Depression in mothers is consistently associated with reduced caregiving sensitivity and greater infant negative affect expression. The current article examined the real-time behavioral mechanisms underlying these associations using Granger causality time series analyses in a sample of mothers (N = 194; 86.60% White) at elevated risk for…

The secure base phenomenon was ascribed to changes in exploration observed during Ainsworth's Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), related to the quality of the attachment relationship. However, infant temperament was not taken into consideration. The current study aims to replicate Ainsworth's findings regarding infant exploration and attachment…

Independent locomotion is associated with a range of positive developmental outcomes, but unlike cognitive, linguistic, and social skills, acquiring motor skills requires infants to generate their own input for learning. We tested factors that shape infants' spontaneous locomotion by observing forty 12- to 22-month-olds (19 girls, 21 boys) during…

Caregivers' goals influence their interactions with their children. In this preregistered study, we examined whether directing parents to "teach" their baby versus "learn" from their baby influenced the extent to which they engaged in intrusive (e.g., controlling, adult-centered rather than child-centered), sensitive, warm, or…

As infants interact with the object world, they generate rich information about object properties and functions. Much of infant learning unfolds in the presence of caregivers, who talk about and act on the objects of infant play. Does mother joint engagement correspond to real-time changes in the complexity and duration of infant object…

In 'The role of play', the fifth article we are highlighting from the extensive "FORUM" archive available online, Maggie Gracie draws on material and observations she had collected during a year of study in an infant and reception class in the mid-1970s to develop ideas about the need to enable pupils to develop genuine autonomy of…

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 current study is the first to examine the role of exploration in play milestones development using a multi-measure micro-analytic approach. Fifteen infants, between the ages of 8 and 17 months, were observed in their natural home environment once a month for a one--hour session; their spontaneous mouthing and fingering and their play level…

This longitudinal study investigated parents' different pretend play behaviors (substitution, animation, and role enactment) to their infants during free play and the bidirectional links with infants' vocabulary development at 14 months (Time-1: N = 34, M[subscript age] = 14.23 months) and 20 months (Time-2: N = 34, M[subscript age] = 20.33…

Speech development occurs in highly variable environments; however, little is known about the effect of situational context on emerging infant vocalizations. At 4 time points (4, 6, 9, and 12 months), we longitudinally measured vocalizations of 104 White infant-caregiver dyads (41 girls) during three play contexts: book-sharing, toy play, and…

Young children engage with digital technologies from a very young age. Often this is considered detrimental to their social development as it is seen as a socially isolating experience. This paper presents the findings of an Australian Research Council funded research project that focused on what characterises infants and toddlers peer-to-peer…

Maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child clean-up task at 18 months and maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child free-play task at 18 months were tested as independent predictors of child internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, social competence, and language development at 24 months. Participants (n = 292 mothers)…

Most research on early language learning focuses on the objects that infants see and the words they hear in their daily lives, although growing evidence suggests that motor development is also closely tied to language development. To study the real-time behaviors required for learning new words during free-flowing toy play, we measured infants'…

Parents play an important role in children's language development. To our knowledge, no studies have compared fathers' and mothers' use of gestural and verbal communication in dyadic versus triadic contexts. This study aimed at analyzing similarities and differences in the bimodal communication of parents when they play alone with their infant and…

For the current study, a multi-measure, micro-analytic approach was used to prospectively explore the role of preliminary symbolic play with single and multi-objects in language milestone development and vice versa. Fourteen infants followed up in monthly one hour sessions between the ages of 8 and 16 months. Their spontaneous play acts and vocal…