin pairs at ages 3, 7, 10, and 12 were 5,602, 5,115, 2,956, and 1,481, respectively. Stability in both behaviors was accounted for by genetic and shared environmental influences. The genetic contribution to stability (INT: 43%; EXT: 60%) resulted from the fact that a subset of genes expressed at an earlier age was still active at the next time point. A common set of shared environmental factors operated at all ages (INT: 47%; EXT: 34%). The modest contribution of nonshared environmental factors (INT: 10%; EXT: 6%) could not be captured by a simple model. Significant age-specific influences were found for all components, indicating that genetic and environmental factors also contributed to changes in problem behavior.     

Infants’ developing expectations of possible and impossible tool-use events between ages 8 and 12 months

Infants’ developing causal expectations for the outcome of a simple tool-use event from ages 8 to 12 months were investigated. Causal expectations were studied by comparing infants’ developing tool-use actions (i.e. as tool-use agents) with their developing perceptual reactions (i.e. as tool-use observers) to possible and impossible tool-use events. In Experiment 1, tool-use actions were studied by presenting infants, ages 8 and 12 months, with tool-use object-retrieval problems. In Experiment 2, a second age-matched sample of infants watched a comparable series of possible and impossible tool-use events in which a tool was used to retrieve a goal-object. Two core related findings were made. First, infants’ causal action and causal perception develop in parallel. In both action and perception, supporting tool-use develops before surrounding tool-use. Second, infants’ tool-use action develops before their causal perception of comparable tool-use events. The findings support the constructivist hypothesis that infants’ causal actions may develop before and inform their causal perceptions.     

Pointing out new news, old news, and absent referents at 12 months of age

There is currently controversy over the nature of 1-year-olds' social-cognitive understanding and motives. In this study we investigated whether 12-month-old infants point for others with an understanding of their knowledge states and with a prosocial motive for sharing experiences with them. Declarative pointing was elicited in four conditions created by crossing two factors: an adult partner (1) was already attending to the target event or not, and (2) emoted positively or neutrally. Pointing was also coded after the event had ceased. The findings suggest that 12-month-olds point to inform others of events they do not know about, that they point to share an attitude about mutually attended events others already know about, and that they can point (already prelinguistically) to absent referents. These findings provide strong support for a mentalistic and prosocial interpretation of infants' prelinguistic communication.     

Age-related changes in deferred imitation between 6 and 9 months of age

Six- and 9-month-old human infants were tested in a deferred imitation paradigm in which an experimenter performed a single action with a novel object. Although infants of both ages imitated the action when tested immediately, only the 9-month-olds exhibited imitation after a 24-h delay.     

Infants' responses to arm restraint at 2 and 6 months: a longitudinal study

This study examined the continuity, stability, and change of infants' responses to a frustrating event (i.e., arm restraint) between 2 and 6 months in terms of both negative reactivity and its regulation. Fifty-two healthy, full-term infants and their mothers participated in an arm restraint procedure. Infant behaviors were observed and coded at 3-s intervals. The results showed that infants' reactivity to frustration and their ability to regulate such reactivity significantly changed in level over time. Individual differences in frustration reactivity were stable across the two ages; two regulatory behaviors (i.e., orientation to mother and avoidance) could be observed in the same percentage of babies at both 2 and 6 months. At 6 months, several significant associations between frustration reactivity and infant regulatory behaviors emerged. These findings suggest that the arm restraint procedure may be usefully employed to study individual differences in infants as young as 2 months of age.     

Numerical representations and intuitions of probabilities at 12 months

Recent research shows that preverbal infants can reason about single‐case probabilities without relying on observed frequencies, adapting their predictions to relevant dynamic parameters of the situation (Téglás, Vul, Girotto, Gonzalez, Tenenbaum & Bonatti, 2011 ; Téglás, Girotto, Gonzalez & Bonatti, 2007 ). Here we show that intuitions of probabilities may derive from the ability to represent a limited number of possibilities. After watching a scene containing moving objects of two ensembles, 12‐month‐olds looked longer at an unlikely than at a likely single‐case outcome when the objects were within the parallel individuation range. However, they did not do so when the scene contained the same ratio between ensembles but a larger number of objects. At the same time, they could form rational expectations about single‐case outcomes in scenes containing the same large number of objects when they could exploit subtle physical parameters induced by the objects’ movements and their spatial configuration. Our findings demonstrate that at early stages of development the mental representations involved in probability estimations of future individual situations are powerful and sophisticated, but at the same time they depend on infants’ overall cognitive architecture, being constrained by the numerical representations spontaneously induced by the situations.     

Emotional interaction in a group of preterm infants at 3 and 6 months of corrected age

Twenty preterm infants (birthweight<1500 g) and 20 healthy fullterm infants were compared with respect to emotional interaction with their mothers in a face‐to‐face situation at 3 months of age and in a feeding situation at 6 months of age (ages corrected for preterm birth). The assessed outcome was analysed with respect to infant variables (group, gender, gestational age, birthweight and neonatal risk factors) and maternal variables (age, education and parity). The outcomes at 3 and 6 months of age were also compared with findings of Griffiths’ testing at 10 months of age. At 3 months of age, the findings reveal no significant difference between the two groups with respect to emotional interaction. Maternal variables are more important for this interaction than are infant variables. The mother's level of formal education has a significant impact in both groups. In the group of fullterm infants, significantly lower scores for interaction are obtained by first‐time mothers in comparison with multi‐parae mothers. At 6 months of age, the difference between fullterm and preterm infants is significant. The preterm infants and their mothers now relate to one another more poorly than is the case for the fullterm dyads. These findings suggest that the difficulties encountered by the preterm infant emerge with time. Emotional interaction at this age and the results of Griffiths’ testing 4 months later are significantly correlated. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Infants' interactions with professional caregivers at 3 and 6 months of age: a longitudinal study

This study longitudinally investigated the quality and stability of 64 infants’ interactions with their professional caregivers in child care centers at 3 and 6 months of age, i.e., across the first 3 months after they entered child care. It was also examined whether the infants’ negative emotionality (as rated by the mother) predicted the quality of the caregiver–infant interaction. The interactive behavior of the professional caregivers (sensitivity, cooperation) and the infants (responsiveness, involvement) was rated from videotapes recorded in three different caregiving situations, lasting about 25 min in total. In contrast to our expectation, the quality of the caregiver–infant interaction did not significantly increase across the first 3 months in child care. As expected, significant rank order stability was found for the quality of the caregivers’ behavior over time. Also in accordance with our expectations, infants with higher negative emotionality scores experienced less sensitivity and cooperation in interactions with their primary professional caregivers at both ages.     

The effects of polydrug use with and without cocaine on mother-infant interaction at 3 and 6 months

The face-to-face interactions of 43 polydrug-with-cocaine-using mothers and their infants at 3 and 6 months were compared to 17 non-cocaine-but other-drug-using mothers and 21 mothers who used no drugs during their pregnancy. Coders blind to mothers' drug use status scored 3 min of face-to-face interactions for 16 measures of maternal and infant interactive behaviors. A principal component of 7 behaviors formed a measure of maternal attentiveness; a principal component of 5 behaviors formed a measure of mother-infant dyadic organization; and a principal component of 4 behaviors formed a measure of infant readiness to interact. A measure of maternal interruption was computed as the mean standard score of 3 additional interruptive behaviors. At 3 and 6 months, polydrug-with-cocaine-using mothers were less attentive to interactions, and polydrug-with-cocaine-using mothers and their infants engaged in fewer dyadic interactions than either non-cocaine or non-drug-using mothers. Compared to 3 months, polydrug-with-cocaine-using mothers at 6 months were less attentive to interactions and more frequently interrupted interactions by looking away, redirecting the infant, or withdrawing, whereas non-cocaine-using and non-drug- using mothers showed no change or an improvement in attentiveness to interactions and a decrease in interruptions. No differences emerged in the interactive behaviors of the infants of polydrug- with-cocaine-using, non-cocaine-using, or non-drug-using mothers. Cocaine use represents a significant risk for diminished parental attentiveness and responsiveness to infants and for diminished interactiveness in infants.     

Sleep arrangements and night waking at 6 and 12 months in relation to infants' stress‐induced cortisol responses

The objective of this short‐term longitudinal study was to examine the concurrent and prospective associations of infants' sleep arrangements and night waking with cortisol responses to an inoculation at 6 and 12 months, controlling for several key covariates. To our knowledge, this was the first study to concurrently and prospectively link proximity in sleep arrangements and night waking to physiological stress reactivity. A sample of 92 mother–infant dyads participated in the study when the infants were 6 and 12 months of age, although sample sizes were reduced for some analyses. Both proximal cosleeping arrangements and more frequent night wakings' were associated concurrently with an increased cortisol response to inoculations at both ages. Night waking at 6 months also was associated with a slightly increased cortisol response to inoculation at 12 months. Results aimed at exploring the direction of influence suggested that cosleeping and night waking may influence infant stress physiology rather than the reverse. Adaptive and maladaptive implications of infants' nocturnal experiences and greater stress‐induced cortisol responses are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Facing the perfect contingency: interactions with the self at 2 and 3 months

We used a double video Live-Replay-Live procedure to explore self-self interactions in fourteen 9-week-old infants, repeated at 13-weeks with 10 of these infants. Using multiple measures of behavioural response we found that (1) in all cases where age effects held, duration of response was greater at 9- than at 13-weeks, (2) infants' responses differed according to whether or not self-images were Live or Replay, and (3) age and condition interacted to influence infants' responses. At 9 (but not 13) weeks, the two Live conditions correlated with each other but not with the Replay condition on some measures, indicating that infants apprehended the visual-proprioceptive contingency provided by their actions. Also at 9-weeks only, all infants showed reversals in visual attention with evidence for a bi-modal pattern: 8 preferring the Live conditions and 6 the Replay condition. An explanation based on familiarity and increasing disinterest with specific contexts is suggested.     

The Role of Morphology and Short Vowelization in Reading Arabic among Normal and Dyslexic Readers in Grades 3, 6, 9, and 12

This study was an investigation of several Arabic reading measures among dyslexics and normal Arabic readers across different ages (grades 3, 6, 9, and 12): the role of morphology, short vowelization (phonological and syntactic skills), spelling, reading isolated words, and reading comprehension. The results of the one-way ANOVAs indicated clear differences between the dyslexic readers and the normal readers on all reading measures. However, the stepwise regression analysis revealed consistent “orthographic” results: morphology (identification and/or production) and spelling were generally the most powerful predictors of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension among dyslexic and normal readers across these different age groups. The results are discussed in terms of the characteristics of the Arabic orthography and the heavy reliance of readers at all levels and ages on “orthographic” factors in reading.     

Socioeconomic and psychological correlates of postpartum depression at 6 months in Dhaka,Bangladesh

To current study aimed to estimate the point prevalence and identify correlates of postpartum depression (PPD) in a sample of mothers in Dhaka. A total of 235 participants from low- and middle-SES neighbourhoods in Dhaka completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and other assessments of socioeconomic and psychological factors at 24 weeks postpartum. Regression models were fit to explore potential correlates of PPD. The estimated prevalence of high PPD risk in the current sample is 24.3%. In multivariable linear regression models, recent life events, perceived stress and household resources (e.g., access to cooking gas, telephone, furniture, electricity, television, etc.) were significantly associated with PPD. The association of social support with PPD when controlling for other variables was sensitive to the choice of social support measure, highlighting an important methodological issue. The point prevalence of PPD among poor, urban mothers in Bangladesh ranges from 12.3 to 28.5%, with psychological risk factors and household resources as strong correlates.