Effects of delayed reinforcement on infant vocalization rate.

Three previous studies have failed to demonstrate conditioning in infants using a 3-s delay of reinforcement. The effects of a delayed reinforcement schedule on vocalization rates therefore were explored in a single-subject repeated-reversal experimental design for 3 4- to 6-month-old normally developing infants. Each infant received delayed social reinforcement from his or her parent for vocalizing. The comparison condition was a schedule of differential reinforcement of behavior other than vocalizations to control for elicitation by social stimulation. An operant level of infant vocalizations was the initial condition, after which the differential reinforcement schedule was implemented in an across-subjects multiple baseline design. Infants' vocalization rates increased above levels measured during differential reinforcement following onset of the delayed reinforcement condition. Also, vocalization rates decreased during differential reinforcement compared to operant levels. The successful use of delayed reinforcement schedules with infants in this study, as opposed to others, is discussed in terms of procedural differences among them.     

Effects of multimodal presentation and stimulus familiarity on auditory and visual processing

Two experiments examined the effects of multimodal presentation and stimulus familiarity on auditory and visual processing. In Experiment 1, 10-month-olds were habituated to either an auditory stimulus, a visual stimulus, or an auditory-visual multimodal stimulus. Processing time was assessed during the habituation phase, and discrimination of auditory and visual stimuli was assessed during a subsequent testing phase. In Experiment 2, the familiarity of the auditory or visual stimulus was systematically manipulated by prefamiliarizing infants to either the auditory or visual stimulus prior to the experiment proper. With the exception of the prefamiliarized auditory condition in Experiment 2, infants in the multimodal conditions failed to increase looking when the visual component changed at test. This finding is noteworthy given that infants discriminated the same visual stimuli when presented unimodally, and there was no evidence that multimodal presentation attenuated auditory processing. Possible factors underlying these effects are discussed.     

Temperament and Parenting during the First Year of Life Predict Future Child Conduct Problems

Predictive associations between parenting and temperament during the first year of life and child conduct problems were assessed longitudinally in 1,863 offspring of a representative sample of women. Maternal ratings of infant fussiness, activity level, predictability, and positive affect each independently predicted maternal ratings of conduct problems during ages 4–13 years. Furthermore, a significant interaction indicated that infants who were both low in fussiness and high in predictability were at very low risk for future conduct problems. Fussiness was a stronger predictor of conduct problems in boys whereas fearfulness was a stronger predictor in girls. Conduct problems also were robustly predicted by low levels of early mother-report cognitive stimulation when infant temperament was controlled. Interviewer-rated maternal responsiveness was a robust predictor of conduct problems, but only among infants low in fearfulness. Spanking during infancy predicted slightly more severe conduct problems, but the prediction was moderated by infant fussiness and positive affect. Thus, individual differences in risk for mother-rated conduct problems across childhood are already partly evident in maternal ratings of temperament during the first year of life and are predicted by early parenting and parenting-by-temperament interactions.

Development of face recognition in infant chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

In this paper, we assessed the developmental changes in face recognition by three infant chimpanzees aged 1–18 weeks, using preferential-looking procedures that measured the infants’ eye- and head-tracking of moving stimuli. In Experiment 1, we prepared photographs of the mother of each infant and an “average” chimpanzee face using computer-graphics technology. Prior to 4 weeks of age, the infants showed few tracking responses and no differential responses. Between 4 and 8 weeks of age, they paid greater attention to their mother's face. From 8 weeks onward, they again showed no differences, but exhibited frequent tracking responses. Experiment 2 investigated the infants’ tracking responses between a familiar human's and an “average” human face. The infants did not show any evidence of recognizing the human faces. We discuss the development of face recognition in relation to the effects of other species’ faces and postnatal visual experience.     

Convergence of multiple sources of information on infant individuality: neonatal behavior,infant behavior,and temperament reports

To shed light on the notion of enduring individual infant characteristics, convergence of three presumably interrelated measures of infant individuality was examined. Data collected included standardized behavioral assessments of the newborn (NBAS), maternal reports of infant temperament (at 3 and 9 months), and naturalistic observations of infant behavior at 1, 3, and 9 months. Infant temperament reports were significantly stable from 3 to 9 months; observed infant fussiness was significantly stable from 1 to 3 and 3 to 9 months; observed altertness/social responsiveness was not stable over time. Analyses of convergence of neonatal and infant behavior revealed that 9-month infant alertness/social responsiveness was significantly correlated with neonatal habituation. Similar analyses of neonatal behavior and reported temperament revealed that 3-month reported dullness was significantly correlated with neonatal habituation and range of state. At 9 months, temperament ratings of infant fussiness and unpredictability were significantly correlated with autonomic stability; fussiness was also significantly correlated with regulation of state. Finally, no significant relationships were observed between reported temperament and observed infant behavior. These results fail to support a simple notion of enduring individuality in infants over their first year of life.     

Qualities of color vision in infancy.

Four-month-old infants attended differentially to eight equally bright, monochromatic spectral lights; that is, they discriminated colors. Moreover, infants showed the same pattern of differential attention regardless of experimental group (different groups of infants saw different subsets of all possible pairings of colors) or experimental method (paired comparisons or single stimulus). In general, the differential attention of infants to colors parallels the ratings of the pleasantness of those same colors by adults. Finally, infants looked significantly longer at color category centers than at color category boundaries. These results suggest that looking at this early stage of infancy can better be understood in terms of preference rather than in terms of stimulus categorization. The results also provide further evidence for a neural excitation model of early visual attention.     

Visual experience influences 12-month-old infants' perception of goal-directed actions of others

In the present study, we investigated whether infants' own visual experiences affected their perception of the visual status of others engaging in goal-directed actions. In Experiment 1, infants viewed video clips of successful and failed goal-directed actions performed by a blindfolded adult, with half the infants having previously experienced being blindfolded. The results showed that 12-month-old infants who were previously blindfolded preferred to look longer at the demonstrator's successful actions, whereas no such preference was observed in 8-month-old infants. In Experiment 2, infants watched the same 2 actions when the adult demonstrator was not blindfolded. The responses of 12-month-old infants were the opposite of those observed in Experiment 1: they showed a preference for the failed actions. These findings suggest that previous experience influenced the subsequent perception of others' goal-directed actions in the 12-month-old infants. We favor the interpretation that the preference for the successful actions in the 12-months-old infants provided with blindfolded experience demonstrates the influence of perceptual experience on considering the visual status of others engaging in goal-directed actions.     

The "euphoria" effect of music videos--a study of the reception of music with visual images

An attempt is made to study the impact of visual information on the perception of music by employing (rock) music videos as stimuli. Forty music videos were presented to judges, who either saw the video or only heard the respective pieces of music. They had to judge the emotions conveyed via the piece of music/video on scales and their overall impression on semantic differential scales. Results indicate that visual information as presented in music videos has considerable effects on impressions: When pieces of music are presented as music videos, more positive emotions are attributed, while presentation of the pieces of music alone resulted in more negative emotion attributions. Thus, music videos seem to "euphorize" the recipient. Furthermore, video presentation compared to presentation of music alone evoked more intense "complexity/interest" as well as "activity" judgments, while "evaluation" judgments were not influenced by the medium of presentation. In addition, a number of presentation factors (like the speed of the music or the number of cuts in the videos) do influence impressions. This leads to the conclusion that researchers should pay more attention to such microcharacteristics of stimuli. In general, the effects found to be due to the medium of presentation are independent of the effects on judgments due to content (i.e., presentation factors).     

Bimodal emotion congruency is critical to preverbal infants’ abstract rule learning

Extracting general rules from specific examples is important, as we must face the same challenge displayed in various formats. Previous studies have found that bimodal presentation of grammar‐like rules (e.g. ABA) enhanced 5‐month‐olds’ capacity to acquire a rule that infants failed to learn when the rule was presented with visual presentation of the shapes alone (circle‐triangle‐circle) or auditory presentation of the syllables (la‐ba‐la) alone. However, the mechanisms and constraints for this bimodal learning facilitation are still unknown. In this study, we used audio‐visual relation congruency between bimodal stimulation to disentangle possible facilitation sources. We exposed 8‐ to 10‐month‐old infants to an AAB sequence consisting of visual faces with affective expressions and/or auditory voices conveying emotions. Our results showed that infants were able to distinguish the learned AAB rule from other novel rules under bimodal stimulation when the affects in audio and visual stimuli were congruently paired (Experiments 1A and 2A). Infants failed to acquire the same rule when audio‐visual stimuli were incongruently matched (Experiment 2B) and when only the visual (Experiment 1B) or the audio (Experiment 1C) stimuli were presented. Our results highlight that bimodal facilitation in infant rule learning is not only dependent on better statistical probability and redundant sensory information, but also the relational congruency of audio‐visual information. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KYTyjH1k9RQ     

Hemispheric asymmetries in visual pattern processing in infancy

A right hemisphere advantage was observed in a previous study of 4- to 9-month old infants presented with a face discrimination task (de Schonen & Mathivet, 1990). The present study was designed to investigate pattern processing by the two hemispheres and the interhemispheric communication of this processing. Infants aged 4 to 9 months were tested with divided visual field presentations in one or two discrimination tasks. Under both task conditions, the infants had to discriminate between two patterns in which only two local components differed. Under one condition the components of the patterns were arranged so as to produce a face-like pattern. Under the other condition the same components were arranged into arbitrary patterns that were not "good form" patterns. No performance asymmetry was observed with the arbitrary patterns; whereas, a right hemisphere (RH) disadvantage was observed with the face-like patterns compared with both the RH performances on the arbitary patterns and the left hemisphere (LH) performances on the face-like patterns. These results show that the RH advantage for individual face recognition is not due to a general immaturity or inability of the LH in pattern processing at this period of development, nor to a more specific inability in a local mode of pattern processing. On the other hand, the RH does not completely lack local processing capacity, but is at a disadvantage when this local mode of processing has to be used with face-like (or good form) patterns. The interhemispheric communication of visual discrimination learning was tested by measuring learning transfer between the visual fields. Contrary to de Schonen and Bry's study (1987) on faceness recognition, no data in favor of interhemispheric communication were recorded in the present study.     

Tonic and phasic orientation in full-term and preterm infants

Thirty-three full-term infants and thirty-eight preterm infants (on average born at 30 weeks gestation) were tested for their latency to turn toward checkered stimulus patterns (phasic orienting or "attention-getting") and for the duration of their initial fixation (tonic orienting or "attention-holding"). Plotted against the logarithm of the subjects' postconceptional age, turning latency fell linearly between 36 and 120 weeks, while fixation time fell abruptly at 53 weeks. Preterm and full-term infants showed the same developmental trends, implying that both of these attentional behaviors are biologically timetabled and that neither is greatly affected by premature extrauterine experience. Unexpectedly, phasic orientation in the first 30 postnatal days was significantly faster in preterm than in full-term infants, and fixation times failed to differ. Despite the necessary functional integration of phasic and tonic orienting in mature visual scanning and attention, the present results suggest an independence in their early postnatal development and that neither is mature at birth.     

Coding processes in preselected and constrained movements: effect of vision

Three experiments were conducted in which visual information was manipulated either at the endpoint or during preselected, subject defined and constrained, experimenter-defined movements. In Experiments 1 and 2 the subject's task was to reproduce the movement in the absence of vision. Augmenting the terminal location of the criterion movement with vision had no differential effect on reproduction in Experiment 1, although preselected movement accuracy was significantly superior to constrained. Providing vision throughout the criterion movement in Experiment 2 not only failed to improve the accuracy of constrained movements but decreased reproduction performance in preselected movements. In Experiment 3 procedures were adopted to control the allocation of the subjects' attention during the criterion movement. The subjects reproduced by vision alone, movement alone, or with both visual and movement information available. When subjects were informed of the modality of reproduction prior to criterion presentation, they were able to ignore concurrent input from vision and attend to movement information. In the absence of precues visual information was spontaneously attended. The data were interpreted as contrary to closed-loop assumptions that additional information necessarily enhances the strength of a motor memory representation. Rather, they can be accommodated in terms of Posner, Nissen and Klein's (1976) theoretical account of visual dominance and serve to illustrate the importance of selective attention effects in movement coding.     

Development of modal and amodal completion in infants

Visual completion has been divided into two types: modal and amodal. While psychophysical studies with adults provided several common properties between modal and amodal completion, studies with infants showed differential trends in the development of these perceptual abilities. In the present study, we further examined the development of these two kinds of visual completion in infants aged 3 to 6 months. We created a display composed of a partially overlapping circle and square. The display induced either modal or amodal completion depending on the colour. Infants were familiarised with either the modal or the amodal display. After this familiarisation, the infants were tested on their discrimination between the complete figure and the broken figure. If the infants could perceptually complete the figures in the familiarisation display, they were expected to show a novelty preference for the broken figure. A total of thirty-two infants participated in the present study. Our results suggest that modal completion develops by 3-4 months of age, whereas amodal completion develops by 5-6 months of age.     

The "what" and "where" of object representations in infancy

Four-month-olds' memory for surface feature and location information was tested following brief occlusions. When the target objects were images of female faces or monochromatic asterisks infants showed increased looking times following a change in identity or color but not following a change in location or combinations of feature and location information. When the target objects were images of manipulable toys, the infants showed increased looking times following a change in location but not identity or the binding of location and identity information. This evidence is consistent with the idea that young infants are unable to maintain the information processed separately in both the dorsal and ventral visual streams during occlusions. Our results suggest that it is the target's affordance for action that determines whether the dorsal or ventral information is selectively maintained during occlusion.     

Intermodal matching of vision and audition in infancy: A proposal for a new taxonomy

The aim of this review paper is first to devise a common framework for the various procedures used in experimental investigations of intermodal auditory – visual matching by human infants, and second to propose a new taxonomy of intermodal tasks in order to gain a better understanding of the perceptual-cognitive processing underlying these tasks and their relationships to other cognitive achievements such as the development of language. Based on an examination of the tasks used in the developmental literature, we suggest analysing them in terms of (a) their mode of presentation (simultaneous or sequential) for accessing the information in the two modalities (auditory and visual) and (b) the type of relation (amodal or arbitrary) between these two stimulus sources. A review of the literature in the light of this classification shows that most experimental studies employ parallel intermodal presentation (PIP) using both amodal and arbitrary relations between stimuli. Very few investigations have used sequential intermodal presentation (SIP) with amodal relations, and none have used SIP procedures with arbitrary relations. It is claimed here that this last approach might be the most appropriate one for furthering our understanding of (a) the categorical and semantic processing involved in intermodal matching and (b) how the developing infant learns to process words.     

Semantic size does not matter: "bigger" words are not recognized faster

Sereno, O'Donnell, and Sereno (2009) reported that words are recognized faster in a lexical decision task when their referents are physically large than when they are small, suggesting that "semantic size" might be an important variable that should be considered in visual word recognition research and modelling. We sought to replicate their size effect, but failed to find a significant latency advantage in lexical decision for "big" words (cf. "small" words), even though we used the same word stimuli as Sereno et al. and had almost three times as many subjects. We also examined existing data from visual word recognition megastudies (e.g., English Lexicon Project) and found that semantic size is not a significant predictor of lexical decision performance after controlling for the standard lexical variables. In summary, the null results from our lab experiment--despite a much larger subject sample size than Sereno et al.--converged with our analysis of megastudy lexical decision performance, leading us to conclude that semantic size does not matter for word recognition. Discussion focuses on why semantic size (unlike some other semantic variables) is unlikely to play a role in lexical decision.     

The cognitive and neural correlates of "tactile consciousness": a multisensory perspective

People's awareness of tactile stimuli has been investigated in far less detail than their awareness of stimuli in other sensory modalities. In an attempt to fill this gap, we provide an overview of studies that are pertinent to the topic of tactile consciousness. We discuss the results of research that has investigated phenomena such as "change blindness", phantom limb sensations, and numerosity judgments in tactile perception, together with the results obtained from the study of patients affected by deficits that can adversely affect tactile perception such as neglect, extinction, and numbsense. The similarities as well as some of the important differences that have emerged when visual and tactile conscious information processing have been compared using similar experimental procedures are highlighted. We suggest that conscious information processing in the tactile modality cannot be separated completely from the more general processing of spatial information in the brain. Finally, the importance of considering tactile consciousness within the larger framework of multisensory information processing is also discussed.     

Do infants have a sense of fairness?

Two experiments examined infants' expectations about how an experimenter should distribute resources and rewards to other individuals. In Experiment 1, 19-month-olds expected an experimenter to divide two items equally, as opposed to unequally, between two individuals. The infants held no particular expectation when the individuals were replaced with inanimate objects, or when the experimenter simply removed covers in front of the individuals to reveal the items (instead of distributing them). In Experiment 2, 21-month-olds expected an experimenter to give a reward to each of two individuals when both had worked to complete an assigned chore, but not when one of the individuals had done all the work while the other played. The infants held this expectation only when the experimenter could determine through visual inspection who had worked and who had not. Together, these results provide converging evidence that infants in the 2nd year of life already possess context-sensitive expectations relevant to fairness.     

Five Points and a Lament About Range and Cotton's "Reports of Assent and Permission in Research With Children: Illustrations and Suggestions"

This comment responds to an article by Range and Cotton (1995) on reporting of parental permission and child assent procedures in published articles for 4 psychology journals. Issue is taken with the assumptions, methodology, interpretations, and implications of listing researchers in the Range and Cotton article. There is no evidence researchers failed in their ethical obligations or that children were put at risk. Reporting permission/assent in publications is not an ethical requirement. Listing researchers as "failing" to do something not part of an ethical code is lamentable. Too many unfortunate implications and problems can be derived from Range and Cotton's analysis and conclusions.     

Newborn visual attention to repeated exposure of redundant vs “novel” targets

This study was designed to test the proposition that habituation in the newborn human is specific to repetition of a single impinging stimulus. Using a group (3) by sex (2) by trials (8) repeated measures factorial design, 120 newborn infants were repeatedly presented with a single visual target (2 × 2 or 12 × 12 black and white checkerboard) or exposed to a series of different targets, and the infants’ visual fixation time was measured. Infants exposed to the multiple target series had a significantly greater mean visual fixation time than did infants repeatedly presented with a single target. However, all groups of infants displayed response decrement in fixation time with repeated target exposure. In addition, infants receiving the multiple target series displayed differential visual fixation to the stimuli, with, in general, targets of greater redundancy (Le., those having a higher degree of spatial repetition and duplication of elements) being most “preferred.” These results suggest that young human infants are receptive and responsive to stimulus change in the immediate visual environment.