Infant Behavior & Development最新文献

{"title":"Before first words: Infants’ ability to map words to goals","authors":"Youjung Choi ,&nbsp;Eun Young Kim ,&nbsp;Hyuna Lee ,&nbsp;Hyun-joo Song","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102154","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102154","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>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.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102154"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","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":"Understanding early aggression: Empirically derived guidance on type, frequency, and severity in infants and toddlers","authors":"Tamara Del Vecchio ,&nbsp;Cassandra Cheeseman ,&nbsp;William Chaplin ,&nbsp;Amy M. Smith Slep","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102161","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102161","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Aggressive behavior in toddlers is a significant concern for parents and caregivers. Although aggressive behaviors commonly occur during early development, research suggests that early aggression, particularly when frequent, may signal risk for adverse developmental outcomes. Therefore, understanding how specific aggressive behaviors and their frequencies contribute to overall aggression severity warrants attention. In this study, we employed item response theory (IRT) to examine how both the type and frequency of reported aggressive behaviors relate to underlying (latent) aggression severity. Mothers of 4- to 24-month-old infants and toddlers (<em>n</em> = 874) reported the frequency of 10 physically aggressive behaviors using the Child Behavior Record (CBR). Most children displayed some form of aggression, with “pull hair” and “hit or smack” as the most frequently endorsed behaviors, whereas “hurt animals” was the least frequently endorsed behavior. IRT analyses revealed that “push or shove” was the best indicator for distinguishing toddlers with high and low underlying levels of aggression. For most behaviors, scores above the 95th percentile typically corresponded to high-frequency occurrence (most days to many times each day), whereas scores above the 68th percentile corresponded to lower frequency patterns (some days or higher). However, these thresholds varied by behavior type, with some behaviors (e.g., hurting animals) indicating higher severity even at low frequencies. The results of this investigation provide an empirically derived framework for understanding how both the type and frequency of aggressive behaviors relate to overall severity, potentially informing early identification and intervention strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102161"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145415916","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":"The association of maternal parenting stress, responsive caregiving and social-emotional competence of children aged 12–36 months: Undirected and Bayesian network analyses","authors":"Fengyi Ren ,&nbsp;Chenying Yue ,&nbsp;Mengyu Bao ,&nbsp;Mengyao Qin ,&nbsp;Xin Liu ,&nbsp;Lei Sheng ,&nbsp;Xiaoyan Liu ,&nbsp;Jing Zhao ,&nbsp;Xinxia Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102162","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102162","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Maternal parenting stress and responsive caregiving are closely associated with social-emotional competence development in children. However, the underlying mechanisms during early childhood remain unclear. Moreover, a detailed map of these associations at the dimension level would be particularly useful for targeted interventions. In this study, information on social-emotional competence of children aged 12–36 months, maternal parenting stress and responsive caregiving was assessed using validated questionnaires completed by mothers (n = 408). Mediation analysis, undirected network analysis, and Bayesian network analysis were performed to examine the associations between maternal parenting stress, responsive caregiving and children’s social-emotional competence, at both variable and dimension levels. The results of undirected network analysis revealed that “promotion of cognitive and emotional development” dimension of responsive caregiving exhibited the highest centrality, while “responsiveness” and “promotion of cognitive and emotional development” of responsive caregiving, along with “mastery motivation” in children’s social-emotional competence were the key bridge nodes within the networks. Mediation analysis showed that responsive caregiving significantly mediated the association between parenting stress and children’s social-emotional competence. Consistently, Bayesian analysis showed that “parent-child dysfunctional interaction” of parenting stress had the highest predictive priority in the network, which could affect children’s social-emotional competence directly and indirectly through multidimensions of responsive caregiving. These findings highlight the complex relationships between parenting stress, responsive caregiving, and social-emotional competence development during early childhood, and provide evidence that “parent-child dysfunctional interaction” dimension in parenting stress, “promotion of cognitive and emotional development” dimension in responsive caregiving may serve as potential intervention targets to improve children’s development, which may have implications for early identification, screening and intervention.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102162"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145507666","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":"2025-12-01","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}

{"title":"Investigating the effects of age and autonomous locomotion on infant location use during the first year","authors":"Alicia L. Springfield ,&nbsp;Do Kyeong Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102155","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102155","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigated the influence of age and autonomous locomotion on infants’ use of physical spaces during the first year of life. A total of 18 healthy infants (8 male, 10 female) were observed longitudinally in their homes from an average starting age of 2.77 months through 12 months. Monthly, naturalistic video recordings captured approximately 30 min of uninterrupted spontaneous play per infant, with the researcher acting as a passive observer. Continuous coding quantified the frequency and duration of infants’ use of distinct locations (e.g., floor, crib, caregiver). Results revealed that infants experienced comparable affordances across households, validating true behavioral variation rather than differential access. Location frequency did not vary with age, but crawling infants visited more locations than pre-crawlers. Time in restrictive locations decreased with age, while floor time increased, particularly before crawling onset. Ultimately, developmental changes were characterized by reduced time in restrictive locations and greater time on the floor, with total frequency of explorations more closely tied to locomotor status than chronological age.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102155"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145266641","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":"2025-12-01","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":"Broadening the lens: How 25 years of prospective longitudinal studies have reshaped infant neurodevelopment in the majority world","authors":"Laura Katus ,&nbsp;Sarah Lloyd-Fox","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102128","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102128","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Since the turn of the 21st century, advances in longitudinal research have underscored the critical importance of investing in early childhood development. Longitudinal neuroimaging, in particular, offers a powerful means of capturing within-person changes in infant brain development over time, rather than relying solely on age-based normative comparisons. Yet despite this progress, longitudinal infant neuroimaging studies, especially in Majority World contexts, remain the exception rather than the norm. As a result, opportunities to intervene during the first 1000 days, a crucial window for neurodevelopment, are often missed. Building on foundational work in Jamaica and Romania, recent studies in The Gambia, India, Brazil, South Africa and Bangladesh have begun to establish scalable, longitudinal metrics of neurodevelopmental change that can be implemented across diverse study sites. These approaches hold promise not only for integration into large, representative cohort studies, but potentially into standard healthcare practice, laying the groundwork for identifying infants who may benefit most from early intervention, particularly given that many neuroimaging biomarkers emerge before 12 months of age. There have also been promising advances in interventions targeting both psychosocial and biological sources of early adversity to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes for at-risk infants. Looking ahead, the full integration of neural markers into intervention studies across Majority World contexts will be essential to ensuring that all children, regardless of geography, have the opportunity to thrive.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102128"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895837","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":"Learning to move, moving to learn: A quarter century of insights into infant motor development","authors":"Ravid-Roth Tal ,&nbsp;Kunde Wilfried ,&nbsp;Jaffe-Dax Sagi ,&nbsp;Eitam Baruch","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102131","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102131","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Over the past quarter century, the field of infant motor development has undergone a profound conceptual shift from viewing motor behavior as a biologically preprogrammed sequence to understanding it as a dynamic, emergent process shaped by interaction, feedback, and prediction. This review traces that evolution across three key eras: the rise of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) in the 2000s, which emphasized real-time coordination across bodily and environmental systems, the developmental cascades framework of the 2010s, which demonstrated how early motor milestones shape broader developmental trajectories, and the emergence of predictive, mechanistic models in the 2020 s, inspired by advances in artificial intelligence and robotics. Building on this trajectory, we propose a unifying framework termed Reinforcement from Sensorimotor Predictability (RSP, which posits that infants repeat actions not because they are goal-directed, but because those actions produce consistent and expected feedback. We present preliminary findings from a gaze-contingent eye-tracking study, along with a large-scale longitudinal project that applies machine learning to track sensorimotor trajectories in early infancy. Together, these lines of work suggest that predictability itself may serve as an intrinsic reinforcer, thus laying the groundwork for learning, agency, and the emergence of intentional behavior.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102131"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144893650","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":"2025-12-01","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":"What have we learned about infant visual attention in the first 25 years of the 21st century?","authors":"Brianna K. Hunter ,&nbsp;Erim Kızıldere ,&nbsp;Shannon M. Klotz ,&nbsp;Christian M. Nelson ,&nbsp;Julie Markant ,&nbsp;Lisa M. Oakes","doi":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102135","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102135","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the primary view of infant visual attention development focused on a transition across the first postnatal year from being stimulus-driven to goal-driven, reflecting a broader shift from subcortical to cortical control. This perspective was supported by decades of infant looking-time studies. However, our understanding of infant attention has significantly evolved over the past 25 years, shaped by both theoretical advancements and new technological and methodological tools. Researchers now understand that attention development reflects multiple interacting systems that have cascading effects across time. The availability of infant-suitable eye-tracking methods have allowed researchers to consider multiple aspects of attention by precisely measuring <em>when</em> and <em>where</em> infants look, emerging quantitative models of stimulus saliency and computational models of the visual system have deepened our understanding of bottom-up and top-down influences on infant attention, and new methods to evaluate infants’ egocentric views have allowed researchers to measure attention in naturalistic contexts. Thus, these innovations allowed us to address questions that were unthinkable 25 years ago. Here, we discuss how these advances have transformed our understanding of infant attention development and outline key directions for future research, paving the way for even more exciting discoveries in the next 25 years.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48222,"journal":{"name":"Infant Behavior & Development","volume":"81 ","pages":"Article 102135"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145008568","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}