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%…

The interaction of visual exploration and auditory processing is central to early cognitive development, supporting object discrimination, categorization, and word learning. Research has shown visual-auditory interactions to be complex, created from multiple processes and changing over multiple timescales. To better understand these interactions,…

Preterm birth poses a major public health challenge, with significant and heterogeneous developmental impacts. Latent profile analysis was applied to the National Institutes of Health Toolbox performance of 1891 healthy prematurely born children from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study (970 boys, 921 girls; 10.00 ± 0.61 years;…

The first months of life are critical for establishing neural connections relevant for social and cognitive development. Yet, the United States lacks a national policy of paid family leave during this important period of brain development. This study examined associations between paid leave and infant electroencephalography (EEG) at 3 months in a…

This study examined how timing (i.e., relative maturity) and rate (i.e., how quickly infants attain proficiency) of A-not-B performance were related to changes in brain activity from age 6 to 12 months. A-not-B performance and resting EEG (electroencephalography) were measured monthly from age 6 to 12 months in 28 infants and were modeled using…

This study evaluated the impact of a parenting intervention on children's cognitive and socioemotional development in a group of caregivers and their 21-to-28-month-old children in a low-income South African township. A randomized controlled trial compared an experimental group (n = 70) receiving training in dialogic book-sharing (8 weekly group…

Efficient attention control is fundamental for infant cognitive development, but its early precursors are not well understood. This study investigated whether dyadic visual attention during parent-infant interactions at 5 months of age predicts the ability to control attention at 11 months of age (N = 55). Total duration of mutual gaze (MG) was…

This study examined associations between caregiver talk and language skills in full term (FT) and preterm (PT) children (n = 97). All-day recordings of caregiver-child interactions revealed striking similarities in amount of caregiver talk heard by FT and PT children. Children who heard more caregiver talk at 16 months demonstrated better…

This study investigated maternal prenatal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) intake and infant cognitive development at 22 months. Estimates for second- and third-trimester maternal DHA intake levels were obtained using a comprehensive Food Frequency Questionnaire. Infants (n = 67) were assessed at 22 months on a novel object search task. Mothers'…

Infants imitate others' individual actions, but do they also replicate others' joint activities? To examine whether observing joint action influences infants' initiation of joint action, forty-eight 18-month-old infants observed object demonstrations by 2 models acting together (joint action), 2 models acting individually (individual action), or 1…

Cognitive impairment is common among children born very preterm (VPT), yet little is known about how this risk changes over time. To examine this issue, a regional cohort of 110 VPT (= 32 weeks gestation) and 113 full-term (FT) born children was prospectively assessed at ages 4, 6, 9, and 12 years using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of…

Infants' visual short-term memory (VSTM) for simple objects undergoes dramatic development: Six-month-old infants can store in VSTM information about only a simple object presented in isolation, whereas 8-month-old infants can store information about simple objects presented in multiple-item arrays. This study extended this work to examine…

Infants' ability to mentally track the orientation of an object during a hidden rotation was investigated (N = 28 in each experiment). A toy on a turntable was fully covered and then rotated 90°. When revealed, the toy had turned with the turntable (probable event), remained at its starting orientation (improbable event in Experiment 1), or…

Sixty infants divided evenly between 5 and 7 months of age were tested for their knowledge of object continuity versus discontinuity with a predictive tracking task. The stimulus event consisted of a moving ball that was briefly occluded for 20 trials. Both age groups predictively tracked the ball when it disappeared and reappeared via occlusion,…

A growing body of research indicates connections exist between action, perception, and cognition in infants. In this study, associated changes between sitting ability and upright face processing were tested in 111 infants. Using the visual habituation "switch" task (C. H. Cashon & L. B. Cohen, 2004; L. B. Cohen & C. H. Cashon, 2001), holistic…