12- and 18-month-old infants follow gaze to spaces behind barriers

Infants follow the gaze direction of others from the middle of the first year of life. In attempting to determine how infants understand the looking behavior of adults, a number of recent studies have blocked the adult's line of sight in some way (e.g. with a blindfold or with a barrier). In contrast, in the current studies an adult looked behind a barrier which blocked the child's line of sight. Using two different control conditions and several different barrier types, 12- and 18-month-old infants locomoted a short distance in order to gain the proper viewing angle to follow an experimenter's gaze to locations behind barriers. These results demonstrate that, contra Butterworth, even 12-month-old infants can follow gaze to locations outside of their current field of view. They also add to growing evidence that 12-month-olds have some understanding of the looking behaviors of others as an act of seeing.     

Changing priority maps in 12- to 18-month-olds: An emerging role for object properties

Everyday action in the world requires the coordination of “where,” “when,” and “how” with “what.” In late infancy, there appear to be changes in how these different streams of information are integrated into the sequential organization of action. An experiment with 12-, 15-, and 18-month-olds was conducted in order to determine the influence of object properties and locations on the sequential selection of targets for reaching. The results reveal a developmental trend from reach decisions’ being influenced only by the spatial layout of locations to the overall pattern of reaching’s being influenced by the global configuration of object properties to object properties’ influencing the sequential decision of what to reach to next. This trend is a new finding regarding the development of goal-directed action in late infancy.     

Conversation attentiveness and following in 12- and 18-week-old infants

In recent years, the investigation of social transactional factors in early language and prelinguistic development have played an important role in reshaping concepts of communication and its ontogenesis. The present study reports findings concerning young infants' dispositions to follow the conversational interchanges of spontaneous adult dialogues. Two of 13 12-week-old infants (15%) and 8 of 12 18-week-old infants (67%) showed organized shifts in visual attentiveness that were co-incident with shifts in speaking that occurred between adult speakers. Conversation monitoring of this sort went on in some instances for as long as 2 to 3 min. The data are discussed from the standpoints of cognition-attention, affect, and subjectivity.     

Learning Proper Names and Count Nouns: Evidence From 16- and 20-Month-Olds

In 4 experiments, we examined 16- and 20-month-old infants' understanding of proper names and count nouns. In each experiment, infants were taught a novel word modeled linguistically as either a proper name (e.g., "DAXY") or a count noun (e.g., "a DAXY") for a stuffed animal shown on a puppet stage. This animal was moved to a new location on the stage, and a second identical-looking animal was placed in the original animal's starting location. We then assessed infants' looking behavior in response to the word they had heard. At 20 months (Experiments 1 and 3), but not at 16 months (Experiments 2 and 4), infants were significantly more likely to look first at the original object in response to hearing the word in the proper name condition than in the count noun condition or in a baseline condition in which they heard no word. The results suggest that distinct and appropriate form–meaning links involving proper names and count nouns emerge in children's language between 16 and 20 months.     

Understanding attention: 12- and 18-month-olds know what is new for other persons

Infants at 12 and 18 months of age played with 2 adults and 2 new toys. For a 3rd toy, however, 1 of the adults left the room while the child and the other adult played with it. This adult then returned, looked at all 3 toys aligned on a tray, showed great excitement ("Wow! Cool!"), and then asked, "Can you give it to me?' To retrieve the toy the adult wanted, infants had to (a) know that people attend to and get excited about new things and (b) identify what was new for the adult even though it was not new for them. Infants at both ages did this successfully, lending support to the hypothesis that 1-year-old infants possess a genuine understanding of other persons as intentional and attentional agents.     

Disorientation inhibits landmark use in 12-18-month-old infants

Recent research has indicated that, particularly under conditions of inertial disorientation, mammals may be sensitive to landmark configuration geometry at the expense of individual featural information when locating hidden goals. The current study sought to establish whether landmark use could be demonstrated in 12-18-month-old infants with and without a disorientation procedure, and with geometrically ambiguous landmark configurations. A peekaboo paradigm was employed in which infants learned to anticipate a peekaboo event after a cue from two locations within a circular arena, followed by a test trial from a novel position in which no peekaboo occurred after the cue. In all conditions, an isosceles triangle arrangement of landmarks was used, with peekaboo occurring between the landmarks of one of the two equal "sides", thus being geometrically ambiguous. In two conditions, the landmarks were distinctive, and in two further conditions, they were identical. In one of the distinctive conditions and one of the identical landmark conditions, infants underwent a disorientation procedure in between training and test trials. Only oriented infants with distinctive landmarks were successful in test trials, thus suggesting that infants are able to use the individual features of landmarks to locate a goal, but can only do so if oriented.     

Do 5- and 6-Year-Old Children Attempt to Appear Fair to Others?

Abstract

Children come to prefer fair distributions at the age of 5 to 6?years. But do they actually want to be fair, or do they want to appear fair to others? In three conditions, an experimenter initially distributed chocolates to 5-/6-year-old participants and partners they were paired with. Participants always possessed, through some means, two chocolates when the experimenter returned after a brief absence, and they had to decide whether to take an extra one for themselves. To measure the extent to which children were concerned with actually being fair versus appearing fair, two conditions were created in which children were led to believe that the experimenter did not know that the distributions had become equal. In the windfall condition, a confederate gave one additional chocolate to the participant, and in the partner condition, the partner transferred one chocolate to the participant. Compared to the control condition, participants who passed the false belief task in both of these conditions tried to appear fair in their distribution. Thus 5-/6-year-old children seem to prefer appearing fair to others regardless of the situation.     

Developmental Differences in the Ability to Provide Temporal Information About Repeated Events

Children (n = 372) aged 4–8 years participated in one or four occurrences of a similar event and were interviewed 1 week later. Compared with 85% of children who participated once, less than 25% with repeated experience gave the exact number of times they participated, although all knew they participated more than once. Children with repeated experience were asked additional temporal questions, and there were clear developmental differences. Older children were more able than younger children to judge relative order and temporal position of the four occurrences. They also demonstrated improved temporal memory for the first and last relative to the middle occurrences, while younger children did so only for the first. This is the first systematic demonstration of children's memory for temporal information after a repeated event. We discuss implications for theories of temporal memory development and the practical implications of asking children to provide temporal information. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From Self‐Respect to Respect for Others

The leading accounts of respect for others usually assume that persons have a rational nature, which is a marvelous thing, so they should be respected like other objects of ‘awesome’ value. Kant's views about the ‘value’ of humanity, which have inspired contemporary discussions of respect, have been interpreted in this way. I propose an alternative interpretation in which Kant proceeds from our own rational self‐regard, through our willingness to reciprocate with others, to duties of respect for others. This strategy, which shares some similarities with moral contractualism, offers a way to justify other‐regarding moral requirements from self‐regarding rational dispositions.     

Stability of deferred imitation in 12- to 18-month-old infants: A closer look into developmental dynamics

Deferred imitation is used to assess declarative memory in infants. Although a lot of studies show that infants from 6 months onwards are able to re-enact actions following a delay, only a few studies describe early declarative memory longitudinally. From a variable-centred approach, these studies found a modest relationship between measurement occasions that increases with age. However, no studies have analysed the differential aspect of memory development from a person-centred perspective. The present study analyses memory stabilities both from a variable-centred and person-centred approach within a sample of N = 87 infants of a 2-wave longitudinal design (12- and 18-month-olds). From a variable-centred perspective, the results indicate that, first, there was a significant increase in infants' memory performance and, second, that although reliable, the stability of infants' memory performance was relatively low. From a person-centred perspective two vs. three groups of infants were differentiated showing different developmental growth trajectories and stability correlations but no differences in language, cognitive and motor development. The implications of those results in terms of further test development are discussed. Furthermore, important methodological expansions for the analysis of infants' memory data are presented and discussed.     

Mattering to Others: Implications for the Counseling Relationship

Although first conceived in the 1980s, mattering to others has only recently earned well‐deserved attention in social science research and literature. Subsequently, it seems that mattering may serve as a powerful dynamic in strengthening counseling relationships. This article reviews the empirical validation study of mattering recently conducted by G. C. Elliott, S. Kao, and A. M. Grant (2004), which was published in the journal Self and Identity. Implications for counselors, the counseling relationship, and counseling research are considered.     

Effects of gesture and target on 12- and 18-month-olds' joint visual attention to objects in front of or behind them

Factors affecting joint visual attention in 12- and 18-month-olds were investigated. In Experiment 1 infants responded to 1 of 3 parental gestures: looking, looking and pointing, or looking, pointing, and verbalizing. Target objects were either identical to or distinctive from distractor objects. Targets were in front of or behind the infant to test G. E. Butterworth's (1991b) hypothesis that 12-month-olds do not follow gaze to objects behind them. Pointing elicited more episodes of joint visual attention than looking alone. Distinctive targets elicited more episodes of joint visual attention than identical targets. Although infants most reliably followed gestures to targets in front of them, even 12-month-olds followed gestures to targets behind them. In Experiment 2 parents were rotated so that the magnitude of their head turns to fixate front and back targets was equivalent. Infants looked more at front than at back targets, but there was also an effect of magnitude of head turn. Infants' relative neglect of back targets is partly due to the "size" of adult's gesture.     

Internet addiction: characteristics of a questionnaire and prevalence in Norwegian youth (12-18 years)

The use of the Internet has increased considerably during the last few years, and there are also some clinical observations that some people 'get hooked', and develop an Internet addiction. An epidemiological study was performed in a representative sample of the Norwegian youth population (N= 3,237; response rate 45.2%). The proportion not using Internet was only 4.9%, while 35.8% were non-frequent users, and 49.6% (1,591) were frequent (weekly) users. They used the Internet on the mean 4.3 hours a week. A mean of 1.98% (boys 2.42%, girls 1.51%) could be described as having an 'Internet addiction' according to the criteria in the Diagnostic Questionnaire of Young (1998), and an additional 8.68% (in sum 10.66) were considered to have an at-risk Internet use (boys 9.21%, girls 8.13%). If these proportions were calculated on individuals who used the Internet frequently, 4.02% fulfilled 5 criteria, and an additional 17.66% 3-4 criteria, giving quite high figures of problematic Internet use (in sum 21.68). The different diagnostic criteria gave a broad range of affirmative answers (from 0.4% to 27.9%). The results have important implications for further studies of prevalence, implementation of preventive measures, and the development of treatment approaches for Internet addiction.     

Waiting for a treat. Studying behaviors related to self-regulation in 18- and 24-month-olds

The ability to delay gratification – conceived as an early expression of self-regulation – develops in the second half of the second year of life. We used inductive methodology to identify different behaviors and set of behaviors performed by children while waiting for a treat. We asked which sets are more effective when it comes to successfully delaying gratification and how all observed sets change during toddler age. 130 children were tested twice – at 18 and at 24 months – using a Snack Delay Task. We observed 20 different behaviors and distinguished 4 sets of behaviors. The most important and effective set for delaying gratification in 18 and in 24 month olds was the set called Attention and Movements. We concluded that growth in the ability to delay gratification resulted from increased ability to overcome temptation by using an active strategy mainly based on attention.     

Talking about Personality: Evidence for Attributions to Self and Others in Early Childhood

ABSTRACT

The early use of person perception terms was examined via an analysis of the spontaneous speech of four young children in conversation with their parents at home. All four children were producing such terms early in their third year. Like their parents, children used the terms in two distinguishable ways: to attribute a trait to a person or to characterize a person’s ongoing action. Most of these terms were evaluative, whether positive or negative. Parents often made direct comments to their children about both their traits and ongoing actions; children made similar comments about themselves. Parents also used person perception terms to make comments about others who were not party to the conversation; children did likewise. A considerable proportion of the trait terms that children produced served as interpretive comments on someone’s actions or preferences. Our findings suggest that from an early age, children are trait theorists. Not only do they describe ongoing actions using trait vocabulary, they interpret those ongoing actions by attributing traits.     

Measuring Possessions as Extensions of Self and Links to Significant Others in Hoarding: the Possessions as Others and Self Inventory

Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment - This paper presents the development and validation of the Possessions as Others and Self Inventory (POSI). The POSI is a 23-item self-report...