Infants' use of material properties to guide their actions with differently weighted objects

Two studies with 9‐, 11‐ and 13‐month‐old infants were conducted to investigate infants' ability to use an object's material properties to guide their object‐directed actions. In study 1, 9‐ and 11‐month‐old infants played in an exploration phase with two objects made of different materials, one very heavy and the other one light and playable. Subsequently, when given the choice between both objects in a preferential reaching task, only the 11‐month‐olds' used the object's material information to remember and choose the lighter object. In study 2, 11‐ and 13‐month‐old infants underwent the same exploration phase. In the test phase, novel objects made of the same materials were offered. The 13‐ but not the 11‐month‐olds chose the objects made from the same material as the lighter object in the exploration phase. Additionally, infants' performances in the reaching task were positively correlated with their exploratory behaviour during the exploration phase. Altogether, the studies show a developmental progression in the use of an object's material information to guide infants' action. The results are discussed in respect to infants' perception of object properties and their implications for the development of physical knowledge. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Social Context of Infant Intention Understanding

Traditional looking-time paradigms are often used to assess infants' attention to sociocognitive phenomena, but the link between these laboratory scenarios and real-world interactions is unclear. The current study investigated hypothesized relations between traditional social-cognitive looking-time paradigms and their real-world counterparts in caregiver–infant social interaction. Seventy-five 10- to 12-month-old infants participated in a structured play session with their caregiver, as well as a traditional looking-time paradigm targeting intentional action. Infants' ability to quickly parse intentional displays correlated with several key qualities of their everyday interactions. In particular, caregiver and infant interaction quality, maternal supportiveness, caregiver and infant joint engagement skill, and social attentiveness in infants correlated with faster habituation to looking-time displays. These results support a linkage between social-cognitive looking-time laboratory paradigms and more naturalistic partner interaction, at this key age. The data provide external validation for the large body of social-cognitive findings emerging from laboratory looking-time paradigms and contribute to a growing literature tracking the developmental trajectory of infants' understanding of people during the first 2 years.     

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.     

Maternal styles in infant psychotherapy: Treatment and research implications

Infant psychotherapy, in which the mother is requested to follow the baby's activities without initiating or directing, is described. Mothers demonstrate different styles of involvement with their infants: a protective mode, a prohibitive mode, a competitive mode, and other ways of interfering with their infants' tendency to explore the environment. Attempts to analyze such factors as position, distance and movement are discussed. Research for recording and analyzing the movement of infant and mother dyads is proposed.     

Pacifiers Disrupt Adults’ Responses to Infants’ Emotions

Research shows that pacifiers disrupt infants' mimicry of facial expressions. This experiment examines whether pacifiers interfere with caretakers' ability to mimic infants' emotions. Adults saw photographs of infants with or without a pacifier. When infants had pacifiers, perceivers showed reduced EMG activity to infants' smiles. Smiles of infants using a pacifier were also rated as less happy than smiles depicted without a pacifier. The same pattern was observed for expressions of distress: adults rated infants presented with pacifiers as less sad than infants without pacifiers. We discuss deleterious effects of pacifier use for the perceiver's resonance with a child's emotions.     

Effects of maternal attention-directing strategies on preterms' response to toys

The relationship between maternal attention-directing strategies in 12-month play interactions and infant response level was investigated for 40 preterm (subdivided into two risk groups) and 20 full-term infants. Mothers use of particular strategies (i.e., maintenance of infants' interests and use of verbal and nonverbal techniques that focus attention, were hypothesized to affect the various infant risk groups in different ways. Results indicated that mothers of preterms used different attention-directing strategies than mothers of full-terms. Mothers of preterms could be further differentiated by the severity of their infants' medical complications. These differences did not, however, adversely affect infant response level. Mothers across the three infant groups used strategies that facilitated infants' manipulation of toys. Discrepancies between the mothers of preterms and full-terms in their use of particular verbal and nonverbal techniques (e.g., questions, attention-directing gestures) can be explained in part by the relationship between the use of these techniques and the infants' developmental level.     

On individual differences in strange situation behavior: Categorical and continuous measurement systems in a cross-cultural data set

Recent discussions of attachment research methodology have questioned the appropriateness of measuring individual differences in Strange Situation behavior in terms of the avoidant, secure, and resistant categories. Continuous, factor-analytically derived latent variables have been proposed as an alternative. The validity of the traditional categorical measurement system was investigated through a cluster analysis of 216 11- to 13-month-old American, Swedish, and Israeli infants' social interactive behaviors in the reunion episodes of the Strange Situation. These analyses indicated that differences within the secure group based on variation in proximity-seeking and contact-maintaining behavior are more prominent than differences between the secure infants and the insecure infants. Moreover, similarity among infants was based on the infants' cultures as well as their membership in the avoidant, secure, and resistant groups. The alternative of continuous, latent-variable measurements was studied using confirmatory factor analyses on the same data. These analyses demonstrated that there are at least two dimensions in the infants' reunion behavior, but the structure of these dimensions varied across cultures. The results of both analyses suggest that there are substantial cultural differences in the patterning of individual differences in Strange Situation behavior.     

Video Versus Reality: Infants' Attention and Affective Responses to Video and Live Presentations

Television viewing by infants has become very common, yet relatively little is known about infants' reactions to video compared to live events. We conducted two experiments in order to compare 9- or 10-month-old infants' behavioral reactions to live events and video presentations of those events. In the first experiment, infants' were shown video and live presentations shown consecutively; their affective reactions were consistent, indicating that video conveys meaning and emotional impact even in infancy. However, infants generally looked longer at, reached more to, showed more interest in, and exhibited more fear to the real stimuli. In a second experiment, infants were shown identical live and video events simultaneously; they looked much longer at the live presentations, further confirming that they distinguished live events from video and preferred to watch real events. Implications for infants' television viewing and the use of video images in infancy research are discussed.     

Facial expressions and vagal tone of infants of depressed and non-depressed mothers

Mothers classified as ‘depressed’, ‘non-depressed’ or ‘low scoring’ on the Beck Depression Inventory and their 3-month-old infants were videotaped during 3-minute face-to-face play interactions. Infants' facial expressions were coded using the AFFEX facial expression coding system and their EKG was recorded during the interactions to assess the relationship between cardiac measures and facial expressivity. Infants of both ‘depressed’ and ‘low scoring’ mothers showed significantly more sad and anger expressions and fewer interest expressions than infants of nondepressed mothers. Cardiac vagal tone, (quantified from the amplitude of respiratory sinus arrhythmia) was correlated with infants' joy and interest expressions and with self-comfort behaviours in the non-depressed and low scoring groups, but not in the depressed group. The results suggest that matermal depression affects infants' affective state and appearance as well as their biobehavioural emotional regulation systems.     

Child‐directed teaching and social learning at 18 months of age: evidence from Yucatec Mayan and US infants

In several previous studies, 18‐month‐old infants who were directly addressed demonstrated more robust imitative behaviors than infants who simply observed another's actions, leading theorists to suggest that child‐directed interactions carried unique informational value. However, these data came exclusively from cultural communities where direct teaching is commonplace, raising the possibility that the findings reflect regularities in infants' social experiences rather than responses to innate or a priori learning mechanisms. The current studies consider infants' imitative learning from child‐directed teaching and observed interaction in two cultural communities, a Yucatec Mayan village where infants have been described as experiencing relatively limited direct instruction (Study 1) and a US city where infants are regularly directly engaged (Study 2). Eighteen‐month‐old infants from each community participated in a within‐subjects study design where they were directly taught to use novel objects on one day and observed actors using different objects on another day. Mayan infants showed relative increases in imitative behaviors on their second visit to the lab as compared to their first visit, but there was no effect of condition. US infants showed no difference in imitative behavior in the child‐directed vs. observed conditions; however, infants who were directly addressed on their first visit showed significantly higher overall imitation rates than infants who observed on their first visit. Together, these findings call into question the idea that child‐directed teaching holds automatic or universal informational value.     

Infants of depressed mothers show less “depressed” behavior with their nursery teachers

This study investigated whether infants' “depressed” behavior (i.e., less positive affect and lower activity levels) noted during their interactions with their depressed mothers generalized to their interactions with their nondepressed nursery teachers. Field et al. (1988) reported that infants of depressed mothers also show “depressed behavior” when interacting with nondepressed female adults, suggesting that the infants develop a generalized “depressed mood style” of interaction. However, in that study the adults were also strangers to the infants, confounding the results. In the present study, eighteen 3-month-old infants interacted with their depressed mothers and also with their nondepressed familiar teachers in 3-minute episodes. The infants' behavior ratings improved when they interacted with their familiar teachers compared to their interactions with their mothers. The infants' low activity levels and negative affect were specific to their interactions with their depressed mothers. Thus, the data suggest that the infants respond differentially to depressed and nondepressed adults who are familiar.     

Altering withdrawn and intrusive interaction behaviors of depressed mothers

Interaction coaching was given to 44 depressed mothers who had either a withdrawn or intrusive interaction style with their infants. The intrusive and withdrawn mothers were given instructions either to imitate their infants' behavior or to keep their infants' attention. The results suggested that the specific type of interaction coaching for the specific type of depressed mother (imitation for the intrusive mothers and attention-getting for the withdrawn mothers) significantly improved their interaction behaviors with their 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.     

Social and cognitive aspects of the development of aggression in infancy

This article addresses theoretical and methodological problems in the study of aggression in infants and toddlers. It is argued that the occurrence of aggressive behavior in very young children must be considered against the background of their developing social competence. As a result, evidence for the infants' capacities to act with specific intentions and the infants' knowledge of the other as a distinctive individual having his own plans and goals are reviewed. Studies of early social interactions in humans are then examined with special emphasis on cognitive development and social cognition. Finally, the problem of dominance in very young children's groups is considered.     

Twelve-Month-Old Infants Generalize Novel Signed Labels,but Not Preferences Across Individuals

By the end of the 1st year, infants expect spoken labels to be extended across individuals and thus seem to understand words as shared conventional forms. However, it is unknown whether infants' willingness to extend labels across individuals is constrained to familiar forms, such as spoken words, or whether infants can identify a broader range of symbols as potential conventions. The present study tested whether 12-month-old infants will extend a novel sign label to a new person. Results indicate that 12-month-olds expect signed object–label relations to extend across agents but restrict object preferences to individuals. The results suggest that infants' expectations about conventional behaviors and linguistic forms are likely broad at 12 months. The implications of these findings for infants' early conceptions of conventional behaviors as well as our understanding of the initial state of the learner are considered.     

The emotional quality of childcare centers in Israel: The Haifa study of early childcare

Data from an Israeli project shows higher proportion of insecurely attached infants in center care as compared with noncenter care (Sagi, Koren‐Karie, Gini, Ziv, & Joels, 2002). The present study was designed to assess structural and emotional aspects characterizing infants' experiences in center care, aiming to explain, in part, the high incidence of attachment insecurity among center‐care infants. In the present study, we focus on 151 center‐care infants who were observed in the Ainsworth Strange Situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) with their mothers. Sixty‐one percent of them were coded as securely attached to their mothers while 39% were coded as insecurely attached. In addition, 56 directors and 120 caregivers in 56 centers were videotaped throughout a full‐day observation. The Assessment Profile of Early Childhood Program (Abbott‐Shim & Sibley, 1987) was also employed. Results indicated that the centers in Israel are of low standards: Large group size, high caregiver–infants ratio, inadequate professional training, and minimal attention to individual emotional needs. No associations were found between infants' attachment and various aspects of the settings. The low quality of the Israeli settings may explain the higher rate of attachment insecurity in center‐care infants. ©2005 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.     

Effectiveness of Primiparae and Multiparae at Soothing Their Newborn Infants

To examine the effectiveness of new parents at soothing their infants, the authors filmed primiparae (20 mothers, 20 fathers) and, for comparison, multiparae (25 mothers, 25 fathers) during an interaction with their crying 2- to 3-day-old infants. Data were derived from loudness ratings of the infants' distress signals and by measuring the time it took parents to quiet their infants. In addition, specific parental behaviors were coded by microanalysis. From these data, measures of soothing effectiveness and behavioral profiles were derived. Data analyses showed that most primiparae were effective at soothing their infants' cries and that there were no parity effects on measures of soothing effectiveness. However, mothers, regardless of parity, were more effective at quieting their infants than were fathers, and there were significant differences in mothers' and fathers' caregiving behaviors. These data suggest that primiparae are effective at quickly soothing their newborns and that their skill, as measured, does not depend on parenting experience. Moreover, the data point to significant differences in mothers' and fathers' competence at quieting their newborns whether or not they are experienced at parenting.     

Effects of fatigue on infant emotional reactivity and regulation

The purpose of the present study was to examine 14‐ to 16‐month‐old infants' emotional reactivity and use of behavioral strategies for regulating distress during states of both alert wakefulness and fatigue. Twenty infants were tested at a time when their mothers expected them to be awake and alert, and twenty infants were tested at the time when their morning or afternoon nap typically began. Infants were observed responding to five mildly stressful episodes in their homes. Fatigued infants were more distressed than alert infants by separation from their mother and by being prevented from handling an attractive toy. Fatigued infants also engaged in fewer mature regulatory behaviors and more immature regulatory behaviors during the episodes. The infants' experiences with nonparental child care also were associated with their emotional reactivity. The relevance of these findings to parents and researchers and the benefits to infants of learning to handle stress when fatigued are discussed. ©1999 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

The importance of maternal state of mind regarding attachment and infant age at placement to foster mothers' representations of their foster infants

Previous research has found that foster mother state of mind with respect to attachment and infant age at placement into foster care influence the developing foster mother–foster child relationship (Dozier, Albus, Stovall, & Bates, 2000; Stovall & Dozier, 2000). This study extends prior research by assessing factors related to foster mothers' representations of their foster infants. Participants were 48 foster mother–foster infant dyads in two mid‐Atlantic cities. We expected that foster mothers' states of mind and infant age at placement would be associated with foster mothers' acceptance of infants, commitment to infants, and belief in their influence on infants' development. Consistent with hypotheses, foster mothers' states of mind interacted with infant age at placement in predicting foster mothers' acceptance of their babies, and the extent to which foster mothers believed they could influence their infants' development. Specifically, autonomous foster mothers of babies placed before 12 months of age were more accepting and more likely to believe they could influence their infants' development compared to autonomous foster mothers of babies placed after 12 months of age, a pattern not seen for nonautonomous foster mothers. These results converge with other findings suggesting that timing of placement in foster care, and foster mothers' states of mind, are important to the developing foster mother–child relationship. ©2002 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.