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Theyer A, Davidson C, Amaireh G, Wijeakumar S. Association between caregiver and infant visual neurocognition. Infant Behav Dev 2024; 76:101975. [PMID: 38986217 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2024.101975] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2024] [Revised: 05/31/2024] [Accepted: 07/02/2024] [Indexed: 07/12/2024]
Abstract
Previous work has shown that caregiver attention shapes visual cognition in infants through dyadic interactions. Is this association measurable when visual cognition is objectively measured in caregivers and infants using comparable experimental paradigms? In the current study, we presented infants (N = 86) and caregivers (N = 78) with age-specific variants of the same preferential looking visual cognition task to investigate whether caregiver visual cognition was associated with their infants' visual cognition. In each trial of the task, two side-by-side flashing displays of coloured shapes were presented. On the 'unchanging' side, the colours of the shapes remained the same. On the 'changing' side, the colour of one shape changed after each flash. Load was varied by changing the number of shapes across trials (low, medium, and high loads). We extracted looking dynamics using video recordings and brain function using functional near-infrared spectroscopy as both infants and caregivers engaged with the task. Change preference (CP) score, which represented the amount of time spent looking at the changing side divided by the total looking duration, showed a load-dependent modulation for both infants and caregivers. Both groups showed the highest CP scores at the low load. Further, higher caregiver CP scores was associated with higher infant CP scores at the low load. Both infants and caregivers engaged canonical regions of the fronto-parietal network involved in visual cognition. Critically, higher caregiver CP scores were associated with greater activation in the left superior parietal lobule in younger infants, a region involved in allocating visuo-spatial attention and working memory maintenance. Further, there was spatial overlap between performance-dependent regions in the right parietal cortex in caregivers and younger infants. Our findings provide first evidence of a heritability-related visual neurocognitive association between caregivers and their children in the first year of life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aimee Theyer
- School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD Nottingham, England, UK
| | - Christina Davidson
- School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD Nottingham, England, UK
| | - Ghada Amaireh
- School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD Nottingham, England, UK
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Ying Z, Karshaleva B, Deák G. Infant sensorimotor decoupling from 4 to 9 months of age: Individual differences and contingencies with maternal actions. Infant Behav Dev 2024; 76:101957. [PMID: 38823341 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2024.101957] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2023] [Revised: 04/29/2024] [Accepted: 05/08/2024] [Indexed: 06/03/2024]
Abstract
Triadic interactions, wherein infants coordinate attention between caregivers and objects of shared focus, are believed to facilitate infant learning, and emerge around 9-12 months of age (Carpenter et al., 1998). Sensorimotor decoupling, wherein infants look at one percept while manipulating another, or use each hand for different actions, was hypothesized (de Barbaro et al., 2016) to contribute to triadic skills by allowing infants to smoothly shift attention between objects and social partners. We explored the development of Hand-Hand (H-H) and Gaze-Hand (G-H) decoupling in 38 infants at 4, 6, and 9 months. We also tested contingencies between maternal behaviors and infant decoupling: i.e., whether decoupling events followed maternal object-directed actions. Both overall and contingent infant decoupling increased from 4 to 9 months. Decoupling rates (both G-H and H-H) predicted variance in infants' fine and gross motor scores. Contingent G-H decoupling at 6 months predicted BSID-III communication scores at 18 months. Thus the development of infant sensorimotor skills, including decoupling, allows infants to smoothly shift attention and participate in triadic interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhuojun Ying
- Department of Cognitive Science, University of California - San Diego, USA
| | - Betina Karshaleva
- Department of Cognitive Science, University of California - San Diego, USA
| | - Gedeon Deák
- Department of Cognitive Science, University of California - San Diego, USA.
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Monroy C, Yu C, Houston D. Parent-child sensorimotor coordination in toddlers with and without hearing loss. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2024:17470218241253277. [PMID: 38659184 DOI: 10.1177/17470218241253277] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/26/2024]
Abstract
Infants experience the world through their actions with objects and their interactions with other people, especially their parents. Prior research has shown that school-age children with hearing loss experience poorer quality interactions with typically hearing parents, yet little is known about parent-child interactions between toddlers with hearing loss and their parents early in life. In the current study, we used mobile eye-tracking to investigate parent-child interactions in toddlers with and without hearing loss (mean ages: 19.42 months, SD = 3.41 months). Parents and toddlers engaged in a goal-directed, interactive task that involved inserting coins into a slot and required joint coordination between the parent and the child. Overall, findings revealed that deaf toddlers demonstrate typical action skills in line with their hearing peers and engage in similar interactions with their parents during social interactions. Findings also revealed that deaf toddlers explored objects more and showed more temporal stability in their motor movements (i.e. less variation in their timing across trials) than hearing peers, suggesting further adaptability of the deaf group to their atypical sensory environment rather than poorer coordination. In contrast to previous research, findings suggest an intact ability of deaf toddlers to coordinate their actions with their parents and highlight the adaptability within dyads who have atypical sensory experiences.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Chen Yu
- Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
| | - Derek Houston
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
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Gönül G, Kammermeier M, Paulus M. What is in an action? Preschool children predict that agents take previous paths and not previous goals. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13466. [PMID: 38054272 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13466] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2021] [Revised: 11/17/2023] [Accepted: 11/27/2023] [Indexed: 12/07/2023]
Abstract
Developmental science has experienced a vivid debate on whether young children prioritize goals over means in their prediction of others' actions. Influential developmental theories highlight the role of goal objects for action understanding. Yet, recent infant studies report evidence for the opposite. The empirical evidence is therefore inconclusive. The current study advanced this debate by assessing preschool children's verbal predictions of others' actions. In five experiments (N = 302), we investigated whether preschool children and adults predict agents to move towards their previous goal (that is, show goal-related predictions) or predict agents to move along the same movement path that they pursued before. While Experiments 1a, 1b and 1c presented young children and adults with animated agents, Experiments 2a and 2b presented participants with human grasping action. An integrative analysis across experiments revealed that children were more likely to predict the agent to move along the same movement path, Z = -4.574, p ≤ 0.0001 (r = 0.304). That is, preschool children were more likely to predict that agents would move along the same trajectory even though this action would lead to a new goal object. Thus, our findings suggest that young children's action prediction relies on the detection of spatial and movement information. Overall, we discuss our findings in terms of theoretical frameworks that conceive of action understanding as an umbrella term that comprises different forms and facets in which humans understand others' actions. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We investigated whether preschool children predict agents to move towards their previous goal or to move along the same movement path that they pursued before. Unlike adults, preschool children predicted that agents would move along the same trajectory even though this action would lead to a new goal. Adults' goal-based predictions were affected from contextual details, whereas children systematically made path-based predictions. Young children's action prediction relies on the detection of spatial and movement information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gökhan Gönül
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchatel, Switzerland
| | - Marina Kammermeier
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
| | - Markus Paulus
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
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Cimino S, Cerniglia L. Breastfeeding Apps: A Descriptive Report. Behav Sci (Basel) 2023; 13:801. [PMID: 37887451 PMCID: PMC10604718 DOI: 10.3390/bs13100801] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/08/2023] [Revised: 09/20/2023] [Accepted: 09/26/2023] [Indexed: 10/28/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Women are increasingly using breastfeeding apps to facilitate and organize breastfeeding; however, no study has so far focused on maternal psychopathological risk and on the quality of dyadic exchanges in this field. AIM AND METHODS This preliminary, descriptive study aimed at evaluating levels of psychopathological symptoms (through the SCL-90/R) and for the quality of the interactions they have with their children during feeding (through the SVIA) in mothers who use breastfeeding apps with different grades of engagement. RESULTS Data analyses showed that mothers with a mild use of the apps present a higher quality of dyadic interactions during feeding and lower psychopathological risk. CONCLUSIONS The cross-sectional and descriptive nature of this study does not allow any causal conclusions. However, results suggest that the higher the engagement and use of breastfeeding apps, the lower the quality of feeding interactions and the higher the maternal psychopathological risk.
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Affiliation(s)
- Silvia Cimino
- Department of Dynamic, Clinical and Health Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Luca Cerniglia
- Faculty of Psychology, International Telematic University Uninettuno, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 39, 00186 Rome, Italy
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Karmazyn-Raz H, Smith LB. Discourse with Few Words: Coherence Statistics, Parent-Infant Actions on Objects, and Object Names. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 2022; 30:211-229. [PMID: 37736139 PMCID: PMC10513098 DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2022.2054342] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/16/2021] [Accepted: 03/05/2022] [Indexed: 09/23/2023]
Abstract
The data for early object name learning is often conceptualized as a problem of mapping heard names to referents. However, infants do not hear object names as discrete events but rather in extended interactions organized around goal-directed actions on objects. The present study examined the statistical structure of the nonlinguistic events that surround parent naming of objects. Parents and 12-month -old infants were left alone in a room for 10 minutes with 32 objects available for exploration. Parent and infant handling of objects and parent naming of objects were coded. The four measured statistics were from measures used in the study of coherent discourse: (1) a frequency distribution in which actions were frequently directed to a few objects and more rarely to other objects; (2) repeated returns to the high-frequency objects over the 10-minute play period; (3) clustered repetitions, continuity, of actions on objects; and (4) structured networks of transitions among objects in play that connected all the played-with objects. Parent naming was infrequent but related to the statistics of object-directed actions. The implications of the discourse-like stream of actions are discussed in terms of learning mechanisms that could support rapid learning of object names from relatively few name-object co-occurrences.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Linda B Smith
- Indiana University, Bloomington, US
- University of East Anglia, Norfolk, UK
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Murray L, Rayson H, Ferrari PF, Wass SV, Cooper PJ. Dialogic Book-Sharing as a Privileged Intersubjective Space. Front Psychol 2022; 13:786991. [PMID: 35310233 PMCID: PMC8927819 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.786991] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2021] [Accepted: 01/17/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Parental reading to young children is well-established as being positively associated with child cognitive development, particularly their language development. Research indicates that a particular, "intersubjective," form of using books with children, "Dialogic Book-sharing" (DBS), is especially beneficial to infants and pre-school aged children, particularly when using picture books. The work on DBS to date has paid little attention to the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the approach. Here, we address the question of what processes taking place during DBS confer benefits to child development, and why these processes are beneficial. In a novel integration of evidence, ranging from non-human primate communication through iconic gestures and pointing, archaeological data on Pre-hominid and early human art, to experimental and naturalistic studies of infant attention, cognitive processing, and language, we argue that DBS entails core characteristics that make it a privileged intersubjective space for the promotion of child cognitive and language development. This analysis, together with the findings of DBS intervention studies, provides a powerful intellectual basis for the wide-scale promotion of DBS, especially in disadvantaged populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lynne Murray
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
| | - Holly Rayson
- Institute des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod (CNRS), Bron, France
| | - Pier-Francesco Ferrari
- Institute des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod (CNRS), Bron, France
- Dipartimento di Neuroscienza, Universitá di Parma, Parma, Italy
| | - Sam V. Wass
- School of Psychology, University of East London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Peter J. Cooper
- School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
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