Relations between maternal sensitivity and physiological reactivity to infant crying were examined using measures of heart rate (HR) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in 49 mothers of second-born infants. Using the Ainsworth Sensitivity Scale, an independent assessment of maternal sensitivity was made during maternal free play and bathing of…

Newborn infants preferentially orient to familiar over unfamiliar speech sounds. They are also better at remembering unfamiliar speech sounds for short periods of time if learning and retention occur after a feed than before. It is unknown whether short-term memory for speech is enhanced when the sound is familiar (versus unfamiliar) and, if so,…

Three laboratory experiments on social referencing examined whether infants' tendencies to look at and use positive information from the experimenter could be interpreted from a perspective of novelty or expertise. In Study 1, novelty was manipulated. Forty-eight 12-month-old infants participated. In a between-subject design, a more novel or a…

In the present study, we examined if young infants can extract information regarding the directionality of biological motion. We report that 6-month-old infants can differentiate leftward and rightward motions from a movie depicting the sagittal view of an upright human point-light walker, walking as if on a treadmill. Inversion of the stimuli…

Infants' response to maternal mirroring was investigated in 4-month-old infants. Mother-infant dyads participated in the still face and replay tasks. Infants were grouped by those whose mothers did and did not mirror their behavior in the interactive phases of the tasks. In the still face task, infants with maternal mirroring showed more…

A notable omission in studies of developmental links to early nutritional deficiencies is infant attachment. In those few studies investigating associations between infant nutrition and attachment, nutrition was defined solely by physical growth, and infants had moderate-severe growth retardation. In this study, we utilized multiple markers of…

Previous research using the name-based categorization task has shown that 20-month-old infants can simultaneously learn 2 words that only differ by 1 consonantal feature but fail to do so when the words only differ by 1 vocalic feature. This asymmetry was taken as evidence for the proposal that consonants are more important than vowels at the…

In laboratory studies of social referencing, infants as young as 12 months have been reported to prefer looking at the experimenter over the caregiver for clarifying information. From an expertise perspective, such behavior could be interpreted as if the infant seeks information from others and can discriminate between persons who have or do not…

Relations between infant-mother attachment security at 15 months and infants' (N = 206) joint attention behaviors (a) with an experimenter at 8 and 15 months, and (b) with their mothers at 15 months were investigated. No concurrent or longitudinal relations were observed between attachment security and infants' tendency to respond to an…

Over the first years of life, infants gradually develop the ability to retrieve their memories across cue and contextual changes. Whereas maturational factors drive some of these developments in memory ability, experiences occurring within the learning event may also impact infants' ability to retrieve memories in new situations. In 2 experiments…

This study investigated the relation between maternal contingent responsiveness and 4- and 5-month-old infants' (N = 64) social expectation behavior in a still-face procedure. Mothers were asked to interact with their infants for 2 min (interactive phase), remain still-faced for 1 min (still-face phase), and resume interaction for 2 min. Mother…

This experiment investigated the impact of the path of approach of an object, from head on versus from the side, and the type of imminent contact with that object, a hit versus a miss, on young infants' perceptions of object looming. Consistent with earlier studies, we found that 4- to 5-month-old infants do indeed discriminate hits versus misses.…

This study examined 6-month-old infants' abilities to use the visual information provided by simulated self-movement through the world, and movement of an object through the world, for spatial orientation. Infants were habituated to a visual display in which they saw a toy hidden, followed by either rotation of the point of observation through the…

Do infants show distinct negative facial expressions for different negative emotions? To address this question, European American, Chinese, and Japanese 11-month-olds were videotaped during procedures designed to elicit mild anger or frustration and fear. Facial behavior was coded using Baby FACS, an anatomically based scoring system. Infants'…

Using four-dimensional (4D) ultrasonography, arm and hand movements toward the face were examined in 27 human fetuses at 19 to 35 weeks of gestation, thereby enabling the continuous monitoring of their faces and other surface features such as the extremities. More than half of the observed arm movements resulted in the hand touching the mouth…