Facial experience during the first year

Parents of 2-, 5-, 8-, and 11-month-olds used two scales we developed to provide information about their infants' facial experience with familiar and unfamiliar individuals during one week. Results showed large discrepancies in the race, sex, and age of faces that infants experience during their first year with the majority of their facial experience being with their primary caregiver, females, and other individuals of the same-race and age as their primary caregiver. The infant's age and an unfamiliar individual's sex were predictive of their time spent interacting with one another. Moreover, an unfamiliar individual's sex was predictive of the attention infants allocated during social interactions. Differences in frequency and length of interactions with certain types of faces, as well as in infant attention toward certain individuals, all likely contribute to the development of expertise in processing commonly experienced face types and deficiencies in processing less commonly experienced face types.     

Motor development of autistic monozygotic twins: a case study.

A pair of autistic monozygotic twins were assessed on relevant portions of the Geddes Psychomotor Inventory. Over-all motor development of the 3-yr., 6-mo. old twins was similar and considered a partial consequence of the same genotype and comparable environmental experiences from birth. The twins exhibited poor or unsuccessful performance on tasks requiring abilities in language, communication, and appropriate relationships to objects; superior performance on specific fine manual motor skills, walking balance board, and climbing; at-age performance on tasks which were considered measures of patterned gross movement, balance, postural maintenance, and spatial orientation; and few typical autistic motor characteristics.     

Genetic and environmental relationships between head circumference growth in the first year of life and sociocognitive development in the second year: a longitudinal twin study

Although growth in head circumference (HC) during infancy is known to predict later childhood outcomes, the mechanisms underlying this association with later sociocognitive abilities remain undetermined. Thus, using a sample of 241 pairs of normally developing Japanese twins, this study investigated the underpinnings of the association between HC growth (difference between HC at birth and at 10 months) and sociocognitive abilities at 19 months as measured by 10 items from the M-CHAT. Phenotypic correlations between HC at birth and sociocognitive abilities and between HC growth and sociocognitive abilities were marginal and not significant. However, multivariate genetic analyses using Cholesky decomposition revealed that genetic influences on HC growth and those on sociocognitive abilities were negatively associated. On the other hand, shared and nonshared environmental influences on HC growth were positively associated with influences on sociocognitive abilities. Genetic and environmental influences on HC at birth were not significantly associated with influences on sociocognitive abilities. These results help to clarify the role of brain growth during infancy in the subsequent development of sociocognitive abilities and highlight the importance of examining the different roles of genetic and environmental influences in studies of these areas.     

Discrimination learning during the first year: stimulus and positional cues

In four studies, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old human infants were tested in a discrimination learning task in which visual fixation to a particular stimulus or lateral position was reinforced with an auditory stimulus. In Experiment 1, all age groups exhibited acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement of fixation to the reinforced target or position. Experiment 2 revealed that 3-month-olds retained the positional discrimination but not the stimulus discrimination after a 5-min delay between acquisition and extinction; older infants retained both types of discriminations. In Experiments 3 and 4 we investigated a possible developmental shift in the dominance of positional versus stimulus cues by training infants on displays in which stimulus and position were confounded and then by dissociating the cues on test trials. Results from both experiments indicated positional cue dominance for young infants and stimulus cue dominance for older infants. The findings are discussed in terms of differences in the attentional demands elicited by proprioceptive versus exteroceptive cues.     

Maternal employment and development of the father-infant relationship in the first year.

This study investigated links between maternal employment and fathers' parenting quality when their infants were 4 and 12 months old. Sixty-three fathers were videotaped interacting with their infants and completed questionnaires regarding their involvement in caregiving, parenting stress, and marital quality, and mothers reported on children's temperament. Fathers whose wives either did not work outside the home or worked part time were more sensitive and responsive to their children when they were more involved in caregiving; men whose wives worked full time exhibited more negative affect and behavior when they participated more in child care. Men whose wives were not employed also were more positive in their interactions when they were happier with their marriage, whereas men whose wives worked either part time or full time exhibited a negative relation between parenting behavior and marital quality. Maternal work circumstances were not related to fathers' parenting stress; rather, marital quality and child temperament predicted parenting stress at 4 and 12 months for all fathers.     

The development of referential offering in the first year

The ontogeny of referential offers was examined in a longitudinal, within dyad case study of two mother–infant pairs. A combination of microanalytic and qualitative methodologies was employed in describing the functions and morphology of this gesture, as well as its temporal and sequential organization with a number of infant and maternal behaviours. Offers were found to emerge from repetitive, exploratory play routines that provide infants with alternative visual perspectives on objects, and were facilitated by mothers' support of infants' immature attentional, motoric and arousal regulation capacities. Offers were observed to co. occur with maternal behaviours that direct and maintain infants' attention to objects. Our observations suggest that offers are transformed through guided interactions into conventional communicative gestures. Offering arises as mothers become part of the infants' exploratory play routines, gradually changing the function of the behaviour of the infants. These observations are consistent with dynamic systems models of development.     

Maternal adjustment during pregnancy and the infant''s first year

The study aimed at establishing the predictive validity of clinical observations and interview data collected during late pregnancy. 40 pregnant women from a Swedish non-risk population were interviewed about psychological and somatic well-being, significant relationships and delivery expectations. Pregnancy adjustment was also assessed by the maternal health clinic midwife. After the birth of the child, the mothers were interviewed in the delivery hospital and during home visits when the infants were 2 and 6 weeks, and 4, 8 and 12 months old. The results showed that pregnancy adjustment, as assessed by the mothers themselves, acted as a significant predictor of the early maternal adjustment and the adjustment towards the end of the infant's first year. The midwives' assessments significantly predicted maternal adjustment towards the end of the first year. Pregnancy data did not correlate with maternal delivery experiences.     

Infants’ scanning of dynamic faces during the first year

This research investigated infants’ scanning of a talking, socially engaging face. Three- to four-month-olds looked equally at the mouth and eyes whereas 9-month-olds attended more to the eyes than mouth. These findings shed light on information infants’ seek from dynamic face stimuli.     

The early development of empathy: Self-regulation and individual differences in the first year

A longitudinal study of 45 mothers and their first-born infants was conducted to identify developmentally meaningful, individual differences in children's primitive empathic responding at 12 months of age, and to determine whether differences in self-regulatory skills assessed at 4 months might underlie any differences in empathic responding observed. Personal distress responses analogous to those observed in older children and adults were identified in one-third of the sample at 12 months of age. These distress responses were associated with indices of poorer self-regulatory skills in social contexts at 4 months of age. The results are interpreted within the broader framework of the development of self-regulatory strategies in the early childhood years.This research was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council, the National Research Fellowship Scheme, and the Macquarie University Research Grant Scheme. We thank Judy Chan, Alison Malbourne, Sylvana Sturevska, and Lorraine Smith for their assistance in data collection and analysis.     

Development of infants’ attention to faces during the first year

In simple tests of preference, infants as young as newborns prefer faces and face-like stimuli over distractors. Little is known, however, about the development of attention to faces in complex scenes. We recorded eye-movements of 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old infants and adults during free-viewing of clips from A Charlie Brown Christmas (an animated film). The tendency to look at faces increased with age. Using novel computational tools, we found that 3-month-olds were less consistent (across individuals) in where they looked than were older infants. Moreover, younger infants’ fixations were best predicted by low-level image salience, rather than the locations of faces. Between 3 and 9 months of age, infants gradually focused their attention on faces. We discuss several possible interpretations of this shift in terms of social development, cross-modal integration, and attentional/executive control.     

Dyadic and triadic skills in preterm and full term infants: a longitudinal study in the first year

This longitudinal study examined dyadic and triadic skills in 26 preterm and 31 full term infants at 3, 6 and 9 months of age. In dyadic interaction, infants engaged with a stranger in face-to-face play interrupted by a still-face episode. In triadic interaction, infants interacted with the adult stranger as she coordinated gaze between the infant and object. Both groups were sensitive for non-contingency in both dyadic and triadic interactions. There were significant group and developmental differences for dyadic and triadic competencies. Compared to full term infants, preterms made less positive elicits during the still-face at 6 months and followed gaze less at 9 months of age. Six-month dyadic skills and 9-month triadic competencies were positively related in preterm and full term infants.     

Changes in students' motivation to learn during the first year of college

This study looks at changes in first-year college students' motivational orientation and whether these changes relate systematically to campus and classroom experiences. 130 college students (M age = 18 yr., 75% women) completed measures of learning orientation, grade orientation, and work avoidance from the LOGO II at the beginning and end of their first year. The year-end assessment also included questions regarding characteristics of students' classes and the amount of time they spent in campus activities. Students became more grade-oriented and work-avoidant and less learning-oriented over time. Changes in learning orientation and work avoidance were associated with classroom and campus experiences. Results are discussed in terms of the need for additional research on changes in college students' motivation and factors predicting this change.     

Dimensions of naturally occurring mother-infant separations during the first year of life

The goals of this paper are (1) to introduce a methodology developed to study mother-infant separations that occur in the context of normal family life, including but going beyond separations associated with maternal employment; (2) to present illustrative data that describe the range of separations experienced by one sample of infants; and (3) to demonstrate how a focus on specific underlying dimensions results in a more precise characterization of the separation experience. It is necessary to identify the specific dimensions on which mother-infant separations vary in order to clarify which aspects of separation are relevant to child outcome. Detailed histories of mother-infant separations and concomitant substitute care during the first year of life were obtained by interview from 144 middle-class mothers of first-born infants. Far from being an unusual event, separation from mother was a normal experience during infancy for this sample. Six types of separation were identified, the majority of which have not been studied previously. Analyses indicated that naturally occurring mother-infant separations can be differentiated statistically and compared in terms of amount of separation, stability of care, characteristics of caregivers, and characteristics of the substitute care setting.