Children raised in chaotic households show affect dysregulation during later childhood. To understand why, we took day-long home recordings using microphones and autonomic monitors from 74 12-month-old infant-caregiver dyads (40% male, 60% white, data collected between 2018 and 2021). Caregivers in low-Confusion Hubbub And Order Scale (chaos)…

Emotions remain something of a mystery for most of us even when we accept their centrality to development in general and to infancy in particular. I make 2 arguments in this paper. One: that the most crucial thing about emotions is that they allow mutuality of engagement with other emotional beings--not only evoking responses, but also provoking…

Maternal depression is a global public health concern with far-reaching impacts on child development, yet our understanding of mechanisms remains incomplete. This study examined whether parenting mediates the association between maternal depression and child outcomes. Participants included 841 rural Pakistani mother-child dyads (50% female).…

The second year of life is a time of formative developmental change as basic behavioral systems undergo rapid integration and expansion. This study examined the developmental trajectories of social-emotional (SoE) outcomes and the effects of infant sex and household chaos (HC) on the development of SoE outcomes across the second year of life. The…

Maternal singing is considered vital to infant well-being. This study focuses on vocal emotion expressions in infant-directed singing among mothers in war conditions. It examines the questions: (a) how traumatic war events and mental health problems are associated with the content and valence of vocal emotion expressions and (b) how these emotion…

Parenting is a key factor for the development of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Therefore, early intervention programs should target parenting behaviors to improve children's developmental outcomes. The present study analyzed the effect of parental behaviors and other family factors on the cognitive and linguistic…

There is no relationship more vital than the one a child shares with their primary caregivers early in development. Yet many children worldwide are raised in settings that lack the warmth, connection, and stimulation provided by a responsive primary caregiver. In this study, we used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), a…

Early interaction is a dynamic, emotional process in which infants influence and are influ­enced by caregivers and peers. This chapter reviews new developments in behavior imag­ing--objective quantification of human action--and computational approaches to the study of early emotional interaction and development. Advances in the automated…

We investigated the continuity and stability of imitative episodes (IMEs) to shed light on the nature of early infant imitative ability. We observed and analyzed interactions of 27 mother-infant pairs as they played in their homes at one and 10 months. We coded the initiator, frequency, duration, kind, structure, and affect of IMEs. At 10 months,…

The author argues for a functionalist understanding of autism. Instead of explaining autism as an inborn or otherwise neurological deficit, autism may be understood as a functional disturbance: the impairment of the abstract attitude. The abstract attitude is a concept developed by German neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein (1987-1965) to describe…

Infants attend daycare at an early age, which raises questions about children's sensitivity to the childcare environment and the role of different temperamental traits in their development in the early years. In a two-year longitudinal study with parent- and caregiver-reported data for Dutch children at the age of 1 and 2 years (120 children from…

Caregivers' sensitive responses to infant cry have long-term consequences for adaptive child development. Although mounting evidence suggests that parents who experience high emotionality to infant cry respond less sensitively to infant cry, there is a dearth of knowledge on potential mechanisms underlying individual differences in emotionality to…

Maternal gatekeeping is characterized by the extent to which mothers engage in behaviors that ultimately serve to inhibit (i.e., gate close) or encourage (i.e., gate open) father involvement in childrearing. This study considered direct and indirect associations between observed and reported maternal gatekeeping and children's social-emotional…

Infants who stay in emergency shelters with their families are most likely to demonstrate resilience despite homelessness if they experience positive, nurturing relationships with their parents. We discuss the strengths and challenges of infants experiencing family homelessness as well as intervention and research evaluation in those contexts.…

This study tested whether maternal responsiveness may buffer the child to the effects of maternal depressive symptoms on DNA methylation of "NR3C1," "11ß-HSD2," and neuroendocrine functioning. DNA was derived from buccal epithelial cells and prestress cortisol was obtained from the saliva of 128 infants. Mothers with depressive…