The present study examined teacher sensitivity as a potential moderator of the relationship between children's temperament in infancy and their social development in first grade. Using data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD), we found that first grade teachers who were sensitive and responsive to students'…

Prior research suggests that infants' action production affects their action understanding, but little is known about the aspects of motor experience that render these effects. In Study 1, the relative contributions of self-produced (n = 30) and observational (n = 30) action experience on 3-month-old infants' action understanding was…

Infants as young as 2 months can integrate audio and visual aspects of speech articulation. A shift of attention from the eyes towards the mouth of talking faces occurs around 6 months of age in monolingual infants. However, it is unknown whether this pattern of attention during audiovisual speech processing is influenced by speech and language…

Many studies have documented influences of maternal responsiveness on cognitive and language development. Given the bidirectionality of interactions in caregiver-infant dyads, it is important to understand how infant behavior elicits variable responses. Prior studies have shown that mothers respond differentially to features of prelinguistic…

The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have…

Early spontaneous gesture, specifically deictic gesture, predicts subsequent vocabulary development in typically developing (TD) children. Here, we ask whether deictic gesture plays a similar role in predicting later vocabulary size in children with Down Syndrome (DS), who have been shown to have difficulties in speech production, but strengths in…

Seven- to 12-month-olds were trained to press levers that contingently activated lights. Infants had the choice of turning on either a light an adult interaction partner was looking at or a light that she turned away from. By 9 months, infants reliably turned on the light that the adult was looking at. In a second study, 9- and 12-month-old…

This study reports on the development of new motor and behavioural indicators for recognizing symbolic acts among infants. Following five infants between the ages of 6 and 18 months and their ability to use an object in novel way yielded four levels of action, based on the number of objects and actions combined in each symbolic act. Employing…

Very early precursors of disrupted social behaviours are significant to understanding the possibility of mitigating or changing behaviours through interventions. Spontaneous play situations between infant and parent in two groups of infants aged 8.5-9 months were observed. First, a large number of videos were analysed to develop an observational…

This study investigated the manner in which 56 infant educators used language to direct the behaviour of infants (defined as children aged birth to two years), on the basis that the ways in which educators frame their commands represent an important component of young children's learning experiences. Underpinned by systemic functional linguistic…

Research Findings: This study considered the interplay between infant temperament and maternal caregiving behaviors in relation to early language. A total of 118 mother-infant dyads participated in the study. Mothers rated infant positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), and maternal behaviors were coded during a free-play task when infants…

This study assessed the links between infant negative affect, parental reflective functioning (RF), and toddler behavior problems in a sample of 84 women and their infants. Mothers provided self-report demographic data and completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised during a home visit when the infant was 7 months old. They also completed…

Compared to previous generations, young children today hear music that differs not only in its content but also in its source of production, mode of transmission, and integration with other activities or social contexts (Young, 2009). In fact, Young (2009) argues that digital technologies allow the home, as opposed to community sites, to be the…

In this study, we address the construction of the first symbolic uses of objects in contexts of triadic interaction (adult-child-object). We assume that symbolic productions are based on public rules of the use of objects previously agreed by the community. The first symbols are not rooted in any literal, evident reality, but in shared rules of…

Research has shown that young infants use contrasting acoustic information to distinguish consonants. This has been used to argue that by 12 months, infants have homed in on their native language sound categories. However, this ability seems to be positionally constrained, with contrasts at the beginning of words (onsets) discriminated earlier.…