Motor training at 3 months affects object exploration 12 months later

The development of new motor skills alters how infants interact with objects and people. Consequently, it has been suggested that motor skills may initiate a cascade of events influencing subsequent development. However, only correlational evidence for this assumption has been obtained thus far. The current study addressed this question experimentally by systematically varying reaching experiences in 40 three‐month‐old infants who were not reaching on their own yet and examining their object engagement in a longitudinal follow‐up assessment 12 months later. Results revealed increased object exploration and attention focusing skills in 15‐month‐old infants who experienced active reaching at 3 months of age compared to untrained infants or infants who only passively experienced reaching. Further, grasping activity after – but not before – reaching training predicted infants’ object exploration 12 months later. These findings provide evidence for the long‐term effects of reaching experiences and illustrate the cascading effects initiated by early motor skills.     

Language development at 18 months is related to multimodal communicative strategies at 12 months

The present study investigated the degree to which an infants’ use of simultaneous gesture–speech combinations during controlled social interactions predicts later language development. Nineteen infants participated in a declarative pointing task involving three different social conditions: two experimental conditions (a) available, when the adult was visually attending to the infant but did not attend to the object of reference jointly with the child, and (b) unavailable, when the adult was not visually attending to neither the infant nor the object; and (c) a baseline condition, when the adult jointly engaged with the infant's object of reference. At 12 months of age measures related to infants’ speech-only productions, pointing-only gestures, and simultaneous pointing–speech combinations were obtained in each of the three social conditions. Each child's lexical and grammatical output was assessed at 18 months of age through parental report. Results revealed a significant interaction between social condition and type of communicative production. Specifically, only simultaneous pointing–speech combinations increased in frequency during the available condition compared to baseline, while no differences were found for speech-only and pointing-only productions. Moreover, simultaneous pointing–speech combinations in the available condition at 12 months positively correlated with lexical and grammatical development at 18 months of age. The ability to selectively use this multimodal communicative strategy to engage the adult in joint attention by drawing his attention toward an unseen event or object reveals 12-month-olds’ clear understanding of referential cues that are relevant for language development. This strategy to successfully initiate and maintain joint attention is related to language development as it increases learning opportunities from social interactions.     

Relations between behavioral reactivity at 4 months and attachment classification at 14 months in a selected sample

Attachment at 14 months of age was examined in a sample of infants who had been selected for high or low levels of positive or negative affective reactivity and motor activity at 4 months of age. The type of early emotional reactivity was not clearly associated with attachment security or insecurity. The proposal of Belsky and Rovine [Belsky, J., & Rovine, M. (1987). Temperament and attachment security in the strange situation: An empirical rapprochement. Child Development, 58, 787–795] that infants classified as B3/B4 or C1/C2 are temperamentally more negatively reactive than those classified as A1/A2 or B1/B2 was supported. Compared with infants who showed high levels of positive affect and infants who scored low on affective reactivity, infants who showed high levels of negative affect in response to stimulation at 4 months of age were significantly more likely to be classified as B3/B4 or C1/C2 in the Strange Situation at 14 months of age. These findings are discussed in the context of prior inconsistent findings about the relations between temperament and groups of attachment sub-classifications. The role of different methods of assessing temperament and the importance of selected samples in clarifying such relations is discussed.     

Exclusive breastfeeding at three months and infant sleep-wake behaviors at two weeks,three and six months

This study assessed infant sleep-wake behavior at two weeks, three and six months as function of feeding method at three months (exclusively breastfed, partially breastfed, and exclusively formula fed infants). Mothers of 163 first-born, full-term, normal birth weight, healthy infants completed socio-demographic, depression, anxiety, and infant sleep-wake behavior measures. No effects were found for sleep arrangements, depression or anxiety, on feeding methods and sleep-wake behavior at three months. At two weeks exclusively breastfed infants at three months spent more hours sleeping and less hours awake during the 24-h period than partially breastfed infants. At three months, exclusively breastfed infants had a shorter of the longest sleep period at night than exclusively formula fed infants. At six months, exclusively breastfed infants at three months spent more hours awake at night than partially breastfed infants, awake more at night than exclusively formula fed infants, and had a shorter sleep period at night than partially breastfed and exclusively formula fed infants. This study showed differences in sleep-wake behaviors at two weeks, three and six months, when exclusively breastfed infants are compared with partially breastfed and exclusively formula fed infants at three months, while no effects were found for sleep arrangements, depression or anxiety.     

Behavioral correlates of self-control at 33 months

Self-control behavior of 48 33-month-old children was examined during two delay-of-gratification tasks. Children were categorized as high, medium, and low in self-control on the basis of their cumulative delay time. Instances of attention shifts, body movements, as well as social and object-referencing were coded throughout the two delay periods. Results showed significant group differences in behavioral tactics. Children in the low group looked at and touched the forbidden object more often; members of the medium group used more social referencing, and those in the high group were more likely to reference nonforbidden objects. Findings also suggested that high controllers were more likely to use self-distraction tactics involving shifts in attention from one object to another during the delay period. Separate analyses for each task indicated that the observed delay tactics were stable from one context to the other. These findings substantiate results from other research on self-control with 3-year-old children and also document different behavioral styles of self-regulation during delay of gratification.     

Elevation predicts domain-specific volunteerism 3 months later

Elevation, the feeling of moral uplift when viewing the virtuous action of another, has been shown to be a distinct moral emotion [Algoe, S.B., & Haidt, J. (2009). Witnessing excellence in action: The ‘other-praising’ emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration. Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 105–127]. Prosocial behaviors have been theorized to be one of the behavioral effects of elevation, but this behavioral connection has not been strongly established. This study followed college students in a naturalistic setting known to induce elevation, a spring break service trip. Self-reports of elevation during service trip were collected from participants at the conclusion of the trip. At 1 week and 3 months later, participants reported on trip-related and general volunteerism. Self-reports of elevation during the trip predicted trip-specific volunteerism at 1 week and 3 months, but did not relate to general volunteerism at either time. This predictive connection was maintained even when pre-trip volunteerism, trait empathy, and the dispositions of Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Agreeableness were controlled for. These results suggest that the experience of elevation motivated participants to volunteer in the domain in which they felt elevation. This finding supports the hypothesis that prosocial responses are a behavioral effect of elevation, but further refines this hypothesis by suggesting that the prosocial response occurs in a domain linked to the context in which elevation was experienced.     

Frontolimbic neural circuitry at 6 months predicts individual differences in joint attention at 9 months

Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9‐ to 10‐month period as a time interval of maximal individual differences. We then demonstrate that fractional anisotropy in the right uncinate fasciculus, a white matter fiber bundle connecting the amygdala to the ventral‐medial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal pole, measured in 6‐month‐olds predicts individual differences in responding to joint attention at 9 months of age. The white matter microstructure of the right uncinate was not related to receptive language ability at 9 months. These findings suggest that the development of core nonverbal social communication skills in infancy is largely supported by preceding developments within right lateralized frontotemporal brain systems.     

Infant affective responses to mother's still face at 6 months differentially predict externalizing and internalizing behaviors at 18 months

This study investigated (a) stability and change in infant affective responses to the still-face interaction, (b) whether maternal depression affected infant responses, and (c) whether responses to the still-face interaction predicted toddler problem behaviors. Infants (63 girls and 66 boys) of European American mothers (67 depressed and 62 nondepressed) were observed in the still-face interaction at 2, 4, and 6 months. Affect and gaze were coded on a 1-s time base. There were stable individual differences in gazing away and in rates of negative affect. Developmental change occurred only for gazing away, which increased. At 18 months, infants who failed to smile at 6 months in the still-face interaction showed more externalizing-type behaviors than did other toddlers. Infants who failed to cry at 6 months showed fewer internalizing-type behaviors. Mothers' current depressive symptoms and infants' earlier responses to the still-face interaction made independent, comparable contributions to problem behaviors at 18 months.     

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.     

Information processing efficiency and regulation at five months

Infants with short look durations are generally thought to have better attentional capabilities due to their efficient information processing. Although effortful attention is considered a key component of developing regulatory abilities, little is known about the relation between speed and efficiency of processing and self-regulation. In this study, 5-month-old infants with shorter look duration had greater EEG power values than infants with longer look duration during baseline, as well as during a distressing task and a post-distress attentional processing task. These short looking infants also demonstrated higher heart rate, relative to long looking infants, during post-distress information processing. Behaviorally the two groups differed in the amount of distraction during distress. These data provide evidence for an association between the efficiency of information processing and beginning regulatory abilities in early infancy.     

Differential memory-preserving effects of reminders at 6 months

Although reactivation and reinstatement reminders differ procedurally, differences in their memory-preserving effects have been described as artifactual. In three experiments, we examined this conclusion. One hundred and twelve 6-month-olds learned an operant task, forgot it, received a reactivation or reinstatement reminder to recover the inactive memory, and were tested after increasing delays until they forgot it again. In Experiments 1a and 1b, a single reactivation reminder extended infants' memory of an operant mobile task for 2 weeks after reminding, but a single reinstatement extended it for 4 weeks, when testing was discontinued. In Experiment 2, a single reinstatement extended 6-month-olds' memory of an operant train task for 19 weeks after reminding, when infants were almost 1 year old. After reactivation, infants remember this task for only 2 weeks. The finding that the memory-preserving effect of reinstatement is greater by an order of magnitude suggests that procedural differences between the two reminders have functional significance.     

Maternal distancing and event memory at 20 months

Maternal distancing strategies (Sigel, 1993 in The Development and Meaning of Psychological Distance , Cocking R, Renninger KA (eds). Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ; 141–158) with 20‐month‐olds were analysed during a mother–child interaction in a free play situation. Then, they were related to memory performance of the children as assessed by the elicited imitation paradigm with 4 three‐step sequences of actions (Bauer, Hertsgaard, Child Dev. 1993; 64 :1204). The aim of this work was to (1) confirm that the Sigel's model of distancing could be used with very young children under two; (2) study relationships between maternal distancing that stimulate representational competence of the child and memory performance of the children. Results showed two different patterns of correlations depending on the sequence type: for enabling sequences, significant positive correlations were obtained for the first two distancing levels whereas for arbitrary sequences no correlation was found whatever the distancing level. As discussed, the first pattern brings new arguments in support of declarative memory before the age of 2 years and reframes the memory development in a Vygotskyian interactionist perspective. The second pattern of correlations calls for replication and more investigation about the processes implied in memory of very young children for different sequence types. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rape impact: Immediately and two months later

This paper analyzes assault victims’ reactions over the course of two months. Specifically, reaction types are analyzed across four dimensions: behavioral changes, interpersonal difficulties, physical symptoms, and emotional responses. Initially, most rape victims report fairly high levels of disruption across three of the four reaction types, with some signs of recovery two months later. Patterns of reactions are also exhibited. At the two month follow‐up, behavioral changes, physical symptoms, and emotional responses have declined, while interpersonal difficulties have increased slightly. These data suggest that the present service delivery system of the rape crisis center may be problematic in that they offer only short‐term intervention. Some victims of rape may require a different type of service from such centers.     

Processing of order information for numbers and months

Despite a great deal of research on the processing of numerical magnitude (e.g., the quantity denoted by the number 5), few studies have investigated how this magnitude information relates to the ordinal properties of numbers (e.g., the fact that 5 is the fifth integer). In the present study, we investigated order-related processing of numbers, as well as months of the year, with a novel ordering task to see whether the processing of order information differs from the processing of magnitude information. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were shown three numbers (Experiment 1) or three months (Experiment 2) and were required to indicate whether the stimuli were in the correct order. In Experiment 3, participants were again shown three numbers; however, now they were instructed to indicate whether the three numbers were ordered in a forward, backward, or mixed direction. Whereas number comparison tasks typically reveal distance effects (comparisons become easier with increased distance between two numbers), these three experiments reveal a different pattern of results. There were reverse distance effects when the stimuli crossed a boundary (i.e., when numbers crossed a decade or months crossed the year boundary) and no effect of distance when the stimuli did not cross a boundary (i.e., when numbers were within a decade and months were within the January—December calendar year). These data suggest that additional mechanisms are involved in the processing of order information: a scanning mechanism and a long-term memory checking mechanism.     

Maternal communicative functions and mind-mindedness at 16 months as predictors of children’s internal and non-internal language at 20 months

The effects of Communicative functions and Mind-Mindedness on children’s language development have been typically investigated in separate studies. The present longitudinal research was therefore designed to yield new insight into the simultaneous impact of these two dimensions of maternal responsiveness on the acquisition of expressive language skills in a sample of 25 mother-child dyads. The frequencies of five communicative functions (Tutorial, Didactic, Conversational, Control and Asynchronous) and two types of mind-related comments (attuned vs. non-attuned) were assessed from a 15-min play session at 16 months. Children’s expressive language was examined at both 16 months (number of word types and tokens produced, and number of words attributed to the child in the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language development) and 20 months (number of internal and non-internal words attributed to the child in the Italian version of the Mac Arthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory). The main finding was that mothers’ use of attuned mind-related comments at 16 months predicted internal state language at 20 months, above and beyond the effects of CFs and children’s linguistic ability at 16 months; in addition, mothers’ Tutorial function at 16 months marginally predicted non-internal state language at 20 months, after controlling for MM and children’s linguistic ability at 16 months. These results suggest that different expressions of maternal responsiveness influence distinct aspects of children’s expressive language in the second year of life, although the effects of MM appear to be more robust.     

At 11 months,prosody still outranks statistics

English‐learning 7.5‐month‐olds are heavily biased to perceive stressed syllables as word onsets. By 11 months, however, infants begin segmenting non‐initially stressed words from speech. Using the same artificial language methodology as Johnson and Jusczyk (2001 ), we explored the possibility that the emergence of this ability is linked to a decreased reliance on prosodic cues to word boundaries accompanied by an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues. In a baseline study, where only statistical cues to word boundaries were present, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for statistical words. When conflicting stress cues were added to the speech stream, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for stress as opposed to statistical words. This was interpreted as evidence that 11‐month‐olds weight stress cues to word boundaries more heavily than statistical cues. Experiment 2 further investigated these results with a language containing convergent cues to word boundaries. The results of Experiment 2 were not conclusive. A third experiment using new stimuli and a different experimental design supported the conclusion that 11‐month‐olds rely more heavily on prosodic than statistical cues to word boundaries. We conclude that the emergence of the ability to segment non‐initially stressed words from speech is not likely to be tied to an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues relative to stress cues, but instead may emerge due to an increased reliance on and integration of a broad array of segmentation cues.     

Parent coaching at 6 and 10 months improves language outcomes at 14 months: A randomized controlled trial

Previous studies reveal an association between particular features of parental language input and advances in children's language learning. However, it is not known whether parent coaching aimed to enhance specific input components would (a) successfully increase these components in parents' language input and (b) result in concurrent increases in children's language development. The present randomized controlled trial assigned families of typically developing 6‐month‐old infants to Intervention (parent coaching) and Control (no coaching) groups. Families were equivalent on socioeconomic status, infants' gender, and infants' age. Parent coaching took place when infants were 6 and 10 months of age, and included quantitative and qualitative linguistic feedback on the amount of child‐directed speech, back‐and‐forth interactions, and parentese speech style. These variables were derived from each family's first‐person LENA recordings at home. Input variables and infant language were measured at 6, 10, and 14 months. Parent coaching significantly enhanced language input as measured by two social interaction variables: percentage of speech directed to the child and percentage of parentese speech. These two variables were correlated, and were both related to growth in infant babbling between 6 and 14 months. Intervention infants showed greater growth in babbling than Control infants. Furthermore, at 14 months, Intervention infants produced significantly more words than Control infants, as indicated by LENA recordings and parent report via the MacArthur‐Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory. Together, these results indicate that parent coaching can enrich specific aspects of parental language input, and can immediately and positively impact child language outcomes. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/7wqR28gPiwo     

Social pretence with mothers and peers at 15 months

Previous research has shown that adults scaffold and direct early infant social pretend play making it difficult to establish infants' own contribution to pretence. To examine infants' social pretence abilities the present study compared infants' social pretend play in interactions with adults and same-age peers, who have similar socio-cognitive competence. Forty-five 15-month-old infants were observed during free-play interactions with their mother and two same-age, same-gender peers. The frequency and duration of parallel and coordinated social pretence were coded during both interactions. Results showed that while infants played pretence with both social partners, they engaged in more and longer coordinated social pretence with their mothers than with peers. Thus, although competent social partners play an important role in scaffolding complex pretence, infants' own socio-cognitive abilities contribute to the development of social pretence and enable them to pretend play with different partners regardless of their competencies.