Infant Behavior & Development最新文献

{"title":"Before first words: Infants' ability to map words to goals.","authors":"Youjung Choi, Eun Young Kim, Hyuna Lee, Hyun-Joo Song","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102154","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study investigated preverbal infants' ability to associate novel words with referent objects. Forty-eight infants, aged 9 and 12 months, repeatedly observed an actor utter a novel word and then grasp one of two objects during the training trials. In the test trial, both age groups looked at the target object when she repeated the same word and directed their gaze to the non-target object when she uttered a different word. These results provide evidence that the foundations of novel word-object associations emerge before the onset of verbal communication.</p>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"102154"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145245692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early contributions of observed and parent-reported gesture to language development in children enrolled in early intervention","authors":"Makenzy S. Turner,&nbsp;Lisa K. Boyce,&nbsp;Avery A. Briggs,&nbsp;Audrey C. Juhasz","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102152","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102152","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Early gesture use has been shown to be predictive of later vocabulary development. Children at-risk for language impairments often use fewer gestures as toddlers than typically developing children. A deeper understanding of the nuances of gesture use in communication could aid in intervention efforts for children at risk for language delays. In the present study, 83 mother-child dyads were recruited from early intervention programs to describe early child gesture behaviors and investigate the influence of early gestures on later language development. Deictic and conventional gesture types were measured by parent report and observational frequency during play. Parent report and observed gesture variables were moderately correlated. Results indicate that 25-month gesture uniquely contributes to 36-month language, above and beyond control variables 25-month language, parent responsiveness, and household income. Specifically, parent report of child deictic gesture and observed conventional gesture were statistically significant predictors of 36-month language. Our findings support previous research documenting the importance of gesture in early language development. Encouraging parents to recognize and respond to gestures may be an effective intervention strategy to increase opportunities for positive parent-child communication with children at-risk for language delays.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102152"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145220311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring size-action and number-action associations in infancy","authors":"Gisella Decarli ,&nbsp;Ludovica Veggiotti ,&nbsp;Maria Dolores de Hevia","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102153","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102153","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the last decades, a growing body of research has assessed the link between numerical and action processing. However, this relationship has not been widely explored in the early stages of development. In this study, we aimed to investigate the number-action mapping during infancy with a novel action and to extend previous research by examining both size-action and quantity-action mappings. In the context of our study, 'size' is related to the perceptual attribute of how big or small an object appears and 'quantities' are connected to the numerical aspect, representing the number of items in a set. Using the habituation technique, 7-month-old infants were presented with videos of a character performing mouth openings directed towards objects of different sizes (Experiment 1; N = 40; 14 females) or quantities (Experiment 2; N = 40; 18 females). The findings suggest that infants are sensitive to the congruency of the pairings, highlighting the early presence of both number-action and size-action mappings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102153"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145208059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Humour from 12 to 36 months: Insights into children’s socio-cognitive and language development","authors":"Chiara Mazzocconi ,&nbsp;Béatrice Priego-Valverde","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102129","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102129","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The relationship between laughter, humour, and socio-cognitive development in infants has attracted scholarly attention, yet structured longitudinal studies remain sparse. This study examines humour appreciation and production in four North American children from the Providence Corpus (Demuth et al., 2006). We annotated 30 min of naturalistic mother–child interactions at six-month intervals (12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months). We identify 271 humorous episodes following two criteria (Archakis and Tsakona, 2005): (1) the presence of laughter and (2) the identification of an incongruity, i.e. <em>Script Opposition</em> (SO) (GTVH, Attardo (2001)). Each episode was analysed for SO type — im/possible, ab/normal, or non/actual—following Hempelmann and Ruch (2005) hierarchical framework. To explore the developmental relevance, we propose a classification of SOs by knowledge Domains: Natural World &amp; Objects, Social-sphere, and Metalinguistic-sphere.</div><div>Findings reveal distinct SO and Domain distributions between mothers and children, developmental trajectories in SOs and Domains, and interactions between them. Between 12 and 30 months, children favoured humourous episodes involving multiple SOs, suggesting a need for multiple cues to interpret mothers’ humorous intent, potentially influencing maternal behaviour. Notably, our results contribute, together with previous studies, in refining McGhee (1979) humour developmental stages, showing that some types of humour emerge earlier than previously postulated. This study provides a detailed investigation of humour in child development from 12 to 36 months, illustrating how humour production and perception reflect cognitive, pragmatic, and linguistic development and offer insights into children’s knowledge acquisition — insights often challenging to access through experimental testing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102129"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145158337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Infants’ attraction to infant vocalizations – A catalyst for infant development","authors":"Linda Polka ,&nbsp;M. Fernanda Alonso-Arteche ,&nbsp;Nicola K. Phillips ,&nbsp;Samin Moradi ,&nbsp;Lucie Ménard ,&nbsp;Matthew Masapollo","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102150","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102150","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Infant vocalizations play a key role in infant behavior and development, yet we know very little about how infants perceive speech signals with infant vocal properties. In this perspective paper, we summarize recent developmental studies capitalizing on technical breakthroughs in speech synthesis that have allowed for rigorous exploration of this topic. The findings indicate that infants prefer to listen to speech signals with vocal resonances that specify a small, infant-sized vocal tract; this preference is robust and distinct in some ways from infants’ attraction to infant-directed speech. This <em>infant talker bias</em> may support infants’ speech recognition skills and there is growing evidence that it is also tied to infants’ own emerging vocal production abilities. These findings further validate prominent views of speech development, including the articulatory filter and the analysis-by-synthesis hypotheses. Related work in our lab shows that adults also display a strong attraction to infant vowel sounds, adding weight to calls for an expanded and multimodal infant schema. Converging evidence that both infants and adults find infant vocalizations appealing also provides critical support for the fitness-signaling perspective on infant endogenous vocalization. We argue that the infant talker bias has a positive impact on multiple levels, shaping receptive, expressive, and motivational aspects of infant development. The infant talker bias also plays a central role in caregiving behaviors and infant-directed speech. The perceptual potency of infant speech is a catalyst for infant development and also for meaningful and innovative research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102150"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145118048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring associations between maternal mental health and infant regulatory behaviors at 6 months in the home environment: Zooming in on maternal anxiety","authors":"Gianina Pérez ,&nbsp;Annie Aitken ,&nbsp;Maggie Zhang ,&nbsp;Moriah E. Thomason ,&nbsp;Natalie H. Brito","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102151","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102151","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Maternal mental health during the perinatal period has been linked to the development of infant emotion regulation capacity, largely through its impact on caregiver-infant interactions during the first year of life. The majority of studies have focused on the effects of maternal depression, even though maternal anxiety is more prevalent and its effects on infant outcomes are less well understood. The current study aims to 1) explore differences in infant affect and regulatory behaviors across two commonly implemented infant stress-induction paradigms and 2) evaluate the differential effects of depression and anxiety on infant regulatory behaviors. Six-month-old infants and their mothers (N = 126) completed two tasks remotely in the home: the Arm Restraint task and the Still-Face Paradigm. Maternal depression and anxiety symptoms were measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) subscales. Within-person results indicated no significant associations among infant regulatory behaviors nor infant reactivity across the two paradigms. Additionally, no significant associations were found between maternal mental health and infant regulatory behaviors during the Still-Face Paradigm. However, higher EPDS composite scores were associated with fewer infant avoidance behaviors during the Arm Restraint task, and this result was driven by items on the anxiety subscale. These findings suggest that infant regulatory behaviors may differ depending on task used and may also be influenced by subclinical levels of maternal anxiety, but not maternal depression.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102151"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145096415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rethinking the study of newborn sociality: Challenges and opportunities","authors":"Elizabeth A. Simpson","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102149","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102149","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Growing empirical evidence from the past quarter century reveals surprising sociality in newborns—infants in the first 28 postnatal days—including their ability to elicit and sustain contingent interactions with mutual gaze, social smiling, and sensitively timed, speech-like vocalizations. Newborns seem to have communicative expectations and behave as if they predict others’ goal-directed actions. Despite these discoveries, I review key barriers to progress in newborn developmental science. First, newborn social behavior research has almost exclusively focused on “average” development—based primarily on White, wealthy, English-speaking, Western, populations—treating interindividual differences as noise rather than meaningful, variability. Focusing almost exclusively on averages, especially with small sample sizes, ignores interindividual differences and hinders discoveries. Second, there are few studies of newborn sociality beyond the first postnatal week. In part, this gap in our understanding may be due to, and a consequence of, the mischaracterizations of newborns’ behaviors as passive, limited, disorganized, and low-level reflexes that are subcortically driven. Finally, researchers often assume that newborns’ behaviors are largely independent of experience. To the contrary, newborns’ need for nearly continuous social contact provides them with rich social learning opportunities, which have been shown to have lasting impacts on their development. Given the uniqueness and plasticity of this period, and their high vulnerability, developmental scientists are doing newborns a disservice by neglecting to characterize their social repertoires within and across diverse populations. Awareness of newborns’ social capacities will facilitate a more objective, accurate view of their social potential.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102149"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145092804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Infant long-term memory: The last quarter century and the next","authors":"Kelsey Davinson ,&nbsp;Amy E. Learmonth ,&nbsp;Kimberly Cuevas","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102136","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102136","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Over the last quarter century, research on infant long-term memory has explored the complex, nuanced ways infants remember and how early memories shape interactions with the world. Pioneering investigations in the 1950s and 1960s revolutionized the study of infant cognition and memory. By 2000, foundational properties of infant memory were established via preferential looking, imitation, and operant conditioning paradigms. In the years since, research has advanced understanding of how infants encode, consolidate, and retrieve information across diverse situations. This body of work has revealed that infants possess memory capacities once thought to emerge later in development and that experience shapes both the duration and flexibility of memory. Systematic investigations of reminders have established the necessary and sufficient conditions for retrieval, emphasizing the roles of context, cue, and timing. Advances in behavioral and neuroimaging research, including sleep-based paradigms, have provided insights into memory consolidation during infancy. Recent studies have also broadened the scope of inquiry to include early learning and retention across various media, such as picture books, television, and touchscreens. However, debate continues regarding the nature of infant memory and whether different types of memory follow distinct developmental trajectories. This review outlines future research directions, including how intertwined learning, memory, and attention processes influence one another and are shaped by the dynamic and evolving niches that infants inhabit. Despite major progress, important questions remain unresolved, including the characterization and fate of our earliest memories.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102136"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145082060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Empathy development from birth to three: Advances in knowledge from 2000 to 2025","authors":"Maayan Davidov ,&nbsp;Ronit Roth-Hanania ,&nbsp;Yael Paz ,&nbsp;Tal Orlitsky ,&nbsp;Florina Uzefovsky ,&nbsp;Carolyn Zahn-Waxler","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102144","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102144","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Empathic abilities serve important functions in social life, supporting the formation and maintenance of social bonds and motivating people to help others. Studying the early development of empathy is valuable, both for advancing theoretical understanding of empathy and for designing interventions to promote it. The past 25 years have seen increased interest in studying empathy development from birth to three, leading to substantial advancements in knowledge and theory, as well as to some ongoing debate. Here we review these developments. First, we provide an integrative overview of the main bottom-up and top-down processes involved in empathy, and the different responses they can yield. We then review accumulated knowledge regarding each of these component/subtypes of empathy during infancy and early childhood, by addressing: (i) The early development of vicarious emotional arousal; (ii) Cognitive empathy – understanding others’ emotions; (iii) When does other-oriented empathy emerge? An ongoing theoretical debate is presented, including the main points of disagreement and critical evaluation of empirical evidence; (iv) Development of more sophisticated forms of concern; and (v) Individual differences in early empathy. We conclude with a summary and important challenges and open questions for future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102144"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145082091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A qualitative exploration of parents’ experiences of infant and toddler sleep and feeding during the United Kingdom COVID-19 lockdown(s)","authors":"Georgia Cook ,&nbsp;Anna Joyce ,&nbsp;Chris Robus ,&nbsp;Cristina Costantini","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102134","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102134","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>COVID-19 restrictions had a significant impact on family life, including daily activities and routines. This study aimed to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s sleep and feeding behaviours, through undertaking reflexive thematic analysis of parents' open-text box responses to survey questions related to their child’s sleep and feeding practices during COVID-19 restrictions. Six hundred and ninety one parents of children aged 0–24 months old who were living in the United Kingdom completed an online questionnaire between 14th December 2020 and 15th January 2021. Results suggested that the pandemic resulted in specific contemporaneous changes to feeding and sleep practices. Specifically, for feeding there were positives around an extension to breastfeeding but this was alongside a negative perception of increased breastfeeding demand. For sleep practices, parents reported primarily negative implications of poorer child sleep and an increase in reactive bedsharing. Overall there were some positive implications on general practices which impacted both sleep and feeding, including providing the opportunity for parents to make beneficial adjustments such as to their routines. However, there were also clear negative implications around practical challenges and a lack of formal and informal help and support. This is the first study to explore the impact of the pandemic and its associated restrictions (which offered a unique snapshot in time, unable to be experimentally replicated) on infant and toddler sleeping and feeding practices. Findings have implications beyond the pandemic as they provide an illustration of the ways in which parents, if afforded with favourable circumstances such as additional time, flexibility, a reduction in perceived pressure and social stigma may seek to change their child’s sleeping and feeding practices. In addition, specific child sleep and feeding behaviours which parents struggled with and may benefit from additional help and support in a post-pandemic context to contribute to children’s development and well-being are highlighted.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102134"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145008561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}