COVID ‐19 pandemic effects: Examining prenatal internalizing symptoms and infant temperament
AbstractFor pregnant women, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented stressors, including uncertainty regarding prenatal care and the long-term consequences of perinatal infection. However, few studies have examined the role of this adverse event on maternal wellbeing and infant socioemotional development following the initial wave of the pandemic when less stringent public health restrictions were in place. The current study addressed these gaps in the literature by first comparing prenatal internalizing symptoms and infant temperament collected after the first wave of the pandemic to equivalent measures in a p...
Source: Infancy - January 21, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Jennifer A. Mattera,
Nora L. Erickson,
Celestina Barbosa ‐Leiker,
Maria A. Gartstein Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Attention control in preterm and term 5 ‐month‐old infants: Cross‐task stability increases with gestational age
AbstractCross-task stability refers to performance consistency across different settings and measures of the same construct. Cross-task stability can help us understand developmental processes, including how risks such as preterm birth affect outcomes. We investigated cross-task stability of attention control in 32 preterm and 39 term infants. All infants had the same chronological age at time of testing (5 months) but varied in gestational age (GA) at birth (30–42 weeks). Infants completed an experimental attention following task with a researcher and a naturalistic play observation with their mothers. Both preterm a...
Source: Infancy - January 20, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Oliver Perra,
Alice Winstanley,
Rebecca Sperotto,
Merideth Gattis Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Comparing apples to manzanas and oranges to naranjas: A new measure of English ‐Spanish vocabulary for dual language learners
AbstractThe valid assessment of vocabulary development in dual-language-learning infants is critical to developmental science. We developed theDual Language Learners English-Spanish (DLL-ES) Inventories to measure vocabularies of U.S. English-Spanish DLLs. The inventories provide translation equivalents for all Spanish and English items on Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) short forms; extended inventories based on CDI long forms; and Spanish language-variety options. Item-Response Theory analyses applied to Wordbank and Web-CDI data (n = 2603, 12–18 months;n = 6722, 16–36 months; half female; 1% Asian, 3...
Source: Infancy - January 14, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Catherine S. Tamis ‐LeMonda,
George Kachergis,
Lillian R. Masek,
Sandy L. Gonzalez,
Kasey C. Soska,
Orit Herzberg,
Melody Xu,
Karen E. Adolph,
Rick O. Gilmore,
Marc H. Bornstein,
Marianella Casasola,
Caitlin M. Fausey,
Michael C. Frank,
Sus Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
What's the point? Infants' and adults' perception of different pointing gestures
In this study, we used a spatial cueing paradigm on an eye tracker to investigate whether and to what extent adults and 12-month-old infants orient their attention in the direction of pointing gestures with different hand shapes: index finger, whole hand, and pinky finger. Furthermore, we assessed infants' and their parents' pointing production. Results revealed that adults showed a rel iable cueing effect: shorter saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to congruent than incongruent targets, for all hand shapes. However, they did not show a larger cueing effect triggered by the index or any other finger. This contradicts previous ...
Source: Infancy - January 13, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Ebru Ger,
Stephanie Wermelinger,
Maxine de Ven,
Moritz M. Daum Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
The role of local meaning in infants' fixations of natural scenes
AbstractAs infants view visual scenes every day, they must shift their eye gaze and visual attention from location to location, sampling information to process and learn. Like adults, infants' gaze when viewing natural scenes (i.e., photographs of everyday scenes) is influenced by the physical features of the scene image and a general bias to look more centrally in a scene. However, it is unknown how infants' gaze while viewing such scenes is influenced by the semantic content of the scenes. Here, we tested the relative influence oflocal meaning, controlling for physical salience and center bias, on the eye gaze of 4- to 1...
Source: Infancy - January 7, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Lisa M. Oakes,
Taylor R. Hayes,
Shannon M. Klotz,
Katherine I. Pomaranski,
John M. Henderson Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Developmental trajectories of picture ‐based object representations during the first year of life
AbstractExperience with an object's photograph changes 9-month-olds ’ preference for the referent object, confirming they can represent objects from pictures. However, picture-based representations appear weaker than object-based representations. The current study's first objective was to investigate age differences in object recognition memory after familiarizati on with objects' pictures. The second objective was to test whether age differences in object permanence sensitivity with picture-based representations match those found with object-based representations, whereby 7-month-olds search more for familiar hidden obj...
Source: Infancy - January 6, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Jeanne L. Shinskey Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Analyzing the effect of sibling number on input and output in the first 18 months
AbstractPrior research suggests that across a wide range of cognitive, educational, and health-based measures, first-born children outperform their later-born peers. Expanding on this literature using naturalistic home-recorded data and parental vocabulary reports, we find that early language outcomes vary by number of siblings in a sample of 43 English-learning U.S. children from mid-to-high socioeconomic status homes. More specifically, we find that children in our sample with two or more —but not one—older siblings had smaller productive vocabularies at 18 months, and heard less input from caregivers across several...
Source: Infancy - January 6, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Catherine Laing,
Elika Bergelson Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Touch and look: The role of affective touch in promoting infants' attention towards complex visual scenes
AbstractIn a complex social environment, stimuli from different sensory modalities need to be integrated to decode communicative meanings. From very early in life, infants have to combine a multitude of sensory features with social and affective attributes. Of all senses, touch constitutes a privileged channel to carry affective-motivational meanings and foster social connection. In the present study, we investigate whether sharing sensory stimulation that varies for its affective value differentially affects infants' attention towards visual stimuli. 6 to 11-month-old infants (N = 42) were familiarized with two characte...
Source: Infancy - January 6, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Laura Carnevali,
Letizia Della Longa,
Danica Dragovic,
Teresa Farroni Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Less attention to emotional faces is associated with low empathy and prosociality in 12 ‐to 20‐month old infants
AbstractThe development of empathy and prosocial behavior begins in infancy and is likely supported by emotion processing skills. The current study explored whether early emerging deficits in emotion processing are associated with disruptions in the development of empathy and prosociality. We investigated this question in a large, diverse sample of 147, 11- to 20-month-old infants (42% female; 61% Black; 67% low socioeconomic status). Infants completed two observational tasks assessing prosocial helping and one task assessing empathy and prosocial comforting behavior. Infants also completed an eye-tracking task assessing e...
Source: Infancy - January 4, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Meghan Rose Donohue,
M. Catalina Camacho,
Jordan E. Drake,
Rebecca F. Schwarzlose,
Rebecca G. Brady,
Caroline P. Hoyniak,
Laura Hennefield,
Lauren S. Wakschlag,
Cynthia E. Rogers,
Deanna M. Barch,
Joan Luby Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Patterns of attention ‐sensitive communication contribute to 7–20‐month‐olds' emerging pragmatic skills
AbstractThe present study aimed at investigating the ability of 7- to 20-month-old infants to displayattention-sensitive communication using either canonical markers of language acquisition (e.g., pointing gestures, canonical babblings) or other signals based on the physical featuresactually perceived by the mother in everyday interaction (e.g., body movements, mouth sounds). We studied 30 French mother-infant dyads in naturalistic settings. We assessed the infants'attention-sensitive communication throughunimodal andcross-modal adjustment, defined as the capacity of infants to address visually inattentive mothers by avoid...
Source: Infancy - January 2, 2024 Category: Child Development Authors: Mawa Dafreville,
Mich èle Guidetti,
Marie Bourjade Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Longitudinal associations between parents' prosocial behavior and media use and young children's prosocial development: The mediating role of children's media use
AbstractResearch has found that media is associated with children's prosocial behavior (PB) from an early age, and that parents play a key role in children's media use and behavior. However, few studies explore these relations as early as infancy while also controlling for well-established predictors of PB (e.g., empathic concern). Thus, the present study examined longitudinal associations between parents' PB and media use, and prosocial development during early childhood, mediated by children's own media use. Participants were 519 children (M age at Time 1 = 17.77 months) and parents who participated in three timepoin...
Source: Infancy - December 31, 2023 Category: Child Development Authors: Laura M. Padilla ‐Walker,
Katey Workman,
Anna Calley,
Sarah Ashby,
Hailey G. Holmgren,
Corinne Archibald,
Ashley M. Fraser,
Sarah M. Coyne Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Infant screen media and child development: A prospective community study
AbstractThe current study examined longitudinal associations between early screen media exposure (assessed at 6, 12, and 24 months) and the child's motor and language/communication development at the ages of 24 and 36 months. We also aimed to study whether these associations varied by socioeconomic status (SES). Participants were 179 parent-infant dyads, recruited from well-baby clinic services during routine visits. Child development measures included standardized measures of developmental milestones as assessed by professionals and referral data to child developmental centers. Both measures were retrieved from the off...
Source: Infancy - December 30, 2023 Category: Child Development Authors: Ortal Slobodin,
Orit E. Hetzroni,
Moran Mandel,
Sappir Saad Nuttman,
Zainab Gawi Damashi,
Eden Machluf,
Michael Davidovitch Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Attachment security and problematic media use in infancy: A longitudinal study in the United States
We examined the relationship between attachment security and problematic media use one and 2 years later. We then constructed a mediation model examining parent responsiveness while jointly engaging in media use and during play as mediators between infant attachment security and problematic media use over time. Results suggest that while infant attachment security may be protective agains t developing problematic media use patterns, this relationship does not seem to be mediated by parent-child interactions while engaging in media or during play. (Source: Infancy)
Source: Infancy - December 19, 2023 Category: Child Development Authors: Jane Shawcroft,
Sarah M. Coyne,
Lisa Linder,
Brandon N. Clifford,
Brandon T. McDaniel Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research
Issue Information
No abstract is available for this article. (Source: Infancy)
Source: Infancy - December 18, 2023 Category: Child Development Tags: ISSUE INFORMATION Source Type: research
Handedness as a major determinant of lateral bias in human functional cradling
AbstractStudies examining infant cradling have almost uniformly concluded with a general human left-side bias for cradling, indicating that people prefer to hold an infant to the left of their body. Explanations for the notion of the left-side cradling bias have traditionally been searched for in a variety of factors, for example, in terms of maternal heartbeat, genetic factors, in the form of an ear asymmetry where auditory information is perceived faster through the left ear, as a result of a right hemispheric functional specialization for perception of emotions and faces, and in identifying a motor bias of the infant, s...
Source: Infancy - December 16, 2023 Category: Child Development Authors: Audrey L. H. van der Meer Tags: REVIEW ARTICLE Source Type: research
