A comparison of low-intensity physical activity, growth, and sleep behavior in 6-month old infants
This study examined low-intensity physical activity (PA), sleep behavior (24-hour accelerometry), and growth in 22 6-month old infants. Relationships were assessed using bivariate correlations. Infants accumulating less ‘total’ sleep spent more time in low-intensity PA (r = −.524, p = .012). Those with less ‘nighttime’ sleep had greater nap frequency (r = −.460, p = .031), nap duration (r = −.529, p = .011) and weight-for-length z-scores (r = −.481, p = .024), but still accumulated less total sleep (r = .608, p = .003). These preliminary data highlight the importance...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - November 1, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Publication standards in infancy research: Three ways to make Violation-of-Expectation studies more reliable
Publication date: Available online 26 October 2018Source: Infant Behavior and DevelopmentAuthor(s): Paula Rubio-FernándezAbstractThe Violation-of-Expectation paradigm is a widespread paradigm in infancy research that relies on looking time as an index of surprise. This methodological review aims to increase the reliability of future VoE studies by proposing to standardize reporting practices in this literature. I review 15 VoE studies on false-belief reasoning, which used a variety of experimental parameters. An analysis of the distribution of p-values across experiments suggests an absence of p-hacking. However, there ar...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 27, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
33-month-old children succeed in a false belief task with reduced processing demands: A replication of Setoh et al. (2016)
Publication date: Available online 26 October 2018Source: Infant Behavior and DevelopmentAuthor(s): Stella S. Grosso, Tobias Schuwerk, Larissa J. Kaltefleiter, Beate SodianAbstractA recent low-inhibition false belief task showed a high success rate with 33-month-old children when response-generation demands were reduced [Setoh, Scott, & Baillargeon (2016). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(47), 13360–13365]. We found correct responding in 74% of N = 58 33-month-old children, replicating the original findings. Within the same sample, we compared this performance with performance in a concurrent meas...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 27, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Typologies of dyadic mother-infant emotion regulation following immunization
Publication date: November 2018Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 53Author(s): Penina M. Backer, Kelsey M. Quigley, Cynthia A. StifterAbstractMother-infant dyadic emotion regulation – the joint modulation of affective rhythms as interactive partners dynamically respond to each other across time – has been shown to promote social-emotional wellbeing both during and beyond infancy. Although contributions of dyadic regulation to self-regulatory development may particularly apparent during infant distress, studies have traditionally examined dyadic regulation in low-stress contexts. The present study addresses...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 21, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Reproducibility and a unifying explanation: Lessons from the shape bias
Publication date: Available online 19 October 2018Source: Infant Behavior and DevelopmentAuthor(s): Sarah C. Kucker, Larissa K. Samuelson, Lynn K. Perry, Hanako Yoshida, Eliana Colunga, Megan G. Lorenz, Linda B. SmithAbstractThe goal of science is to advance our understanding of particular phenomena. However, in the field of development, the phenomena of interest are complex, multifaceted, and change over time. Here, we use three decades of research on the shape bias to argue that while replication is clearly an important part of the scientific process, integration across the findings of many studies that include variation...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 20, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Different patterns of sensitivity differentially affect infant attention span
Publication date: November 2018Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 53Author(s): Jennifer L. Miller, Ellen Hurdish, Julie Gros-LouisAbstractWe exposed infants to different types of sensitive behavior to examine effects on infants’ attention. Results revealed infants changed their patterns of visual attention; infants had longer durations of sustained attention to toys, shorter durations to the social partner, and fewer attention shifts when interacting with a nonvocal social partner than when interacting with a vocal social partner. (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 16, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Prenatal neural responses to infant faces predict postpartum reflective functioning
Publication date: Available online 9 October 2018Source: Infant Behavior and DevelopmentAuthor(s): Helena J.V. Rutherford, Michael J. Crowley, Lucy Gao, Brianna Francis, Alysse Schultheis, Linda C MayesAbstractPregnancy is shaped by unfolding psychological and biological changes in preparation for parenthood. A growing literature has examined the postpartum maternal brain. However, few studies examine the maternal brain during pregnancy, and whether brain function in pregnancy may have implications for postpartum caregiving. Using event-related potentials, we examined the late positive potential (LPP) elicited by infant di...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 9, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The roles of item repetition and position in infants’ abstract rule learning
We examined 11- and 14- month-old infants’ learning and generalization of abstract repetition rules (“repetition anywhere,” Experiment 1 or “medial repetition,” Experiment 2) and ordering of specific items (edge positions, Experiment 3) in 4-item sequences. Infants were habituated to sequences containing repetition- and/or position-based structure and then tested with “familiar” vs. “novel” (random) sequences composed of new items. Eleven-month-olds (N = 40) failed to learn abstract repetition rules, but 14-month-olds (N = 40) learned rules under both conditions. In Experiment 3, 11-month-olds (N...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 4, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Action effects foster 11-month-olds’ prediction of action goals for a non-human agent
In this study, 11-month-olds showed equally fast predictive gaze shifts to a claw’s action goal when the grasping action was presented either with three agency cues (self-propelled movement, equifinality of goal achievement and a salient action effect) or with only a salient action effect, but infants showed tracking gaze when the claw showed only self-propelled movement and equifinality of goal achievement. The results suggest that action effects, compared to purely kinematic cues, seem to be especially important for infants' online processing of goal-directed actions. (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 4, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Two-year-olds’ executive functioning: The influence of task-specific vocabulary knowledge
This study investigated how the vocabulary used in explaining an EF task affects 2-year-olds’ performance. Experiment 1 used the standard instructions for the Reverse Categorization Task, in which children are asked to sort different-sized blocks into different-sized buckets according to one rule and then switch to a new rule. In Experiment 2, the task remained the same, but different instructions requiring less knowledge of size words were used. Children’s productive vocabulary was assessed in both experiments but was only correlated with task performance in Experiment 1. These results suggest that task-specific vocab...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - October 4, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Early life experiences: Meaningful differences within and between families
Publication date: Available online 10 September 2018Source: Infant Behavior and DevelopmentAuthor(s): Sophie von Stumm, Rachel M. LathamAbstractPrevious research has focused on differences in early life experiences that occur between families and their impact on children's development. However, less is known about the variations in early life experiences that occur within families. Here, 53 British mothers (mean age = 34.46 years; SD = 4.35) of newborn infants (mean age = 1.68 months, SD = 0.96) used a smartphone application (app) to repeatedly rate their wellbeing and support and to report their baby's and...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 12, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Associations of paternal postpartum depressive symptoms with infant development in a Chinese longitudinal study
This study examined paternal postpartum depression and its adverse impact on infants, and the possible mediating role of father-infant attachment in the link between fathers’ depressive symptoms and infants’ outcomes. Pregnant women and their partners were recruited from the antenatal clinics of two public hospitals in Hong Kong. Information about paternal and maternal depression, paternal-infant attachment, and infant development were collected at antenatal period, 6 weeks and 6 months postpartum. Linear regression was employed to examine risk factors for paternal depression symptoms, and mediation analysis was used t...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - September 12, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: August 2018Source: Infant Behavior and Development, Volume 52Author(s): (Source: Infant Behavior and Development)
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - August 24, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Exploring the morphological and emotional correlates of infant cuteness
Publication date: Available online 20 August 2018Source: Infant Behavior and DevelopmentAuthor(s): Mayra L. Almanza-Sepúlveda, Aya Dudin, Kathleen E. Wonch, Meir Steiner, David R. Feinberg, Alison S. Fleming, Geoffrey B. HallAbstractEthologists have observed that “baby schema” or infant cuteness is an adaptive protective mechanism ensuring the young’s survival. Past efforts to quantify cuteness have been restricted to line measurement techniques. We developed a novel data-driven approach to quantify infant cuteness into a single metric. Using the Psychomorph program, we delineated facial elements of 72 infant pictur...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - August 21, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Parental negative emotions are related to behavioral and pupillary correlates of infants’ attention to facial expressions of emotion
This study investigated the associations between infants’ attention to emotional faces and infants’ and parents’ negative emotions in a community sample. Infants’ (N = 57, Mage = 14.26 months) fixations and pupil responses to fearful, sad, angry versus happy and neutral faces were measured with an eye-tracker. Mothers’ and fathers’ negative emotions (negative affect, depression, and anxiety), and infants’ negative temperament were measured with questionnaires. Infants looked longer at fearful than happy or neutral faces, while they showed less pupil dilation to fearful than to happy or neutral faces. Higher l...
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - August 20, 2018 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
