Exposure to communicative gestures, through their parents' use of gestures, is associated with infants' language development. However, the mechanisms supporting this link are not fully understood. In adults, sensorimotor brain activity occurs while processing communicative stimuli, including both spoken language and gestures. Using…

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…

Imitation requires the imitator to solve the correspondence problem--to translate visual information from modelled action into matching motor output. It has been widely accepted for some 30 years that the correspondence problem is solved by a specialized, innate cognitive mechanism. This is the conclusion of a poverty of the stimulus argument,…

Skilled behavior requires a balance between previously successful behaviors and new behaviors appropriate to the present context. We describe a dynamic field model for understanding this balance in infant perseverative reaching. The model predictions are tested with regard to the interaction of two aspects of the typical perseverative reaching…

Mirror neurons are increasingly recognized as a crucial substrate for many developmental processes, including imitation and social learning. Although there has been considerable progress in describing their function and localization in the primate and adult human brain, we still know little about their ontogeny. The idea that mirror neurons result…

These experiments explored the role of prior experience in 12- to 18-month-old infants' tool-directed actions. In Experiment 1, infants' use of a familiar tool (spoon) to accomplish a novel task (turning on lights inside a box) was examined. Infants tended to grasp the spoon by its handle even when doing so made solving the task impossible (the…

Evaluated psychological mechanisms underlying imitation of facial actions in 40 newborn infants. Results showed imitation of head movement and a tongue-protrusion gesture. Subjects imitated from memory after displays had stopped. (RJC)

Conservation of weight is known to be achieved at a conceptual level at about 9 years of age. Infant behavior seems to indicate that between 6 and 18 months of age they develop a sensorimotor form of conservation. (Author/RC)

Three experiments examined whether newborns are sensitive to an operant-conditioning task involving unprepared relation between a response and a stimuli. Found that newborns tested under the High-Amplitude Sucking procedure were involved in an operant-learning situation, in that an increase in sucking rates could be obtained after an auditory…

Infants' exploration of their environment has been considered by Piaget and others to provide a vehicle for cognitive development. Little research, however, has examined in detail what infants actually do while exploring or how exploratory behavior is related to other aspects of cognitive functioning. The present investigation was designed to…

Investigates the effects of variable-practice versus constant-practice on the learning of novel motor schemata in 36 children ranging in age from two years one month to four years. (Author/SS)

Presents a mathematical model of the development of reaching behavior in infants, along with the results of two experiments that showed that infant movements could be decomposed into the underlying submovements using a principled method; and the angular error in infant reaches matches the form and magnitude of error assumed by the model. (MDM)

Examined infants' ability to retrieve an object from atop a slightly larger object. Found that even 5-month-olds could retrieve objects close in size and fully contiguous with their bases when demands on reaching skill were reduced. Proposed that when they fail this task, it is because they lack the skill to reach the top object without…

FINDINGS WERE REPORTED ON THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THOSE SKILLS NECESSARY FOR VISUALLY DIRECTED REACHING. THE SKILLS INVOLVED WERE THE ORIENTING, ACCOMMODATING, AND PURSUIT RESPONSES OF THE EYES, ALL OF WHICH ARE ACHIEVED DURING THE FIRST HALF-YEAR OF LIFE. SEVERAL EXPERIMENTAL CHANGES WERE MADE TO THE ENVIRONMENT OF A GROUP OF…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO FIND OUT WHETHER SOCIAL CLASS DIFFERENCES IN INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT ARE PRESENT IF (1) CHILDREN FROM SOCIALLY DISORGANIZED SLUM FAMILIES ARE COMPARED WITH CHILDREN FROM STABLE, LOW INCOME AND MIDDLE INCOME FAMILIES, (2) THE PIAGET OBJECT SCALE, A NEW MEASURE OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT BASED ON PIAGET'S SENSORIMOTOR…