It is well documented that in the first year after birth, infants are able to identify self-performed actions. This ability has been regarded as the basis of conscious self-perception. However, it is not yet known whether infants are also sensitive to aspects of the self when they cannot control the sensory feedback by means of self-performed…

No evidence had been provided so far of newborns' capacity to give a matching response to 2D stimuli. We report evidence from 18 newborns who were presented with three types of stimuli on a 2D screen. The stimuli were video-recorded displays of tongue protrusion shown by: (a) a human face, (b) a human tongue from a disembodied mouth, and (c) an…

Our goal in the present study was to examine the effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on infant self-regulation, exploring birth weight as a mediator and sex as a moderator of risk. A prospective sample of 218 infants was assessed at 6 months of age. Infants completed a battery of tasks assessing working memory/inhibition, attention, and…

There are no known biomedical or genetic markers to identify which infants with galactosaemia (GAL) are most at risk of poor language skill development, yet pre-linguistic communicative "red flag" behaviours are recognised as early identifiers of heightened vulnerability to impaired language development. We report on pre-linguistic…

Thirty infants at 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while playing for 18 minutes. Experimental stimuli were presented in three communicative intent contexts--proto-declarative, proto-imperative, and ambiguous--to elicit infant communicative bids that did and did not contain gestures. Mothers' responses were analyzed, and their verbal responses…

Infants of adolescent mothers are at increased risk for negative developmental outcomes. Given the high rate of pregnancy among Mexican-origin adolescent females in the US, the present study examined health characteristics at birth and developmental functioning at 10 months of age in a sample of 205 infants of Mexican-origin adolescent mothers.…

The atypical behaviour of preterm infants can elicit stress in fathers and influence their ability to perceive and interpret infants' cues. This study investigated whether fathers of moderately and late preterm infants were more stressed than fathers of term infants. In a randomised controlled trial, we also studied the effect of the Mother-Infant…

It is known that young infants can learn to perform an action that elicits a reinforcer, and that they can visually anticipate a predictable stimulus by looking at its location before it begins. Here, in an investigation of the display of these abilities in tandem, I report that 10-month-olds anticipate a reward stimulus that they generate through…

In this study, relations between emotional resonance responses to another's distress, emotion regulation, and self-other discrimination were investigated in infants three-, six-, and nine-months-old. We measured the emotional reactions to the pain cry of a peer, along with the ability to regulate emotions and to discriminate between self and other…

Imitation requires the imitator to solve the correspondence problem--to translate visual information from modelled action into matching motor output. It has been widely accepted for some 30 years that the correspondence problem is solved by a specialized, innate cognitive mechanism. This is the conclusion of a poverty of the stimulus argument,…

Research suggests that early self-regulatory difficulties among high-risk newborns can lead to poor interactional difficulties and negative long-term cognitive and social-emotional outcomes if not identified and treated early. This article describes why an individualized, developmentally supportive, relationship-based program, such as the Newborn…

This qualitative multi-case study explored the social exchanges and responsive connections between infants and their infant childcare teachers within a group care context. Infants' naturally occurring behaviours were videotaped purposefully at two separate time points, near the end of their first year and approximately six months later. Findings…

The current study examined the influence of maternal characteristics on the development of infant smiling and laughter, a marker of early positive emotionality (PE) and how maternal characteristics and the development of infant PE contributed to subsequent maternal parenting. One hundred fifty-nine mothers with 4-month-old infants participated.…

Following Meltzoff's (1995) behavioral reenactment paradigm, this study investigated the ability of 12-month-olds (N = 44) to reproduce a model's attempted-but-failed actions on objects. Testing was conducted using a novel set of objects designed to enable young infants to readily identify the potential outcome of the model's actions. Infants who…

Self-produced locomotion is regarded as a setting event for other developmental transitions in infancy with important implications for socioemotional development and parent-child interaction. Using an age-held-constant design, this study examined changes in reported infant behaviour and maternal proactive/reactive control and compared them with…