Infant speech perception and cognitive skills as predictors of later vocabulary

Research has identified bivariate correlations between speech perception and cognitive measures gathered during infancy as well as correlations between these individual measures and later language outcomes. However, these correlations have not all been explored together in prospective longitudinal studies. The goal of the current research was to compare how early speech perception and cognitive skills predict later language outcomes using a within-participant design. To achieve this goal, we tested 97 5- to 7-month-olds on two speech perception tasks (stress pattern preference, native vowel discrimination) and two cognitive tasks (visual recognition memory, A-not-B) and later assessed their vocabulary outcomes at 18 and 24 months. Frequentist statistical analyses showed that only native vowel discrimination significantly predicted vocabulary. However, Bayesian analyses suggested that evidence was ambiguous between null and alternative hypotheses for all infant predictors. These results highlight the importance of recognizing and addressing challenges related to infant data collection, interpretation, and replication in the developmental field, a roadblock in our route to understanding the contribution of domain-specific and domain-general skills for language acquisition. Future methodological development and research along similar lines is encouraged to assess individual differences in infant speech perception and cognitive skills and their predictability for language development.     

Expertise in basketball modifies perceptual discrimination abilities,underlying cognitive processes,and visual behaviours

In this paper, the links between cognitive constraints, visual behaviours, and perceptual judgements are examined. Two experiments investigated the perceptual processes employed during same-different judgement tasks. In Experiment 1, experts' eye movements (i.e., number of fixations and fixation duration) were consistent across discrepant source and target conditions where the number of displaced elements was manipulated. In contrast, novices decreased the number of fixations employed as the number of elements displaced increased. The findings are consistent with the view that both experts and novices process information in a manner (relational or attributional) that constrains the type of visual search used (low or high sensitive to attributional change). In Experiment 2, manipulation of target presentation confirmed that recognition was viewpoint dependent for both expert and novice players. The degradation in performance was accompanied by a change in the visual search behaviours employed by experts, which confirmed thr strength of the search–cognition–performance links     

The impact of perceptual, cognitive and motor factors on bimanual coordination

Bimanual coordination is governed by constraints that permit congruent movements to be performed more easily than incongruent movements. Theories concerning the origin of these constraints range from low level motor-muscle explanations to high level perceptual–cognitive ones. To elucidate the processes underlying coordinative constraints, we asked subjects to use a pair of left–right joysticks to acquire corresponding pairs of congruent and incongruent targets presented on a video monitor under task conditions designed to systematically modulate the impact of several perceptual–cognitive processes commonly required for bimanual task performance. These processes included decoding symbolic cues, detecting goal targets, conceptualizing movements in terms of goal target configuration, planning movement trajectories, producing saccades and perceiving visual feedback. Results demonstrate that constraints arise from target detection and trajectory planning processes that can occur prior to movement initiation as well as from inherent muscle properties that emerge during movement execution, and that the manifestation of these constraints can be significantly altered by the ability to visually monitor movement progress.     

Infants' persistence and mothers' teaching as predictors of toddlers' cognitive development

This study examined the relative contributions of infants' persistence and mothers' teaching at 6 and 14 months to infants' cognitive development at 14 months in a sample of 65 low-income mother-infant dyads. Infants' persistence was assessed from a videotaped persistence task at 6 months and from the Behavior Record Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 2nd ed. (BSID II) at 14 months. Mothers' teaching was assessed from a videotaped teaching interaction at 6 and 14 months using the Nursing Child Assessment Satellite Training (NCAST) teaching scale. Cognitive development at 14 months was based on the Mental Scale, BSID II. Infants' persistence at both ages and mothers' teaching at 6 months each explained unique variance in infants' cognitive status at 14 months. Persistence appears to be a stable quality that can be measured early on, and both infants' early persistence and mothers' teaching are direct pathways to cognitive status at the start of the second year.     

Infant motor skill predicts later expressive language and autism spectrum disorder diagnosis

Motor difficulties may be an early Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) risk indicator and may predict subsequent expressive language skills. Further understanding of motor functioning in the first year of life in children with ASD is needed. We examined motor skills in 6-month-olds (n = 140) at high and low familial risk for ASD using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales (Grasping, Visual-Motor Integration, and Stationary subscales). In Study 1, motor skill at 6 months predicted ASD status at 24–36 months; ASD was associated with poorer infant motor skills. In Study 2, motor skill at 6 months predicted expressive language at 30 and 36 months. Findings provide evidence that vulnerability in motor function early in development is present in ASD. Findings highlight the importance of developmental monitoring in high-risk infants and possible cascading effects of early disruption in motor development.     

Intelligence and age as predictors of motor performance

The Yule-Oseretsky test of motor performance was administered to 10 ‘undifferentiated’ mentally-retarded adults, 10 normal children and 10 normal adults. In accordance with Denny's (1964) 3-group design, the children were matched on mental age with the retardates, the normal adults were matched on chronological age with the retardates, and the children and normal adults were matched on intelligence quotient. The results showed that mental age predicted performance on both fine and gross motor tasks, with the children and retarded adults both obtaining similar relatively-low scores.     

Infant recall memory and communication predicts later cognitive development

This longitudinal study investigates the relation between recall memory and communication in infancy and later cognitive development. Twenty-six typically developing Swedish children were tested during infancy for deferred imitation (memory), joint attention (JA), and requesting (nonverbal communication); they also were tested during childhood for language and cognitive competence. Results showed that infants with low performance on both deferred imitation at 9 months and joint attention at 14 months obtained a significantly lower score on a test of cognitive abilities at 4 years of age. This long-term prediction from preverbal infancy to childhood cognition is of interest both to developmental theory and to practice.     

Cognitive and emotional factors in health behaviour: Dual-process reasoning,cognitive styles and optimism as predictors of healthy lifestyle,healthy behaviours and medical adherence

Current Psychology - Although it is today commonly accepted that cognitive and emotional factors interact in guiding decisions and behaviour in various domains, including medical and health related...     

Perfectionism, cognitive bias, and hopelessness as prospective predictors of suicidal ideation

Perfectionism, negative cognitive bias, and hopelessness were assessed among people hospitalized for depression (N = 121). Hopelessness and suicidal ideation were assessed 6 months after discharge. Path analyses indicated that higher perfectionism as an inpatient was directly associated with higher suicidal ideation 6 months later. Cognitive bias, in contrast, led to greater hopelessness 6 months later, which in turn led to higher concurrent suicidal ideation. Alternative models examined whether hopelessness partially or fully mediated the effect of perfectionism, whether hopelessness partially mediated the effect of cognitive bias, and whether inpatient depression and suicidal ideation severity explained the observed relationships. These alternative models were not supported. Perfectionism and negative cognitive bias both uniquely contributed to the prospective prediction of suicidal ideation.     

How language acquisition builds on cognitive development

When children acquire a first language, they build on what they know--conceptual information that discriminates and helps create categories for the objects, relations and events they experience. This provides the starting point for language from the age of 12 months on. So children first set up conceptual representations, then add linguistic representations for talking about experience. Do they then discard earlier conceptual representations in favour of linguistic ones, or do they retain them? Recent research on the coping strategies that young children (and adults) rely on when they are unable to draw on language suggest that they retain both types of representations for use as needed.     

Infant artificial language learning and language acquisition

The rapidity with which children acquire language is one of the mysteries of human cognition. A view held widely for the past 30 years is that children master language by means of a language-specific learning device. An earlier proposal, which has generated renewed interest, is that children make use of domain-general, associative learning mechanisms. However, our current lack of knowledge of the actual learning mechanisms involved during infancy makes it difficult to determine the relative contributions of innate and acquired knowledge. A recent approach to studying this problem exposes infants to artificial languages and assesses the resulting learning. In this article, we review studies using this paradigm that have led to a number of exciting discoveries regarding the learning mechanisms available during infancy. These studies raise important issues with respect to whether such mechanisms are general or specific to language, the extent to which they reflect statistical learning versus symbol manipulation, and the extent to which such mechanisms change with development. The fine-grained characterizations of infant learning mechanisms that this approach permits should result in a better understanding of the relative contributions of, and the dynamic between, innate and learned factors in language acquisition.     

Set recognition as a window to perceptual and cognitive processes

The Set visual perception game is a fertile research platform that allows investigation of perception, with gradual processing culminating in a momentary recognition stage, in a context that can be endlessly repeated with novel displays. Performance of the Set game task is a play-off between perceptual and conceptual processes. The task is to detect (among the 12 displayed cards) a 3-card set, defined as containing cards that are either all similar or all different along each of four dimensions with three possible values. We found preference and reduced response times (RTs) for perceiving set similarity (rather than span) and for including cards sharing the most abundant value in the display, suggesting that these are searched preferentially (perhaps by mutual enhancement). RT decreases with number of sets in the display according to a horse race model, implying independence of simultaneous searches. Central cards are included slightly more often, but set card proximity seems irrelevant. A supplementary experiment determining dimensional salience showed consistent but individual preferences, yet these seemed not to affect set identification. Training induced gradual improvement, which generalized to a new version of the game, suggesting high-level learning. We conclude that elements of perception such as similarity detection are basic for finding sets in this task, as in other real-world perceptual and cognitive tasks, suggesting the presence of basic similarity-perceiving mechanisms. The findings confirm the conclusion that conceptual processes are affected by perception.