Eurosibs: Towards robust measurement of infant neurocognitive predictors of autism across Europe
We report data quality assessments across sites, showing that neurocognitive measures hold great promise for cross-site consistency in diverse populations. We discuss our approach to ensuring robust data analysis pipelines and boosting future reproducibility. Finally, we summarise challenges and opportunities for future multi-site research efforts. (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 24, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Decomposing the social gradient in children’s vocabulary skills at 3 years of age: A mediation analysis using data from a large representative cohort study
This study investigated the processes by which maternal education, as a powerful indicator for socio-economic status, affects early expressive language. A nationally representative cohort study of 8,062 children resident in the Republic of Ireland were assessed on the British Ability Scales (BAS) Naming Vocabulary Test at 36 months. A significant difference of almost six points was found between the mean vocabulary test scores of children whose mothers had completed the minimum level of educational attainment compared with children whose mothers had a degree-level qualification. Mediation analysis revealed that 78% of the ...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 22, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Postnatal maternal symptoms of depression and child emotion dysregulation: The mediation role of infant EEG alpha asymmetry
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Cecilia Marino, Valentina Riva Giulia Mornati, Caterina Piazza, Renata del Giudice, Ginette Dionne, Massimo Molteni, Chiara CantianiAbstractIn a community-based sample of 104 infants and their mothers, we hypothesized a pathway from postnatal maternal symptoms of depression to child emotion dysregulation, and tested at 6 months of age the mediation role of alpha asymmetry at frontal and parietal sites. We recorded infant resting-state EEG at 6 months of age. Child emotion dysregulation was measured at 24 months by the Child Behavior...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 22, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Motion or emotion: Infants discriminate emotional biological motion based on low-level visual information
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Marissa Ogren, Brianna Kaplan, Yujia Peng, Kerri L. Johnson, Scott P. JohnsonAbstractInfants’ ability to discriminate emotional facial expressions and tones of voice is well-established, yet little is known about infant discrimination of emotional body movements. Here, we asked if 10–20-month-old infants rely on high-level emotional cues or low-level motion related cues when discriminating between emotional point-light displays (PLDs). In Study 1, infants viewed 18 pairs of angry, happy, sad, or neutral PLDs. Infants looked more...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 19, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Interaction between maternal and paternal parenting styles with infant temperament in emerging behavior problems
This study examined the interaction effects of infant temperament (negative affect, orienting/regulatory capacity, surgency) on the relationship between maternal and paternal parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive) and externalizing and internalizing behaviors simultaneously. A diverse sample of mothers (N = 186) and fathers (N = 142) reported on infant temperament of their 6-month-olds and their children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors one year later. Significant interactions revealed: (a) surgency moderated maternal authoritative and paternal permissive parenting style and extern...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 17, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Culture, carrying, and communication: Beliefs and behavior associated with babywearing
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Emily E. Little, Cristine H. Legare, Leslie J. CarverAbstractEthnographic research suggests mother-infant physical contact predicts high levels of maternal responsiveness to infant cues, yet it is unclear whether this responsiveness is driven by the act of physical contact or by underlying beliefs about responsiveness. We examine beliefs and behavior associated with infant carrying (i.e., babywearing) among U.S. mothers and experimentally test the effect of mother-infant physical contact on maternal responsiveness. In Study 1 (N = 2...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 17, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Effects of children’s hearing loss on the synchrony between parents’ object naming and children’s attention
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Chi-hsin Chen, Irina Castellanos, Chen Yu, Derek M. HoustonAbstractChildren’s attentional state during parent-child interactions is important for word learning. The current study examines the real-time attentional patterns of toddlers with and without hearing loss (N = 15, age range: 12–37 months) in parent-child interactions. High-density gaze data recorded from head-mounted eye-trackers were used to investigate the synchrony between parents’ naming of novel objects and children’s sustained attention on the named object...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 16, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Age attenuates noise and increases symmetry of head movements during sleep resting-state fMRI in healthy neonates, infants, and toddlers
This study quantitatively mapped a developmental trajectory of spontaneous head movements during an rs-fMRI scan acquired during natural sleep in 91 datasets from healthy children from ∼birth to 3 years old, using the Open Science Infancy Research upcycling protocol. The youngest participants studied, 2–3 week-old neonates, showed increased noise-to-signal levels as well as lower symmetry features of their movements; noise-to-signal levels were attenuated and symmetry was increased in the older infants and toddlers (all Spearman's rank-order correlations, P < 0.05). Thus, statistical features of spontaneous hea...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 16, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Fixations and Fixation Shifts in Own-Race and Other-Race Face Pairsat Three, Six and Nine Months
Publication date: November 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 57Author(s): Ina Fassbender, Arnold LohausAbstractCaucasian infants were presented 15 pairs of Caucasian own-race faces and 15 pairs of African other-race faces. The infants were assessed longitudinally at ages three, six and nine months. Two measures were obtained from the infants’ eye-movements: (1) the length of fixations on either stimulus of a pair presented for 5.5 s (fixation duration) and (2) the amount of fixation shifts between the two stimuli (shift frequency). The study analyzes the changes in both measures with age and across th...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 15, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Infant-adult vocal interaction dynamics depend on infant vocal type, child-directedness of adult speech, and timeframe
This study explored the temporal contingencies between infant and adult vocalizations as a function of the type of infant vocalization, whether adult caregivers’ vocalizations were infant-directed or other-directed, and the timescale of analysis. We analyzed excerpts taken from day-long home audio recordings that were collected from nineteen 12- to 13-month-old American infants and their caregivers using the LENA system. Three 5-minute sections having high child vocalization rates were identified within each recording and coded by trained researchers. Infant and adult vocalizations were sequenced and defined as contingen...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - May 15, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: May 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 55Author(s): (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - April 26, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Play for Success: An intervention to boost object exploration in infants from low-income households
Publication date: May 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 55Author(s): Melissa W. ClearfieldAbstractInfants from low-income households typically spend less time exploring objects and use less mature strategies when they do explore compared to their higher-income peers (e.g., Clearfield et al., 2014). The current study tested a novel intervention designed to boost early object exploration in infants from low-income households. The intervention, called Play for Success, was administered through the Early Head Start home visiting program, and asked all infants to explore a toy with a caregiver for 10 min a d...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - April 20, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Mother–infant interactions with firstborns and secondborns: A within-family study of European Americans
This study employed a within-family design to examine mean-level consistency and individual-order agreement in 5-month-old sibling behaviors and maternal parenting practices with their firstborns and secondborns (ns = 61 mothers and 122 infants). Each infant was seen independently with mother. Firstborn infants were more social with their mothers and engaged in more exploration with objects than secondborn infants; firstborn and secondborn infants’ behaviors were correlated for smiling, distress communication, and efficiency of exploration. Mothers engaged in more physical encouragement, social exchange, didactic int...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - April 17, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Infant frontal EEG asymmetry moderates the association between maternal behavior and toddler negative affectivity
We examined associations between infant frontal electroencephalogram (EEG), maternal parenting behaviors, and children’s negative affect across the first two years of life. Infant baseline frontal EEG asymmetry was measured at 5 months; maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness were observed during mother-child interaction at 5 and 24 months; and mothers provided reports of toddler negative affect at 24 months. Results indicated that maternal sensitive behaviors at 5 months were associated with less negative affect at 24 months, but only for infants with left frontal EEG asymmetry. Similarly, maternal sensitive behaviors at...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - April 4, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Probing communication-induced memory biases in preverbal infants: Two replication attempts of Yoon, Johnson and Csibra (2008)
Publication date: May 2019Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 55Author(s): Priya Silverstein, Teodora Gliga, Gert Westermann, Eugenio PariseAbstractIn a seminal study, Yoon, Johnson and Csibra [PNAS, 105, 36 (2008)] showed that nine-month-old infants retained qualitatively different information about novel objects in communicative and non-communicative contexts. In a communicative context, the infants encoded the identity of novel objects at the expense of encoding their location, which was preferentially retained in non-communicative contexts. This result had not yet been replicated. Here we attempted two repl...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - April 1, 2019 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
