Nicolás Alessandroni, Laia Fibla, Miranda Gómez Díaz, Xiaowei Gong, Hilary Killam, Melanie López Pérez, Charlotte Moore, Alexandra Paquette, Andrea Sander-Montant, Krista Byers-Heinlein
{"title":"Expanding the toolbox: 25 years of methodological change in infant research","authors":"Nicolás Alessandroni, Laia Fibla, Miranda Gómez Díaz, Xiaowei Gong, Hilary Killam, Melanie López Pérez, Charlotte Moore, Alexandra Paquette, Andrea Sander-Montant, Krista Byers-Heinlein","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102105","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102105","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The landscape of infant behavior research has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past quarter-century. In this special issue opinion article, we synthesize these methodological changes and their implications for developmental science. Drawing on a systematic comparative assessment of empirical articles published in <em>Infant Behavior and Development</em> in 2000 and 2024, we critically evaluate five key methodological dimensions: research contexts, sample and cell sizes, coding practices, data analysis techniques and statistical software, and open science practices. Our synthesis reveals how the field has expanded beyond traditional laboratory settings toward more diverse research environments, including remote and archival approaches that enhance ecological validity and sample diversity. We trace how sample sizes have nearly doubled and experimental cell sizes have increased 2.5-fold, strengthening statistical power and replicability. We examine the selective adoption of automated methodologies in domains like eye tracking and speech analysis, alongside the persistent value of manual coding for complex behaviors. We observe a transition from classical statistical methods to more nuanced analytical approaches, increasingly implemented in open source software, reflecting both technological capabilities and theoretical shifts toward capturing developmental complexity. Finally, we document the emergence of open science practices, which now appear in over a third of published studies. Throughout, we highlight how these methodological transformations reflect broader drivers: the replication crisis, technological innovations, and evolving theoretical perspectives. Looking forward, we offer a roadmap for methodological development that builds on these advances while addressing persistent challenges in the field.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102105"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144661977","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}
Taysa-Ja Newman , Philip McAdams , Nicola Yuill , Alice E. Skelton
{"title":"Sensitivity To natural scene statistics in infancy and its impact on development","authors":"Taysa-Ja Newman , Philip McAdams , Nicola Yuill , Alice E. Skelton","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102109","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102109","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Infant sensitivities for the statistical regularities found in their visual world are underexplored. From birth, infants are exposed to a complex visual experience with large variations in hues, textures, and forms. The extent of these visual properties means that infants must find a way to filter important information from irrelevant information, parsing visual statistics that aid in their learning of the world around them. Research has shown that infants are sensitive to some of the visual statistics of real and virtual everyday scenes (‘natural scenes’) such as colour distributions and also use these properties to facilitate actions such as target detection. These studies suggest that infants’ sensitivity to these statistics aids in creating a standardized model of their visual environment. Research has also found variations in the timeframes of when infants develop sensitivities to different natural scene statistics, with some sensitivities emerging later than others, prompting questions as to the methods and limitations behind infants’ perceptual learning. However, this area of research remains largely unexplored, and as such many questions remain unanswered. The current review investigates the existing literature from the past 25 years surrounding infant sensitivities to these natural scene statistics, how they use these statistics to find structure in their visual world now and into adulthood, and the effects that different environments’ characteristic visual statistics may have on their subsequent behaviour and development. We also propose directions for future work that will fill the gaps in this underdeveloped, but key, area of infant research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102109"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144655698","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}
Sehyun Ju , Samantha Iwinski , Qiujie Gong , Ledan Yang , Kelly K. Bost
{"title":"Longitudinal study of early bite profiles as predictors of eating behaviors in children: Food responsiveness and emotional overeating","authors":"Sehyun Ju , Samantha Iwinski , Qiujie Gong , Ledan Yang , Kelly K. Bost","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102108","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102108","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates eating profiles in toddlers, characterized by observed latency to first bite and bite frequency during naturalistic family mealtimes, and their predictive value for parent-reported food responsiveness and emotional overeating. The sample included 109 children and their families participating in a longitudinal birth cohort study in the United States. Video-recorded family mealtimes at 18–24 months were systematically coded for latency to first bite and bite speed. Food responsiveness and emotional overeating were measured using the Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire at 36 months. Latent Profile Analysis using Gaussian finite mixture modeling identified three profiles labeled as <em>fast-initiating, slow eaters; slow-initiating, slow eaters;</em> and <em>fast-initiating, fast eaters</em>. Linear regression revealed that early bite profiles predict food responsiveness and emotional overeating at 36 months. <em>Slow-initiating, slow eaters</em> exhibited significantly higher food responsiveness than <em>fast-initiating, slow eaters</em>, while <em>fast-initiating, fast eaters</em> and <em>slow-initiating, slow eaters</em> had significantly higher emotional overeating than <em>fast-initiating, slow eaters</em>. These findings highlight the potential for early interventions targeting children’s bite profiles to identify those at higher risk for dysregulated eating behaviors, thereby promoting healthier eating patterns.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102108"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144661975","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":"Neural correlates of false belief understanding in 33- to 36-month-old infants","authors":"Shuting Li, Jörg Meinhardt, Beate Sodian","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102106","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102106","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Very little research has addressed the neural correlates of false belief understanding in young children. Following up on a previous event-related potential (ERP) study examining false belief understanding in 4- to 6-year-old children, the present study grouped infants (<em>N</em> = 45, 33–36 months old) into passers and failers according to their behavioral performance on a low-demands false belief task. Their ERP responses to false belief and true belief conditions were examined in a novel ERP paradigm. The study found that a late positive waveform over the occipital electrode sites distinguished between the false belief and true belief conditions only in infants who passed the low-demands behavioral false belief task. In contrast, a late negative waveform over the frontocentral electrode sites consistently distinguished between the false belief and true belief conditions regardless of low-demands behavioral false belief task performance. These findings raise the possibility that a sensitive neural system supporting false belief understanding may emerge early in development. Specifically, the late positive waveform observed over the occipital electrode sites appears to be a potential neural marker for false belief understanding in infants.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102106"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144604701","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":"Using imitation to study long-term recall in infancy","authors":"Angela F. Lukowski , Ledan Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102107","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102107","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Significant advances have been made in our collective understanding of cognitive development more broadly, and recall in particular, over the past 25 years. Whereas early work established the conditions under which recall was apparent in the first years of life, more recent studies focus on social ecological factors that may promote or hinder recall. In this review paper, we first describe the elicited or deferred imitation paradigm and its variants. We then report on well-established experimental factors that impact long-term recall performance, including child age, sequence constraints, encoding manipulations, and the adult-provided supportive language in imitation tasks. We also discuss more recently identified contextual correlates, including infant language exposure and comprehension. We conclude with future directions, highlighting additional work needed on currently understudied contextual correlates of long-term recall, including sleep and cross-cultural variability in recall performance, along with providing recommendations to establish remote administration and scoring procedures that could be used by large-scale research collaboratives to further our understanding of cognitive development not only in small samples, but in infants around the world.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102107"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144604700","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":"Diverse language experiences in deaf infants and in hearing infants with deaf parents: 25 years of improved understanding and recognition","authors":"Evelyne Mercure , Rain Bosworth , Teodora Gliga","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102103","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102103","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Most infants first encounter language through the words spoken in their environment. However, for a smaller number of deaf and hearing infants, language can be presented in different sensory modalities, including a visual-manual signed language (e.g. American Sign Language - ASL or British Sign Language – BSL) and an auditory-oral spoken language (e.g. English). Language acquisition trajectories for children exposed to both signed and spoken language are less understood and less recognised. For hearing children with deaf parents using sign language, recent research suggests that they develop a special case of bilingualism – bimodal bilingualism - which offers some advantages in early communication skills. In deaf children, it has now been clearly demonstrated that early exposure to sign language brings about gains in both the spoken and signed modalities, suggesting an amodal impact of language experience in infancy. The present review presents progress made in the last 25 years in understanding the impact of sign language experience in infancy. It will discuss potential neurocognitive mechanisms by which learning gains in one language modality can be transferred to the other language modality. The research data collected so far leave several questions unanswered and suggest many avenues for future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102103"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144587556","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":"Continuity, discontinuity, and atypicality in early language acquisition","authors":"Tadashi Koyama","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102102","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102102","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Continuity and discontinuity during the development from infancy to later stages are central themes in developmental psychology. These concepts are particularly important for understanding and supporting language development in children with atypical language development. This review aimed to clarify future research issues on the early language acquisition process up to 36 months of age from the viewpoint of developmental continuity and discontinuity in early language acquisition. Recent studies on early language development support the concepts of both continuity and discontinuity, particularly in the relationship between early gestural development and later language acquisition, as well as in predicting delayed speech in children. However, focusing on 24 months of age, when the development of syntax typically begins, several studies have reported relationships between developmental domains such as gross motor and language. It is necessary to examine continuity and discontinuity in the early language acquisition process from an interdisciplinary perspective. Furthermore, it is important to consider both the speeding up and slowing down aspects of developmental trajectories in early language acquisition. Research on the language acquisition of late bloomers is important from the viewpoint of continuity and discontinuity from the prelinguistic period, domain relevance, and speed in cognitive development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102102"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144579531","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}
Eliza L. Nelson , Caroline Danforth , Amy W. Needham
{"title":"Infant reaching and grasping: Frameworks for testing developmental cascades","authors":"Eliza L. Nelson , Caroline Danforth , Amy W. Needham","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102104","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102104","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The goal of this review was to highlight discoveries on infant reaching and grasping from research published between 2000 and 2025. We structured the review on two examples from the last quarter century where researchers introduced new approaches for investigating developmental change in infants’ reaching and grasping from the perspective of developmental cascades—processes by which changes in one domain influence abilities within or outside that domain. In the first example, we looked at the “micro” level of dissecting the components of developmental change as measured with the experimental paradigm sticky mittens. In the second example, we zoomed out to the “macro” level to identify different trajectories of change over developmental time from infant handedness. In both, we observed how earlier experiences can lead to different skills later in infancy. These approaches illustrate how developmental scientists can begin to test developmental cascades at different levels of analysis, and these examples have broader implications for methodological and conceptual decisions that all infancy researchers must make. For the next quarter century, we outlined research directions aimed at mechanistic questions to further test how infants’ reaching and grasping experience influences downstream developmental outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102104"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144572071","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":"Emotion regulation in infancy through the lens of individual differences: Insights and future directions","authors":"Elizabeth B. daSilva","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102096","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102096","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Much of the research on infants’ emotion regulation has prioritized broad, group-based patterns over individual trajectories. Ignoring individual differences between infants can lead to incomplete or misleading conclusions about the development of self-regulation and may result in overgeneralizing findings that are not universally applicable. Over the past 25 years, increasing evidence indicates that infants vary considerably in their regulatory patterns, forming distinct subgroups shaped by behavioral, physiological, and temperamental factors. This review synthesizes key findings on the emergence of these subgroups across domains in the first year of life. Additionally, the review explores how individual differences in maternal behavior contribute to the development of emotion regulation in infants, both independently and through interactions with infant characteristics. The review concludes by outlining priorities for future research that will further contribute to understanding individual differences, including multimodal approaches, longitudinal studies, and broader family-system frameworks. By embracing an individual differences perspective, researchers can deepen our understanding of complexities of early emotion regulation and its long-term developmental implications.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102096"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144534403","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}
Kara Kern , Alex Claiborne , Filip Jevtovic , Breanna Wisseman , Dylan Steen , Cody Strom , Ashton Lilley , Edward Newton , James Devente , Steven Mouro , David Collier , Katrina D. Dubose , Amy Gross McMillan , Rachel Tinius , Swati Surkar , Linda E. May
{"title":"Exercise FITT-V during pregnancy: 1-month infant neuromotor outcomes","authors":"Kara Kern , Alex Claiborne , Filip Jevtovic , Breanna Wisseman , Dylan Steen , Cody Strom , Ashton Lilley , Edward Newton , James Devente , Steven Mouro , David Collier , Katrina D. Dubose , Amy Gross McMillan , Rachel Tinius , Swati Surkar , Linda E. May","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102069","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102069","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Background</h3><div>Despite decades of research documenting health benefits from exercise during pregnancy, it remains unknown how prenatal exercise affects infant neuromotor skill development.</div></div><div><h3>Objectives</h3><div>To examine the effects of exercise modes, and maternal exercise metrics; frequency, intensity, time, type, and volume (FITT-V) during pregnancy on infant gross motor skills. We hypothesized that 1 month old infants of mothers who exercised during pregnancy would exhibit more developed gross motor skills compared to infants of mothers who did not exercise during pregnancy. Further, we hypothesized that infant gross motor skills will be directly associated with maternal exercise frequency, volume, and duration.</div></div><div><h3>Materials & methods</h3><div>Healthy pregnant women between 18 and 40 years were randomized to one of four groups: aerobic, resistance, combination exercise, or no exercise. Infant neuromotor skills (n = 162) were measured at 1 month of age using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales, 2nd Edition (PDMS-2).</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>Locomotion subtest percentile for infants born to exercising mothers trended higher than infants of controls (p = .09), while exercise group allocation did not affect outcomes. Infants born to women who averaged > 4 METs (n = 35) exercise intensity during each session showed a higher overall Gross Motor Quotient (GMQ) percentile score (p = .02). CONCLUSION: While we found no relationship for maternal exercise frequency, volume or duration during pregnancy, exercise intensity shows an intensity-dependent association with increased locomotor skills in 1 month old infants.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"80 ","pages":"Article 102069"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144510976","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}