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Beebe B, Abdurokhmonova G, Lee SH, Dougalis G, Champagne F, Rauh V, Algermissen M, Herbstman J, Margolis AE. Mother-infant self- and interactive contingency at four months and infant cognition at one year: A view from microanalysis. Infant Behav Dev 2024; 74:101920. [PMID: 38237345 PMCID: PMC10956369 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101920] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/25/2023] [Revised: 11/02/2023] [Accepted: 12/31/2023] [Indexed: 03/17/2024]
Abstract
Although a considerable literature documents associations between early mother-infant interaction and cognitive outcomes in the first years of life, few studies examine the contributions of contingently coordinated mother-infant interaction to infant cognitive development. This study examined associations between the temporal dynamics of the contingent coordination of mother-infant face-to-face interaction at 4 months and cognitive performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development at age one year in a sample of (N = 100) Latina mother-infant pairs. Split-screen videotaped interactions were coded on a one second time base for the communication modalities of infant and mother gaze and facial affect, infant vocal affect, and mother touch. Multi-level time-series models evaluated self- and interactive contingent processes in these modalities and revealed 4-month patterns of interaction associated with higher one-year cognitive performance, not identified in prior studies. Infant and mother self-contingency, the moment-to-moment probability that the individual's prior behavior predicts the individual's future behavior, was the most robust measure associated with infant cognitive performance. Self-contingency findings showed that more varying infant behavior was optimal for higher infant cognitive performance, namely, greater modulation of negative affect; more stable maternal behavior was optimal for higher infant cognitive performance, namely, greater likelihood of sustaining positive facial affect. Although interactive contingency findings were sparse, they showed that, when mothers looked away, or dampened their faces to interest or mild negative facial affect, infants with higher 12-month cognitive performance were less likely to show negative vocal affect. We suggest that infant ability to modulate negative affect, and maternal ability to sustain positive affect, may be mutually reinforcing, together creating a dyadic climate that is associated with more optimal infant cognitive development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beatrice Beebe
- Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA.
| | - Gavkhar Abdurokhmonova
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
| | - Sang Han Lee
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10032, USA; The Nathan Kline Institute, Orangeburg, NJ, 10962, USA, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10032, USA
| | - Georgios Dougalis
- Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA
| | - Frances Champagne
- Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA
| | - Virginia Rauh
- Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
| | - Molly Algermissen
- Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
| | - Julie Herbstman
- Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
| | - Amy E Margolis
- Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA
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Chan KCJ, Shaw P, Westermann G. The sound of silence: Reconsidering infants' object categorization in silence, with labels, and with nonlinguistic sounds. Cognition 2023; 237:105475. [PMID: 37148638 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105475] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/16/2021] [Revised: 01/20/2023] [Accepted: 04/28/2023] [Indexed: 05/08/2023]
Abstract
A large body of research based on a specific stimulus set (dinosaur/fish) has argued that auditory labels and novel communicative signals (such as beeps used in a communicative context) facilitate category formation in infants, that such effects can be attributed to the auditory signals' communicative nature, and that other auditory stimuli have no effect on categorization. A contrasting view, the auditory overshadowing hypothesis, maintains that auditory signals disrupt processing of visual information and, therefore, interfere with categorization, with more unfamiliar sounds having a more disruptive effect than familiar ones. Here, we used the dinosaur/fish stimulus set to test these contrasting theories in two experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 17), we found that 6-month-old infants were able to form categories of these stimuli in silence, weakening the claim that labels facilitated their categorization in infants. These results imply that prior findings of no categorization of these stimuli in the presence of nonlinguistic sounds must be due to disruptive effects of such sounds. In Experiment 2 (N = 17), we showed that familiarity modulated the disruptive effect of nonlinguistic sounds on infants' categorization of these stimuli. Together, these results support the auditory overshadowing hypothesis and provide new insights into the interaction between visual and auditory information in infants' category formation.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Phoebe Shaw
- Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
| | - Gert Westermann
- Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom.
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Nina Banerjee P, McFadden K, Shannon JD, Davidson LL. Preterm Birth and Other Measures of Infant Biological Vulnerability: Associations with Maternal Sensitivity and Infant Cognitive Development. Matern Child Health J 2023; 27:698-710. [PMID: 36759432 DOI: 10.1007/s10995-023-03590-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/18/2023] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Low birth weight (LBW), biological vulnerability that includes preterm birth (PTB) and small for gestational age (SGA), is associated with reduced maternal sensitivity ("making accurate inferences about an infant's physical and emotional needs and responding appropriately") and impaired infant cognitive development. However, research does not examine if preterm birth, SGA, or both drive these associations. This study separated these measures of biological vulnerability to examine associations of LBW, PTB, and SGA with maternal sensitivity and infant cognitive development (controlling for maternal depression, breastfeeding, and demographic covariates). METHODS The sample included 6900 9-month-old infants from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort and used birth certificate data, maternal interviews, assessments of maternal sensitivity and infant cognitive development. Multiple linear regressions examined LBW, PTB, and SGA associations with concurrent measures of maternal sensitivity and infant cognition. RESULTS Of the biological vulnerabilities, preterm birth had the strongest negative association with maternal sensitivity (F1,6450 = 29.48 versus 15.33 and 5.51, ps < .001) and infant cognitive development (F1,6450) = 390.65 versus 248.02 and 14.43, ps < .001). In the final regression model, preterm birth and maternal sensitivity were uniquely associated with infant cognitive development (R2 = .05, p < .001), after controlling for maternal depression, breastfeeding, and demographics. CONCLUSION In this nationally representative infant sample infants, PTB had a stronger negative association with both maternal sensitivity and infant cognitive development in comparison to SGA or LBW. The LBW designation combines infants born preterm with SGA infants, potentially minimizing differences in developmental outcomes of PTB and SGA infants.
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Affiliation(s)
- P Nina Banerjee
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, NY, NY, USA.
| | - Karen McFadden
- Department of Early Childhood Education/Art Education Department, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA
| | - Jacqueline D Shannon
- Department of Early Childhood Education/Art Education Department, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA
| | - Leslie L Davidson
- Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, NY, NY, USA
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Collins-Jones LH, Cooper RJ, Bulgarelli C, Blasi A, Katus L, McCann S, Mason L, Mbye E, Touray E, Ceesay M, Moore SE, Lloyd-Fox S, Elwell CE. Longitudinal infant fNIRS channel-space analyses are robust to variability parameters at the group-level: An image reconstruction investigation. Neuroimage 2021; 237:118068. [PMID: 33915275 PMCID: PMC8285580 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118068] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/01/2020] [Revised: 03/12/2021] [Accepted: 04/08/2021] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
First investigation of validity of longitudinal infant channel-space fNIRS analysis. Novel image reconstruction analysis conducted. Variability in array position is dominant factor driving different inferences. Channel-space fNIRS analyses robust to implicit assumptions at group-level. Hope to encourage more widespread use of image reconstruction in infant analyses.
The first 1000 days from conception to two-years of age are a critical period in brain development, and there is an increasing drive for developing technologies to help advance our understanding of neurodevelopmental processes during this time. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has enabled longitudinal infant brain function to be studied in a multitude of settings. Conventional fNIRS analyses tend to occur in the channel-space, where data from equivalent channels across individuals are combined, which implicitly assumes that head size and source-detector positions (i.e. array position) on the scalp are constant across individuals. The validity of such assumptions in longitudinal infant fNIRS analyses, where head growth is most rapid, has not previously been investigated. We employed an image reconstruction approach to analyse fNIRS data collected from a longitudinal cohort of infants in The Gambia aged 5- to 12-months. This enabled us to investigate the effect of variability in both head size and array position on the anatomical and statistical inferences drawn from the data at both the group- and the individual-level. We also sought to investigate the impact of group size on inferences drawn from the data. We found that variability in array position was the driving factor between differing inferences drawn from the data at both the individual- and group-level, but its effect was weakened as group size increased towards the full cohort size (N = 53 at 5-months, N = 40 at 8-months and N = 45 at 12-months). We conclude that, at the group sizes in our dataset, group-level channel-space analysis of longitudinal infant fNIRS data is robust to assumptions about head size and array position given the variability in these parameters in our dataset. These findings support a more widespread use of image reconstruction techniques in longitudinal infant fNIRS studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Liam H Collins-Jones
- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK; DOT-HUB, Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
| | - Robert J Cooper
- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK; DOT-HUB, Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
| | - Chiara Bulgarelli
- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
| | - Anna Blasi
- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
| | - Laura Katus
- Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | - Samantha McCann
- Department of Women and Children's Health, Kings College London, London, UK
| | - Luke Mason
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College, London, UK
| | - Ebrima Mbye
- MRC Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | - Ebou Touray
- MRC Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | - Mohammed Ceesay
- MRC Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | - Sophie E Moore
- Department of Women and Children's Health, Kings College London, London, UK; MRC Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
| | - Sarah Lloyd-Fox
- Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | - Clare E Elwell
- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
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Abstract
Mental rotation (MR) is the ability to imagine the appearance of an object from a different perspective. This ability is involved in many human cognitive and behavioral activities. We discuss studies that have examined MR in infants and its development across the first year after birth. Despite some conflicting findings across these studies, several conclusions can be reached. First, MR may be available to human infants as young as 3 months of age. Second, MR processes in infancy may be similar or identical to MR processes later in life. Third, there may be sex differences in MR performance, in general favoring males. Fourth, there appear to be multiple influences on infants' MR performance, including infants' motor activity, stimulus complexity, hormones, and parental attitudes. We conclude by calling for additional research to examine more carefully the causes and consequences of MR abilities early in life.
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Affiliation(s)
- David S Moore
- Pitzer College and Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, United States.
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Vouloumanos A. Voulez-vous jouer avec moi? Twelve-month-olds understand that foreign languages can communicate. Cognition 2018; 173:87-92. [PMID: 29358091 PMCID: PMC5801064 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.01.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/10/2017] [Revised: 12/21/2017] [Accepted: 01/04/2018] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Abstract
Infants understand that speech in their native language allows speakers to communicate. Is this understanding limited to their native language or does it extend to non-native languages with which infants have no experience? Twelve-month-old infants saw an actor, the Communicator, repeatedly select one of two objects. When the Communicator could no longer reach the target but a Recipient could, the Communicator vocalized a nonsense phrase either in English (infants' native language), Spanish (rhythmically different), or Russian (phonotactically different), or hummed (a non-speech vocalization). Across all three languages, native and non-native, but not humming, infants looked longer when the Recipient gave the Communicator the non-target object. Although, by 12 months, infants do not readily map non-native words to objects or discriminate most non-native speech contrasts, they understand that non-native languages can transfer information to others. Understanding language as a tool for communication extends beyond infants' native language: By 12 months, infants view language as a universal mechanism for transferring and acquiring new information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Athena Vouloumanos
- Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, United States.
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Abstract
The paper is a reply to commentaries to "Activity theories and the Ontology of Psychology: Learning from Danish and Russian Experiences" (Mammen and Mironenko 2015). At the same time it is an attempt to reply to more general issues raised by the commentators and an attempt to further develop some general ideas from our paper with a focus on the introduction of the new analytical concepts sense and choice categories. These concepts have been elaborated in an axiomatic frame in (Mammen 2016) and the present paper is thus also pointing forwards to that and supporting it with examples from research on adult human relations of love and affection and on infant cognitive development. A few examples from myth and literature are referred to also. The ambition is to introduce new analytical tools across schools and domains of psychology which open for theoretical inclusion of new phenomena and re-structuring of well-known ones. The hope is to surmount some problems, as e.g. the dilemma between dualism and reductionism, which have been obstacles in the search for conceptual and methodological coherence in psychology. In the first place the hope is also to sharpen the analytical, critical and practical potential of psychology as a science. The ambition is not, here and now, to develop a comprehensive general theory as a container for the huge amount of empirical results collected using very heterogeneous criteria for what belongs to the domain of psychology and very heterogeneous conceptual frames. Here we still need some patience following the lesson from natural science, step by step including new domains as the conceptual and practical frames are expanding, but on the other hand not excluding anything apriori.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jens Mammen
- Niels Bohr Professorship Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.
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