Individual differences in infant attention are theorized to reflect the speed of information processing and are related to later cognitive abilities (i.e., memory, language, and intelligence). This study provides the first systematic longitudinal analysis of infant attention and early childhood executive function (EF; e.g., working memory,…

There is evidence that 4.5-month-olds do not always use surface pattern to individuate objects but that they can be primed to attend to pattern differences through select experiences. For example, if infants are first shown events in which the pattern of an object predicts its function (dotted containers pound and striped containers pour), they…

Four experiments investigated infants' preferences for age-appropriate and age-inappropriate infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Two initial experiments showed that 6-, 10-, and 14-month-olds preferred IDS directed toward younger infants, and 4-, 8-, 10-, and 14-month-olds, but not 6-month-olds, preferred IDS directed…

Relations between infant-mother attachment security at 15 months and infants' (N = 206) joint attention behaviors (a) with an experimenter at 8 and 15 months, and (b) with their mothers at 15 months were investigated. No concurrent or longitudinal relations were observed between attachment security and infants' tendency to respond to an…

The current study distinguishes between attributions of goal-directed perception (i.e. attention) and non-goal-directed perception to examine 9-month-olds' interpretation of others' head and eye turns. In a looking time task, 9-month-olds encoded the relationship between an actor's head and eye turns and a target object if the head and eye turns…