Developmental psychology focuses on how psychological constructs change with age. In cognitive development research, however, the specifics of this emergence is often underspecified. Researchers often provisionally assume linear growth by including chronological age as a predictor in regression models. In this work, we aim to evaluate this…

Does knowledge of other people's minds grow from concrete experience to abstract concepts? Cognitive scientists have hypothesized that infants' first-person experience, acting on their own goals, leads them to understand others' actions and goals. Indeed, classic developmental research suggests that before infants reach for objects, they do not…

The current study is the first to examine the role of exploration in play milestones development using a multi-measure micro-analytic approach. Fifteen infants, between the ages of 8 and 17 months, were observed in their natural home environment once a month for a one--hour session; their spontaneous mouthing and fingering and their play level…

Over the past 50 years, scientists have made amazing discoveries about the origins of human language acquisition. Central to this field of study is the process by which infants' perceptual sensitivities gradually align with native language structure, known as "perceptual narrowing." Perceptual narrowing offers a theoretical account of…

Object play yields enormous benefits for infant development. However, little is known about natural play at home where most object interactions occur. We conducted frame-by-frame video analyses of spontaneous activity in two 2-h home visits with 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, and 23-month-old walking infants (N = 40; 21 boys; 75%…

Research has documented elevated experiences of racial discrimination among African American families, and its adverse impacts on their psychological well-being. However, most studies have investigated the experiences of and consequences for older children and adults. The goal of the current study was to examine the relations among mothers'…

Infants are born highly sensitive to the natural patterns found in languages. They use their perceptual sensitivity to acquire detailed information about the structure of languages in their environment. To date, most studies of infant perception and early language acquisition have investigated spoken/auditory languages and hearing infants (e.g.…

Several researchers have found that media exposure through books or electronic media contribute to preschoolers' development. However, research with behavioral measures and during the first years of life have not been carried out in Latin American contexts. The aim of the following research was to evaluate the relations between media exposure…

Over the last 2 centuries there has been a rapid increase in the proportion of children who grow up in cities. However, relatively little work has explored in detail the physiological and cognitive pathways through which city life may affect early development. To assess this, we observed a cohort of infants growing up in diverse settings across…