We investigated the development of the other-race effect "ORE" in a longitudinal sample of 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Caucasian infants. Previous research using cross-sectional samples has shown an unstable ORE at 3 months, an increase at 6 months and full development at 9 months. In Experiment 1, we tested whether 9-month-olds showed the…

Positive shyness is a universal emotion with the specific social function of regulating our interactions by improving trust and liking, and showing politeness. The present study examined early infant production of coy smiles during social interactions as a measure of positive shy behavior. Eighty 4-month-olds were experimentally observed during…

We explored the amount and timing of temporal synchrony necessary to facilitate prenatal perceptual learning using an animal model, the bobwhite quail. Quail embryos were exposed to various audiovisual combinations of a bobwhite maternal call paired with patterned light during the late stages of prenatal development and were tested postnatally for…

A notable omission in studies of developmental links to early nutritional deficiencies is infant attachment. In those few studies investigating associations between infant nutrition and attachment, nutrition was defined solely by physical growth, and infants had moderate-severe growth retardation. In this study, we utilized multiple markers of…

Recent epidemiological evidence suggests that even in the midst of the "terrible twos," frequent/severe oppositional-defiant behaviors (ODBs) are not common among toddlers and hence may be indicative of a significant opposition-defiance problem. The main objective of this study was to obtain a maximum likelihood estimate of the…

Fourteen-month-olds are sensitive to mispronunciations of the vowels and consonants in familiar words (N. Mani & K. Plunkett (2007), "Journal of Memory and Language", 57, 252; D. Swingley & R. N. Aslin (2002), "Psychological Science", 13, 480). To examine the development of this sensitivity further, the current study…

In this study, we asked whether 14- and 18-month-old infants use the experiences they have previously shared with others when deciding what to point to for them declaratively. After sharing a particular type of referent with an adult in an excited manner, 18-month-olds subsequently found a picture of that type of referent more worthy of…

Toward the end of their first year of life, infants' overly specified word representations are thought to give way to more abstract ones, which helps them to better cope with variation not relevant to word identity (e.g., voice and affect). This developmental change may help infants process the ambient language more efficiently, thus enabling…

This longitudinal study on Finnish families was conducted to identify developmental differences in family-level communication among mothers, fathers, and their infants during the second half of the infant's first year, and associations with infants' later language and communicative skills. We examined coregulated communication of parent-infant…

This study examined 6-month-old infants' abilities to use the visual information provided by simulated self-movement through the world, and movement of an object through the world, for spatial orientation. Infants were habituated to a visual display in which they saw a toy hidden, followed by either rotation of the point of observation through the…

Cultural variation in durations, relations, and contingencies of mother-infant person- and object-directed behaviors were examined for 121 nonmigrant Latino mother-infant dyads in South America, Latina immigrants from South America and their infants living in the United States, and European American mother-infant dyads. Nonmigrant Latina mothers…

Two experiments examined toddlers' performance on a new task designed to examine the development of body self-awareness. The new task was conceived from observations by Piaget (1953/1977) and theoretical work from Povinelli and Cant (1995) and involved a toy shopping cart to the back of which a small mat had been attached. Children were asked to…

Toddler toy play evolves in a predictable manner and provides a valid, nonverbal measure of cognitive function unbiased by social behaviors. Research on prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) indicates that exposure to stress in utero results in developmental deficits. We hypothesized that children exposed to high objective PNMS from a natural disaster…

Over half the world's population speaks a tone language, yet infant speech perception research has typically focused on consonants and vowels. Very young infants can discriminate a wide range of native and nonnative consonants and vowels, and then in a process of "perceptual reorganization" over the 1st year, discrimination of most…

This study compared multiple characteristics of girls' and boys' vocabulary in 6 different linguistic communities--1 urban and 1 rural setting in each of 3 countries. Two hundred fifty-two mothers in Argentina, Italy, and the United States completed vocabulary checklists for their 20-month-old children. Individual variability was substantial…