Researchers commonly use puppets in development science. Amongst other things, puppets are employed to reduce social hierarchies between child participants and adult experimenters akin to peer interactions. However, it remains controversial whether children treat puppets like real-world social partners in these settings. This study investigated…

Using existing longitudinal data from 570 infants in the Maternal Lifestyle Study, we explored the predictive value of maternal and infant affect and maternal vocalizations during 2 minutes of face-to-face interactions at 4 months on IQ scores at 4.5 and 7 years. After controlling for demographic factors, maternal depression, and prenatal drug…

Executive control (EC) develops rapidly during the preschool years and is central to academic achievement and functional outcome. Although children with perinatal adversity are at known risk for EC impairments, little is known about the underlying nature of these impairments or the mechanisms that contribute to their development over time. Drawing…

Gaze following is a fundamental component of triadic social interaction which includes events and an object shared with other individuals and is found in both human and nonhuman primates. Most previous work has focused only on the immediate reaction after following another's gaze. In contrast, this study investigated whether gaze following is…

Temperament dimensions influence children's approach to and participation in social interactive experiences which reflect and impact children's social understandings. Therefore, temperament differences might substantially impact theory-of-mind development in early childhood. Using longitudinal data, we report that certain early temperament…

I advance the hypothesis that the earliest phases of language acquisition--the developmental transition from an initial universal state of language processing to one that is language-specific--requires social interaction. Relating human language learning to a broader set of neurobiological cases of communicative development, I argue that the…

In adults, three phenomena are taken to demonstrate an experience effect on face recognition: an inversion effect, a non-native face effect (so-called "other-race" effect) and their interaction. It is crucial for our understanding of the developmental perception mechanisms of object processing to discover when these effects are present in…