Infants' prelinguistic vocalizations reliably organize vocal turn-taking with social partners, creating opportunities for learning to produce the sound patterns of the ambient language. This social feedback loop supporting early vocal learning is well-documented, but its developmental origins have yet to be addressed. When do infants learn that…

This paper used longitudinal data from five studies conducted in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda to examine the links between family stimulation and early childhood development outcomes (N = 4904; M[subscript age] = 51.5; 49% girls). Results from random-effects and more conservative child-fixed effects models indicate that…

Doll play provides opportunities for children to practice social skills by creating imaginary worlds, taking others' perspectives, and talking about others' internal states. Previous research using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) found a region over the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) was more active during solo doll play…

Parents with fewer educational and economic resources (low socioeconomic-status, SES) tend to speak less to their children, with consequences for children's later life outcomes. Despite this well-established and highly popularized link, less research addresses why the SES "word gap" exists. Moreover, while research has assessed…

Coordinated attention between children and their parents plays an important role in their social, language, and cognitive development. The current study used head-mounted eye-trackers to investigate the effects of children's prelingual hearing loss on how they achieve coordinated attention with their hearing parents during free-flowing object…

Methods can powerfully affect conclusions about infant experiences and learning. Data from naturalistic observations may paint a very different picture of learning and development from those based on structured tasks, as illustrated in studies of infant walking, object permanence, intention understanding, and so forth. Using language as a model…

Object substitutions in play (e.g. using a box as a car) are strongly linked to language learning and their absence is a diagnostic marker of language delay. Classic accounts posit a symbolic function that underlies both words and object substitutions. Here we show that object substitutions depend on developmental changes in visual object…

Iconicity--resemblance between a symbol and its referent--has long been presumed to facilitate symbolic insight and symbol use in infancy. These two experiments test children's ability to recognize iconic gestures at ages 14 through 26 months. The results indicate a clear ability to recognize how a gesture resembles its referent by 26 months, but…

We investigated how 14-month-old infants know what others know. In two studies, an infant played with each of two objects in turn while an experimenter was present. Then the experimenter left the room, and the infant played with a third object with an assistant. The experimenter returned, faced all three objects, and said excitedly "Look! Can you…

Studying short-term dynamic processes and change mechanisms in interaction yields important knowledge that contributes to understanding long-term social development of children. In order to get a grip on this short-term dynamics of interaction processes, the authors made a dynamic systems model of dyadic interaction of children during one play…

The present study investigated the referential communication skills of children with imaginary companions (ICs). Twenty-two children with ICs aged between 4 and 6 years were compared to 22 children without ICs (NICs). The children were matched for age, gender, birth order, number of siblings, and parental education. All children completed the Test…

Evidence from theory-of-mind tasks suggests that young children have substantial difficulty thinking about multiple object identity and multiple versions of reality. On the other hand, evidence from children's understanding of pretense indicates that children have little trouble understanding dual object identity and counterfactual scenarios that…

Year-old infants' play was scored within and outside joint attention with mother and when alone for four levels of maturity: stereotypical, inappropriate relational, appropriate relational, functional. Maternal sensitivity within joint attention was rated on two measures: following infants' interests and scaffolding infants' activities. Infants'…

Prior research (DeLoache, Uttal & Rosengren, 2004) has documented that 18- to 30-month-olds occasionally make scale errors: they attempt to fit their bodies into or onto miniature objects (e.g. a chair) that are far too small for them. The current study explores whether scale errors are limited to actions that directly involve the child's…

The focus of the present study was the role of cultural learning in infants' acquisition of pretense actions with objects. In three studies, 18- and 24-month-olds (n= 64) were presented with novel objects, and either pretense or instrumental actions were demonstrated with these. When children were then allowed to act upon the objects themselves,…