Means-end actions are an early-emerging form of problem solving. These actions require initiating initial behaviors with a goal in mind. In this study, we explored the origins of 8-month-old infants' means-end action production using a cloth-pulling training paradigm. We examined whether highlighting the goal (toy) or the means (cloth) was more…

This study employed a new "anticipatory intervening" paradigm to tease apart false belief and ignorance-based interpretations of 18-month-olds' helpful informing. We investigated in three experiments whether 18-month-old infants inform an adult selectively about one of the two locations depending on the adult's belief about which of the two…

The two aims of the study were (a) to determine when infants begin to use force intentionally to defend objects to which they might have a claim and (b) to examine the relationship between toddlers' instrumental use of force and their tendencies to make possession claims. Infants' and toddlers' reactions to peers' attempts to take their toys were…

How do young children direct their attention to other people in the natural world? Although many studies have examined the perception of faces and of goal-directed actions, relatively little work has focused on what children will look at in complex and unconstrained viewing environments. To address this question, we showed videos of objects,…

The effect of background television on 6- and 12-month-olds' attention during 20 min of toy play was examined. During the first or second half of the session, a clip from a variety of commonly available television programs was presented. The duration and frequency of infants' looks to the toys and to the television indicated that regardless of age…

Infant social inhibition is associated with increased risk for anxiety later in life. Although both genetic and environmental factors are associated with anxiety, little empirical work has addressed how developing regulatory abilities work with genetic and environmental risk to exacerbate or mitigate problem behaviors. The current study was aimed…

Ten dyads were observed biweekly from 10 to 24 months of infant age while playing together at home with a set of toys. The aim was to examine whether mother-infant coregulation changes over the second year of the infant's life and whether there are individual differences in that process. Normative trends as well as variability between and within…

Using a sequential touching procedure, we examined whether 18-month-olds could use different categorization strategies adaptively as a function of context. Infants were presented with test toys of land animals (quadrupeds), cars, and hybrids made by recombining car parts with animal parts. Infants who experienced a context emphasizing a taxonomic…

The present study investigated temporal associations between putative emotion regulation strategies and negative affect in 20-month-old toddlers. Toddlers' parent-focused, self-distraction, and toy-focused strategies, as well as negative affect, were rated on a second-by-second basis during laboratory parent-toddler interactions. Longitudinal…

The relations among infant anger reactivity, approach behavior, and frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry, and their relations to inhibitory control and behavior problems in early childhood were examined within the context of a longitudinal study of temperament. Two hundred nine infants' anger expressions to arm restraint were observed at 4…

In 2 experiments, the interplay of action perception and action production was investigated in 6-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, infants received 2 versions of a means-end task in counterbalanced order. In the action perception version, a preferential looking paradigm in which infants were shown an actor performing means-end behavior with an…

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…

This experiment explored whether or not 2-year-olds would engage in synchronic imitation with human hands. Sixty-four 24-month-old infants participated. In a test of synchronic imitation, infants were given a toy while a model simultaneously performed novel actions on an identical toy. Infants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 model conditions: a…

Infants follow the gaze of an individual with whom they are directly interacting by the end of the first year. By 18 months infants are capable of learning novel words in observational (or third-party) contexts (Floor & Akhtar, 2006). To examine third-party gaze following in 12- and 18-month-olds, the parent and experimenter engaged in a…

This study examined the hypothesis that toddlers interpret an adult's head turn as evidence that the adult was looking at something, whereas younger infants interpret gaze based on an expectancy that an interesting object will be present on the side to which the adult has turned. Infants of 12 months and toddlers of 24 months were first shown that…