Two preferential-reaching experiments explored 5- and 7-month-olds' sensitivity to pictorial depth cues. In the first experiment, infants viewed a display in which texture gradients, linear perspective of the surface contours, and relative height in the visual field provided information that two objects were at different distances. Five- and…

Halberda (2003) demonstrated that 17-month-old infants, but not 14- or 16-month-olds, use a strategy known as mutual exclusivity (ME) to identify the meanings of new words. When 17-month-olds were presented with a novel word in an intermodal preferential looking task, they preferentially fixated a novel object over an object for which they already…

Infants (n = 24, mean age 13 months and n = 24, mean age 19 months) were tested on an extension of the method introduced by Tomasello and Haberl (2003) to examine the understanding of another person's interest in a novel object. Four objects were presented serially. For two objects, infants played with an experimenter. The infant played with one…

Like faces, bodies are significant sources of social information. However, research suggests that infants do not develop body representation (i.e., knowledge about typical human bodies) until the second year of life, although they are sensitive to facial information much earlier. Yet, previous research only examined whether infants are sensitive…

Behne, Carpenter, Call, and Tomasello (2005) showed that 9- to 18-month-olds, but not 6-month-olds, differentiated between people who were unwilling and unable to share toys. As the outcome of the two tasks is the same (i.e., the toy is not shared), the infants must respond to the different goals of the actor. However, visual habituation paradigms…

The present study examines coviewing of "Baby Mozart" by 6- to 18-month-old infants and their caregivers under naturalistic conditions. We had two questions. First, extending the method of Barr, Zack, Garcia, and Muentener (Infancy, 13 [2008], 30-56) to a younger population, we asked if age, prior exposure, and caregiver verbal input would predict…

Three developmental connectionist models simulate a purported shift from "featural" to "correlational" processing in infant categorization (models: Gureckis & Love, 2004/this issue; Shultz & Cohen, 2004/this issue; Westermann & Mareschal, 2004/this issue; empirical data: Cohen & Arthur, 2003; Younger, 1985; Younger & Cohen, 1986). In this article,…

Developmental studies of face processing have revealed age-related changes in how infants allocate neurophysiological resources to the face of a caregiver and an unfamiliar adult. We hypothesize that developmental changes in how infants interact with their caregiver are related to the changes in brain response. We studied 6-month-olds because this…