Why the body comes first: effects of experimenter touch on infants' word finding

The lexicon of 6‐month‐olds is comprised of names and body part words. Unlike names, body part words do not often occur in isolation in the input. This presents a puzzle: How have infants been able to pull out these words from the continuous stream of speech at such a young age? We hypothesize that caregivers' interactions directed at and on the infant's body may be at the root of their early acquisition of body part words. An artificial language segmentation study shows that experimenter‐provided synchronous tactile cues help 4‐month‐olds to find words in continuous speech. A follow‐up study suggests that this facilitation cannot be reduced to the highly social situation in which the directed interaction occurs. Taken together, these studies suggest that direct caregiver–infant interaction, exemplified in this study by touch cues, may play a key role in infants' ability to find word boundaries, and suggests that early vocabulary items may consist of words often linked with caregiver touches. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/NfCj5ipatyE     

Mothers' interactions with temperamentally frustrated infants

A sample of 162 six‐month‐old infants was selected from a larger sample of 346 infants on the basis of mothers' report of their infants' temperament and a laboratory assessment of temperament. Infants were classified as easily frustrated or less frustrated and observed in several types of interactions with their mothers in the laboratory. Mothers completed several measures that indicated their level of parenting stress, psychological functioning, and marital adjustment. Maternal behavior with infants was coded along the dimensions of sensitivity, intrusiveness, and physical stimulation. Results indicated that maternal intrusiveness was related to infant temperament and that maternal physical stimulation was predicted by an interaction of infant temperament and mothers' perceived parenting stress. Implications of these findings for mother–infant interaction and subsequent child adjustment are discussed. ©2004 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

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.     

A comparison of dyadic interactions and coping with still‐face in healthy pre‐term and full‐term infants

Pre‐term birth has a significant impact on infants' social and emotional competence, however, little is known about regulatory processes in pre‐term mother‐infant dyads during normal or stressful interactions. The primary goals of this study were to investigate the differences in infant and caregiver interactive behaviour and dyadic coordination of clinically healthy pre‐term compared to full‐term infant‐mother dyads and to examine pre‐term infants' capacity for coping with stress using the face‐to‐face still‐face paradigm (FFSF). Fifty mother‐infant dyads, including 25 pre‐term infants and 25 full‐term infants were videotaped during the FFSF. All infants were 6–9 months of age (corrected for gestational age in the pre‐term group). Infant and maternal socio‐emotional expressivity and self‐regulatory behaviours were coded and measures of dyadic coordination (Matching, Reparation Rate, and Synchrony) were calculated. There were no significant differences in infant and caregiver socio‐emotional behaviours between the two groups and both groups demonstrated the still‐face (SF) effect and the reunion effect. There was a difference in self‐regulatory behaviour. Pre‐term infants were more likely than full‐term infants to use distancing (e.g., by turning away, twisting, or arching) from their mothers during the FFSF. Additionally, during the Reunion episode of the FFSF pre‐term infants showed more social monitoring compared to full‐term infants. Regardless of the birth status, the dyads showed less coordination and a slower rate of reparation during the Reunion episode than during the Play episode. The higher proportion of distancing in the pre‐term group and the increase in social monitoring suggest that even in normal interactions pre‐term infants may experience a higher level of stress and have less capacity for self‐regulation compared to the full‐terms and that pre‐term infants appear to use a compensatory strategy of increased social monitoring to cope with the stress of renegotiating the interaction during Reunion. The findings suggest that pre‐term infants have different regulatory and interactive capacities than full‐term infants.     

Music therapy with hospitalized infants—the art and science of communicative musicality

Infants seek contingent, companionable interactions with others. Infants in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), while receiving care that optimizes their chances of survival, often do not have the kind of interactions that are optimal for their social development. Live music therapy (MT) with infants is an intervention that aims for contingent, social interaction between therapist and infant. This study, with a limited numbers of infants, examined the effectiveness of an MT intervention in the NICU at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne. Two groups of late pre‐term and full‐term infants were recruited to the study; one was given MT and the other was not. A healthy group of infants not given MT served as an additional control. The effect of MT was indexed using two measures reflecting infant social engagement: the Neurobehavioral Assessment of the Preterm Infant (NAPI) and the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB). Results suggest that the MT intervention used at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne supports infants' neurobehavioral development. In particular, hospitalized infants who received MT were better able to maintain self‐regulation during social interaction with an adult, were less irritable and cried less, and were more positive in their response to adult handling, when compared with infants who did not receive the intervention. These are important prerequisites for social interaction and development. Further and larger scale research using MT with this population is indicated.     

Mothers' facial expressions of pain and fear and infants' pain response during immunization

The goal of the current study was to examine the relationship between mothers' spontaneous facial expressions of pain and fear immediately preceding their infants' immunizations and infants' facial expressions of pain immediately following immunizations. Infants' observations of mothers' faces prior to immunization also were examined to explore whether these observations moderated the effect of mothers' facial expressions on infant pain. The final sample included 58 mothers and their infants. Video data were used to code maternal facial expressions, infants' observations, and infants' expressions of pain. Infants who observed their mothers' faces had mothers who expressed significantly more fear pre‐needle. Furthermore, mothers' facial expressions of mild fear pre‐needle were associated with lower levels of infants' pain expression post‐needle. A regression analysis confirmed maternal facial expressions of mild fear pre‐needle as the strongest predictor of infant pain post‐needle after controlling for infants' observations of mothers' faces. Mothers' subtle facial expressions of fear may indicate a relationship history of empathic caregiving that functions to support infants' abilities to regulate distress following painful procedures. Interventions aimed at improving caregiver sensitivity to infants' emotional cues may prove beneficial to infants in pain. Future directions in research are discussed.     

Infants' responses to mothers' imitative behaviors

Several investigators have suggested that young infants' smiles and vocalizations following their mothers' imitative behaviors might reflect infant recognition that the mother's behavior is imitative or at least contingent. This study investigated whether infants smile and vocalize more frequently subsequent to maternal imitative than non-imitative behavior during both spontaneous and imitative face-to-face interactions. Fourteen 3 1/2-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped in these two face-to-face interaction situations. The infants vocalized more frequently during the imitative situation and infant vocalizations plus simultaneous smiling, and vocalizations occurred more often following maternal imitative than non-imitative behavior. Although these data suggest that infant vocalizations and simultaneous smiles and vocalizations may reflect the infants' recognition of maternal imitative behavior, they do not establish definitively that it is the imitation per se vs. the contingency aspect that is recognized by the infant.     

Infants' object category formation and use: Real-world context effects on category use in object processing

Three experiments investigated category formation based on real-world encounters with objects and how that category knowledge functioned as a top-down influence on infants' scene processing. 5-month-old infants received various experiences with exemplars of an object category and then were shown a display containing 2 adjacent novel objects, 1 of which was a novel exemplar of the category. If infants recognized this novel exemplar, they could use category information to determine the boundary between the 2 objects. Only infants who experienced object exemplars in situations that closely mimicked everyday infant experiences with objects successfully parsed the display. Results suggest that regularities in the contexts where infants experience similar objects help infants link their experiences and form object categories that can be used to segregate novel scenes. These results shed light on the real-world process of infant knowledge base formation and on how infants use their knowledge base to segment real-world scenes.     

New Evidence for the Social Embeddedness of Infants' Early Triangular Capacities

Infants appear to be active participants in complex interactional sequences with their parents far earlier than previously theorized. In this report, we document the capacity of 3‐month‐old infants to share attention with two partners (mothers and fathers) simultaneously, and trace links between this capacity and early family group‐level dynamics. During comprehensive evaluations of the family's emergent coparenting alliance completed in 113 homes, we charted infants' eye gaze patterns during two different mother‐father‐infant assessment paradigms. Triangular capacities (operationalized as the frequency of rapid multishift gaze transitions between parents during interactions) were stable across interaction context. Infants exhibiting more advanced triangular capacities belonged to families showing evidence of better coparental adjustment. Theoretical and practice implications of these findings are discussed.     

Shared minds: How mothers and infants co-construct early patterns of choice within intentional communication partnerships

The qualitative research method of case study inquiry is employed to investigate different patterns observed in early communicative interactions between two infants and their mothers. These mothers and babies were similar in significant ways: Both mothers were observed to be competent, well-functioning adults and reported no communicative or parenting dysfunction: both infants were evaluated as developing normally in terms of their cognitive level and acquisition of communication behaviors. However, a difference was observed between the dyads in their effectiveness in contributing to the infants' development as intentional communicators. The extent to which an infant and mother “share minds” is proposed as accounting for the observed difference. This phenomenon of “shared minds” is examined by observing the process of choice co-construction engaged in by mothers and infants during communication. It is concluded that characteristics of these early co-constructions influence the way in which the young child begins to act with intention and to interpret him- or herself and others as intentional communicative beings. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Learning blossoms: Caregiver-infant interactions in an outdoor garden setting

Plants provide unique opportunities for learning by engaging all human senses. Recent laboratory studies have shown that infants use a combination of behavioural avoidance and social learning strategies to safely learn about plant properties from adults. Here we investigate how infants and their caregivers interact with plants in an outdoor garden as a first step towards examining the operation of these social learning processes in naturalistic settings. We focus on two specific aspects of spontaneous infant-caregiver interactions with plants: olfactory and touch behaviours. Additionally, we look at whether infants' and caregivers’ prior knowledge of the plants in our study influences infants’ behaviour. Our results showed a multifaceted connection between infants’ and caregivers' previous experience with the plants and their olfactory and touch behaviours. First, infants tended to touch and smell the plants after their caregivers did, and this appeared to be independent of whether infants had seen the plant before. Second, infants systematically engaged in some of the same types of olfactory and touch behaviours their caregiver displayed towards plants. Finally, infants whose caregivers were given more information about the plants in the study showed fewer touch behaviours, but no difference in olfactory behaviours. These findings bolster the previous laboratory studies of plant learning early in life, highlighting the importance of olfactory behaviours, and underscoring the benefits of using ecological observations to explore unique aspects of human development.     

The relation between early mother–infant skin‐to‐skin contact and later maternal sensitivity in South African mothers of low birth weight infants

The relation between early mother–infant skin‐to‐skin contact (SSC) and mothers' subsequent sensitivity to their low birth weight infants was investigated in a study of 12 mother–infant dyads who participated in a South African randomized control study of early SSC. The dyads were visited in the home when infants were under 1 year. Amounts of SSC were taken from hospital records and home interviews. Videotapes of mother–infant interactions in the home were scored for maternal sensitivity on the Maternal Behavior Q‐Sort (D.R. Pederson, G. Moran, & S. Bento, 1999) and the Maternal Behavior subscale of the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (G. Sumner & A. Spietz, 1994). Amount of SSC in infants' first 24 hr correlated with amount of SSC through the first month. Amount of SSC in infants' first 24 hr independently accounted for maternal sensitivity on both measures, indicating that early mother–infant SSC predicted subsequent maternal sensitivity.     

Social Cognition and Social Responsiveness in 10-month-old Infants

In this study, we investigated relations between infants' understanding of intentional actions and measures of social responsiveness during a transitional period, 9- to 11-months. Infants (N = 52) were tested in visual habituation paradigms tapping their understanding of the relation between a person and the object of her attention. Measures of social responsiveness included orienting to the target of another's attention, point production, and supported joint attention in parent---child play. Infants' responses to the habituation events were related to their social responsiveness. Distinct factors for understanding actions and social responsiveness as relational were revealed. Infants who produced object-directed points were more likely to understand pointing as relational, and infants who engaged in high amounts of shared attention were more likely to understand gaze. Infants' tendency to orient in response to an adult's gaze shifts and points was unrelated to their understanding of gaze and pointing. These findings elucidate the ways in which social cognition and social responsiveness, although distinct, are related in development.     

Working mother-infant interactions across the second year of life

Play interactions between 36 college-educated, middle-income, working mothers and their infants, who had attended nursery school since 1 month of age, were videotaped when the infants were 12, 18, and 24 months of age. The videotapes were coded for mother and infant looking at each other, vocalizing, affectionate play, and constructive play. Changes noted in the infants' play behaviors across this period included an increase in infant vocalizations and constructive play and a decrease in affectionate play. These results, together with corresponding decreases in the mothers' constructive and affectionate play behavior, suggest growing autonomy of the infants' play and encouragement of autonomy by the mothers. Stability of behaviors across this period and stability of relations between infant and mother behaviors were only moderate. Comparison of these data with data from a study by Clarke-Stewart and Hevey (1981) suggested greater frequency of interactive behavior among working mothers and their infants than among nonworking mothers and their infants.     

Intentional action processing across the transition to crawling: Does the experience of self-locomotion impact infants’ understanding of intentional actions?

Motor developmental milestones in infancy, such as the transition to self-locomotion, have cascading implications for infants’ social and cognitive development. The current studies aimed to add to this literature by exploring whether and how crawling experience impacts a key social-cognitive milestone achieved in infancy: the development of intentional action understanding. Study 1 used a cross-sectional, age-held-constant design to examine whether locomotor (n = 36) and prelocomotor (n = 36) infants differ in their ability to process a failed intentional reaching action. Study 2 (n = 124) further probed this question by assessing how variability in locomotor infants’ experience maps onto variability in their failed intentional action understanding. Both studies also assessed infants’ tendency to engage in triadic interactions to shed light on whether self-locomotion impacts intentional action understanding directly or indirectly via changes in infants’ interactions with social partners. Altogether, results showed no evidence for the role of self-locomotion in the development of intentional action understanding. Locomotor and prelocomotor infants did not differ in their failed action understanding or levels of triadic engagement (Study 1) and individual differences in days of crawling experience, propensity to crawl during play, and maximum crawling speed failed to predict infants’ intentional action understanding or triadic engagement (Study 2). Explanations for these null findings and alternative influences on the development of intentional action understanding are considered.     

Interactive silences within spontaneous early infant–father ‘dialogues’

The present longitudinal and naturalistic study aims to investigate infants' and fathers' facial expressions of emotions during pauses preceding and following spontaneous early infant–father conversation. Studying emotional expressions in the course of pauses in early infant–father interaction is important because it may extend our knowledge on how, without being able to speak, infants begin communication and develop a capacity to share understanding of what they and Significant Others (such as fathers) mean by what they do. Eleven infant–father dyads from Crete, Greece, were observed during their natural interactions at home from the second to the sixth month of life. The microanalysis of fathers' and infants' facial expressions of emotions provided evidence that: (a) in the course of pauses preceding and following early infant–father conversation, either the infant is interested in the father while the latter expresses pleasure to the infant, or the infant expresses external interest while the father is interested in the infant, (b) infants seem to attune their descending and stable emotional intensity to the same direction as their father's emotional intensity, (c) infants and fathers remain consistent in their emotional expression in the beginning and at the end of the pause, and (d) infant and paternal pleasure and interest did not change significantly across the nine age points of this study. Exploratory analysis of the relationship of paternal and infant emotional expressions across infants' birth order provided evidence of certain differences and similarities. It is proposed that pausal interruptions preceding and following free early infant–father ‘dialogues’ constitute interactive silences, since in their course there is evidence of inter‐subjective emotional coordination and intra‐subjective regulation of emotion. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Uncertainty matters: impact of stimulus ambiguity on infant social referencing

Most infant social referencing studies have assumed that infants would be more likely to engage in social looking and be influenced by adults' message when a context is ambiguous. The present study empirically tested the effect of stimulus ambiguity on infants' referencing behaviours, with three different stimuli (positive, ambiguous, and negative), two different messages (happy and fearful), two different message providers (mother and stranger), and in two age groups (12 and 16 month olds). A typical social referencing paradigm was used and infants' social looking and regulation were measured. Infants looked at adults more frequently and faster during ambiguous situations than during unambiguous situations. They also tended to regulate their affect and behaviour based on adults' message only towards ambiguous toys. Older infants tended to look at adults faster, and showed stronger reactions towards ambiguous stimuli than younger infants, suggesting that infants' social development may moderate the effect of stimulus ambiguity on social referencing. Overall, results indicated that the ambiguity postulate is a legitimate assumption for infant social referencing. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting maternal reactivity/sensitivity: The role of infant emotionality,maternal depressiveness/anxiety,and social support

It was hypothesized that an accumulation of unfavorable conditions, i.e., high negative emotionality and low positive emotionality of the infant, maternal depression and anxiety, and lacking social and emotional support can attenuate mothers' reactivity/sensitivity. Maternal reactivity/sensitivity was observed during home visits and in the laboratory. Infant negative and positive emotionality was assessed by mother reports and behavioral observations. Maternal depressiveness/anxiety as well as social support were assessed via questionnaires. All mothers were primiparous and had healthy infants. Data collection was conducted at the infants' ages of four months (37 dyads) and eight months (33 dyads). The sample consisted of 19 male and 18 female infants (four‐months' measurement). Whereas the presence of a single risk factor was not related to maternal reactivity/sensitivity, the combination was. A decrease in maternal reactivity/sensitivity over the course of time was demonstrated for mothers who had to deal with high negative emotionality of the infant in combination with either high depressiveness/anxiety or low social support at the infants' age of four months. No significant main or interaction effects could be shown for infant positive emotionality. ©2004 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Expression of negative affect during face‐to‐face interaction: a double video study of young infants' sensitivity to social contingency

The purpose was to assess infants' sensitivity to social contingency, taking affective state into account, during face‐to‐face interaction with the mother in a double video set‐up. Infants' behaviour during three sequences of live face‐to‐face interaction were compared to two sequences where the interaction between the infant and the mother was set out of phase, by presenting either the infant or the mother with a replay of their partners' behaviour during earlier live interaction. We found a significant negative correlation between the infant's degree of negative affect and the average time of looking at the mother during the live sequences. A median split was calculated to separate the infants into a high‐negative‐affect group and a low‐negative‐affect group on the basis of their emotional responses during the experiment. The low‐negative‐affect infants looked significantly more at their mothers than other foci during the live but not the replay sequences, while the high‐negative‐affect infants did not show this difference. The results suggest that 2–4‐month old infants are able to distinguish between experimental distortion of contingent aspects in live and replay sequences, but that this effect of the replay condition may not be shown by moderate to highly distressed infants. Our findings underline the importance of taking infants' emotional state into account in experiments intended to assess their capacity for intersubjective communication. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

See and be seen: Infant–caregiver social looking during locomotor free play

Face‐to‐face interaction between infants and their caregivers is a mainstay of developmental research. However, common laboratory paradigms for studying dyadic interaction oversimplify the act of looking at the partner's face by seating infants and caregivers face to face in stationary positions. In less constrained conditions when both partners are freely mobile, infants and caregivers must move their heads and bodies to look at each other. We hypothesized that face looking and mutual gaze for each member of the dyad would decrease with increased motor costs of looking. To test this hypothesis, 12‐month‐old crawling and walking infants and their parents wore head‐mounted eye trackers to record eye movements of each member of the dyad during locomotor free play in a large toy‐filled playroom. Findings revealed that increased motor costs decreased face looking and mutual gaze: Each partner looked less at the other's face when their own posture or the other's posture required more motor effort to gain visual access to the other's face. Caregivers mirrored infants' posture by spending more time down on the ground when infants were prone, perhaps to facilitate face looking. Infants looked more at toys than at their caregiver's face, but caregivers looked at their infant's face and at toys in equal amounts. Furthermore, infants looked less at toys and faces compared to studies that used stationary tasks, suggesting that the attentional demands differ in an unconstrained locomotor task. Taken together, findings indicate that ever‐changing motor constraints affect real‐life social looking.