By 12 months of age, infants exhibit behavioral sensitivity to sound symbolism (e.g. sound-shape correspondences) when they hear universally sound symbolic pseudowords (e.g. "bouba," "kiki"). Here, we investigated whether infant's sensitivity to sound-shape correspondences is affected when they hear language-specific sound…

What are the vocal experiences of children growing up on Malakula island, Vanuatu, where multilingualism is the norm? Long-form audio-recordings captured spontaneous speech behavior by, and around, 38 children (5-33 months, 23 girls) from 11 villages. Automated analyses revealed most children's vocal input came from female adults and other…

Two experiments examined 12- to 13-month-old infants' reactions to noncontingent responding by the parent (Experiment 1, 40 infants) or by an unfamiliar adult (Experiment 2, 40 infants). During the initial play phase, the adult was either reading a book or using his or her mobile phone, resulting in a response delay when the infant would seek the…

This study examined the extent to which the quality of teacher-infant interactions varies across play and routine care activities. In addition, the effects of the quantity of adult involvement in the quality of teacher-infant interactions were investigated. Participants were teachers and infants from 90 infant classrooms in Portugal. Classrooms…

Saccade latency is widely used across infant psychology to investigate infants' understanding of events. Interpreting particular latency values requires knowledge of standard saccadic RTs, but there is no consensus as to typical values. This study provides standard estimates of infants' (n = 194, ages 9 to 15 months) saccadic RTs under a range of…

Adult-infant interactions operate simultaneously across multiple domains and at multiple levels -- from physiology to behaviour. Unpackaging and understanding them, therefore, involve analysis of multiple data streams. In this study, we tested physiological responses and cognitive preferences for infant and adult faces in adult females and males.…

Studies investigating imitation are usually conducted with adult models in Western contexts; therefore, the influence of cultural context and the model's age on infants' imitation is largely unknown. This study assessed deferred imitation in 9-month-old infants from the German middle-class ("N" = 44) and the ethnic group of Nso in rural…

In the studies presented here, infants' understanding of others' attention was assessed when gaze direction cues were not diagnostic. Fourteen-, 18- and 24-month-olds witnessed an adult look to the side of an object and express excitement. In 1 experimental condition this object was new for the adult because she was not present while the child and…

Tested 6 infants periodically until they were 28-weeks old for head and eye coordination in tracking moving targets and fixating stationary targets while subjects were moving. Found that head movement was more prevalent than eye movement. There was improvement with age in coordination of head turning to target or body movement. (BC)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between infants' attachment to mother and mothers' responsiveness to behaviors of her infant. Twenty-four male and 24 female 12-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped at a laboratory in the Ainsworth-Wittig strange situation and in a series of subsequent situations designed…

In follow-up studies conducted 36 hours, 3 months, and 12 months after delivery, maternal behavior, infant behavior, the duration of breast feeding, and attitudes toward child rearing procedures were shown to develop differently among mothers and infants receiving physical contact soon after birth as compared to control subjects who were briefly…