Antenatal and postnatal depressive symptoms: Association with quality of mother–infant interaction
ConclusionsThe results corroborate the need to offer treatment and dyadic interventions to antenatal and postnatal depressive mothers and postulate that the presence of antenatal depressive symptoms may influence the subsequent mother–infant interaction style and greater severity of symptoms. (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - November 7, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Co-sleeping as a proximal context for infant development: The importance of physical touch
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Elaine S. BarryAbstractCo-sleeping is a complex familial phenomenon that has yet to be well understood by Western scientists. This paper provides an interdisciplinary review of research from anthropology, nursing, pediatrics, sociology, social work, public health, family studies, and psychology to focus on the role of physical touch in the context of co-sleeping, and how close physical contact in this context affects infants and their caregivers. Including an anthropological, evolutionary view of co-sleeping with other perspectives ...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 24, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The effect of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact on Ghanaian infants’ response to the Still Face Task: Comparison between Ghanaian and Canadian mother-infant dyads
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Frances Emily Owusu-Ansah, Ann E. Bigelow, Michelle PowerAbstractThe effect of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact on Ghanaian infants’ developing social expectations for maternal behavior was investigated. Infants with high and low mother-infant skin-to-skin contact experience in the infants’ first month engaged with their mothers in a Still Face Task at 6 weeks of age. Infants with high skin-to-skin contact experience, but not those with low skin-to-skin contact experience, demonstrated the still face effect with their smiles. ...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 23, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Infant sleep moderates the effect of infant temperament on maternal depressive symptoms, maternal sensitivity, and family functioning
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Stephanie H. Parade, Kristyn Wong, Renee Belair, Susan Dickstein, Ronald SeiferAbstractObserved infant temperamental difficulty and infant sleep efficiency and sleep variability were examined as predictors of maternal depressive symptoms, maternal sensitivity, and family functioning. Eight observations at 8-months postpartum were used to assess infant temperament, and actigraphy was used to measure infant sleep for 1-week at the time of the 8-month assessment. Structured clinical interviews were used to assess maternal depressive sy...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 19, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Antenatal determinants of early childhood talking delay and behavioural difficulties
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Stephanie D’Souza, Caitlin N. Crawford, Jude Buckley, Lisa Underwood, Elizabeth R. Peterson, Amy Bird, Susan M.B. Morton, Karen E. WaldieAbstractThe determinants of talking delay alone or its comorbidity with behavioural difficulties was examined in 5768 two-year-old members of the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study. Using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development inventories and the total difficulties score from the preschool Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, a composite measure was created so that children ...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 19, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Dyadic synchrony among young Latina mothers and their toddlers: The role of maternal and child behavior
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Aimee T. Hammer, Josefina M. Grau, Stephanie G. Silberman, Erin N. SmithAbstractSynchronous interactions are an important indicator of parent-child relationship quality with positive implications for child development. Latina adolescent mothers face several demographic challenges that place them at risk for less synchronous interactions. To identify factors that may facilitate more optimal parent-child relationships in this population, our study examined maternal sensitivity and children’s behavioral styles as joint predictors of ...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 18, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
A novel two-body sensor system to study spontaneous movements in infants during caregiver physical contact
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Priya Patel, Yan Shi, Faezeh Hajiaghajani, Subir Biswas, Mei-Hua LeeAbstractSpontaneous movements, which refer to repetitive limb movements in the absence of any external stimulus, have been found to be reflective of neurodevelopmental status during infancy. These movements are modulated by both individual and environmental factors, including physical contact (holding) with the caregiver. However, it is a challenge to measure spontaneous movements during physical contact because infant-generated movements become coupled with caregiv...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 17, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Oscillatory gamma activity mediates the pathway from socioeconomic status to language acquisition in infancy
ConclusionsThese results confirm the predictive role of gamma activity oscillatory activity on later language acquisition, suggesting a specific role for these oscillatory mechanisms in language development milestones such as vocabulary development and early word combination. Furthermore, they suggest that SES differences in brain activity may be apparent at early stages of life and affect later language skills. If replicated, our findings could contribute to identifying highest-risk children and may prompt cost-effective preventive/treatment strategies. (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 9, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Increasing task precision demands reveals that the reach and grasp remain subject to different perception-action constraints in 12-month-old human infants
This study used frame-by-frame video analysis to investigate whether increasing precision demands, by placing small reaching targets on a narrow pedestal rather than on a flat table, would influence the reach and grasp movements of 12-month-old infants in a complementary or differential fashion. The results reveal that placing the target atop a pedestal impaired the infants’s ability to direct an appropriate digit towards the small target, but did not produce a corresponding decrease in the frequency with which they used an index-thumb pincer grip to grasp the target. This was due to the fact that, although infants were ...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 1, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
A step forward: Bayesian hierarchical modelling as a tool in assessment of individual discrimination performance
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Maartje de Klerk, Duco Veen, Frank Wijnen, Elise de BreeAbstractIndividual assessment of infants’ speech discrimination is of great value for studies of language development that seek to relate early and later skills, as well as for clinical work. The present study explored the applicability of the hybrid visual fixation paradigm (Houston et al., 2007) and the associated statistical analysis approach to assess individual discrimination of a native vowel contrast, /aː/ - /eː/, in Dutch 6 to 10-month-old infants. Houston et al. fo...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 27, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Does category-training facilitate 11-month-olds’ acquisition of unfamiliar category-property associations?
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Michelle S. Zepeda, Susan A. GrahamAbstractThe ability to form category-property links allows infants to extend a property from one category member to another. In two experiments, we examined whether orienting infants to the demands of the task, through categorization training, would facilitate 11-month-old infants’ category-property extensions when familiarized with a single exemplar of an unfamiliar animal category. In Experiment 1, 11-month-olds (N = 35) were trained with two familiar animal-sound pairings (i.e., dog-bark, ...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 27, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Do early lexical skills predict language outcome at 3 years? A longitudinal study of French-speaking children
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Tamara Patrucco-Nanchen, Margaret Friend, Diane Poulin-Dubois, Pascal ZesigerAbstractEarly language development is considered critical for children’s adjustment in school, for social adaptation and for later educational achievement. Despite the role of children’s receptive skills as a foundation for later productive word use, receptive language skills have received surprisingly little attention. The present research extends recent work on the prediction of preschool language skills by exploring whether a decontextualized measure...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 25, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
DNA methylation and behavioral changes induced by neonatal spinal transection
This study represents an initial step toward understanding the relationship between epigenetic mechanisms and plasticity associated with spinal cord and locomotor development. (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 24, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Mothers’ and fathers’ early tactile contact behaviors during triadic and dyadic parent-infant interactions immediately after birth and at 3-months postpartum: Implications for early care behaviors and intervention
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Marisa Mercuri, Dale M. Stack, Sabina Trojan, Lorenzo Giusti, Francesco Morandi, Irene Mantis, Rosario MontirossoAbstractMothers’ and fathers’ touch were investigated during their first naturalistic interaction with their newborns, and maternal touch was predicted from newborn to 3-months postpartum during the Still-Face (SF) procedure. Both parents displayed more nurturing types of touch when interacting with their infants for the first time. Maternal touch at newborn predicted maternal touch after, but not before, the SF 3-mon...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 21, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Similarities and differences between western cultures: Toddler temperament and parent-child interactions in the United States (US) and Germany
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): C. Kirchhoff, E.E. Desmarais, S.P. Putnam, M.A. GartsteinAbstractParents play a critical role in shaping social-emotional development, particularly in early childhood; however, children’s influence on their own development is equally important. Parent-child interactions, fundamental to secure attachment and social schemes, represent a critical area of social-emotional development subject to child effects associated with temperament. The present study explores these effects through a cross-cultural lens via comparisons of dyads fro...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 20, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
