Exposure to communicative gestures, through their parents' use of gestures, is associated with infants' language development. However, the mechanisms supporting this link are not fully understood. In adults, sensorimotor brain activity occurs while processing communicative stimuli, including both spoken language and gestures. Using…

The development of skills related to executive function (EF) in infancy, including their emergence, underlying neural mechanisms, and interconnections to other cognitive skills, is an area of increasing research interest. Here, we report on findings from a multidimensional dataset demonstrating that infants' behavioral performance on a flexible…

Responses to infant signals are critical to infant development and well-being. However, brain mechanisms underlying paternal responses to infant crying are still largely unknown. Here using EEG, we investigated brain activations in two different groups, 10 fathers and 10 non-fathers, in response to infant-related sounds: typically developing…

Around the end of the first year of life, infants develop a social referencing ability -- using emotional information from others to guide their own behavior. Much research on social referencing has focused on changes in behavior in response to emotional information. The present study was an investigation of the changes in neural responses that…

A current theory of attention posits that several micro-indices of attentional vigilance are dependent on activation of the locus coeruleus, a brainstem nucleus that regulates cortical norepinephrine activity (Aston-Jones et al., 1999). This theory may account for many findings in the infant literature, while highlighting important new areas for…

In this study, we had 3 major goals. The 1st goal was to establish a link between behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures of infant attention and recognition memory. To assess the distribution of infant visual preferences throughout ERP testing, we designed a new experimental procedure that embeds a behavioral measure (paired…

Research in the area of infant development has endless facets of investigation. No one facet of research is more important than another, and all of the findings work in a synchronous fashion to facilitate our understanding of child development. Research on child development has proliferated across the centuries. Infant characteristics like…

Developmental studies of face processing have revealed age-related changes in how infants allocate neurophysiological resources to the face of a caregiver and an unfamiliar adult. We hypothesize that developmental changes in how infants interact with their caregiver are related to the changes in brain response. We studied 6-month-olds because this…

Betsy Lozoff is among the world's leading experts on iron deficiency and its effects on infant brain development and behavior. Iron deficiency is the most common single nutrient disorder in the world, affecting more than half of the world's infants and young children. Research by Lozoff and others has shown that there are long-lasting…

Evaluated brainstem auditory evoked responses (BAERs) on 10- to 12-year-olds who had been classified as high or low reactive to unfamiliar stimuli at 4 months of age. Found that children previously classified as high reactive at 4 months had larger wave V components than did low reactive children, possibly suggesting greater excitability in…

This paper is a response to a review of the conference titled, "Unintegration, Disintegration and Integration", written by Cathy Urwin and Maria Rhode in the ACP Bulletin. The review mentioned Michael Fordham, noting that he referred to a "good" kind of unintegration. In this paper, I point out that this is a somewhat misleading reference to what…

Examined whether the atypical pattern of brain activity found in infants of depressed mothers generalized to situations not involving the mother. Found that 13- to 15-month-olds of depressed mothers exhibited reduced left--relative to right--frontal activity during baseline and during interactions with mother and familiar experimenter. This…

The article examines how infants are first permeated by culture. Building on Thibault (2000), semiogenesis is traced to the joint activity of primary intersubjectivity. Using an African example, analysis shows how--at 14 weeks--an infant already uses culturally specific indicators of "what a caregiver wants." Human predispositions and…

Scientists believe that the stimulation that infants and young children receive determines which synapses form in the brain. This book presents 125 games for infants from birth to 12 months and is designed to nurture brain development. The book is organized chronologically in 3-month increments. Each game description includes information from…

Discusses the causes of shaken baby syndrome and how to recognize, respond to, and prevent it. Identifies horseplay to avoid and recommends never shaking baby even for apnea. Offers 12 tips for working with crying babies and includes ten discussion questions to test knowledge of the syndrome. (DLH)