Suchergebnisse

AbstractHumans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality. Despite the importance of both of these early social skills—attending to faces and attending to the eyes—surprisingly little is known about how they interact. We used eye tracking to explore whether eye contact influences infants' face detection. Longitudinally, we examined 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐month‐olds' (N = 65) visual scanning of complex image arrays with human and animal faces varying in eye contact and head orientation. Across all ages, infants displayed superior detection of faces with eye contact; however, this effect varied as a function of species and head orientation. Infants were more attentive to human than animal faces and were more sensitive to eye and head orientation for human faces compared to animal faces. Unexpectedly, human faces with both averted heads and eyes received the most attention. This pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following—the ability to look where another individual looks—which begins to develop around this age. Infants may be especially interested in averted gaze faces, providing early scaffolding for joint attention. This study represents the first investigation to document infants' attention patterns to faces systematically varying in their attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that infants develop early, specialized functional conspecific face detection.

AbstractOver half of US children are enrolled in preschools, where the quantity and quality of language input from teachers are likely to affect children's language development. Leveraging repeated objective measurements, we examined the rate per minute and phonemic diversity of child and teacher speech‐related vocalizations in preschool classrooms and their association with children's end‐of‐year receptive and expressive language abilities measured with the Preschool Language Scales (PLS‐5). Phonemic diversity was computed as the number of unique consonants and vowels in a speech‐related vocalization. We observed three successive cohorts of 2.5–3.5‐year‐old children enrolled in an oral language classroom that included children with and without hearing loss (N = 29, 16 girls, 14 Hispanic). Vocalization data were collected using child‐worn audio recorders over 34 observations spanning three successive school years, yielding 21.53 mean hours of audio recording per child. The rate of teacher vocalizations positively predicted the rate of children's speech‐related vocalizations while the phonemic diversity of teacher vocalizations positively predicted the phonemic diversity of children's speech‐related vocalizations. The phonemic diversity of children's speech‐related vocalizations was a stronger predictor of end‐of‐year language abilities than the rate of children's speech‐related vocalizations. Mediation analyses indicated that the phonemic diversity of teacher vocalizations was associated with children's receptive and expressive language abilities to the extent that it influenced the phonemic diversity of children's own speech‐related vocalizations. The results suggest that qualitatively richer language input expands the phonemic diversity of children's speech, which in turn is associated with language abilities.

AbstractInfant attachment is a key predictor of later socioemotional functioning, but it is not clear how parental responsivity to infant expressive behavior is associated with attachment outcomes. A mid‐range model of responsivity holds that both unresponsive and highly reactive parental behaviors lead to insecure and disorganized attachment. We examined the relationship between maternal (and infant) contingent responsivity and attachment in a high‐risk sample. Participants were 625 infant‐mother pairs from a longitudinal study of children with and without prenatal drug exposure and variable levels of associated social risks. Infant‐mother pairs participated in the Face‐to‐Face/Still‐Face paradigm (FFSF) at 4‐months and in the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) at 18‐months. A model incorporating both linear and quadratic responsivity effects indicated that mothers who were either very high (reactive) or very low (unresponsive) in responsivity were more likely to have infants with disorganized attachment outcomes. While maternal responsivity was associated with attachment disorganization, no associations between maternal responsivity, and attachment security/insecurity were detected. Infant responsivity to mother was not associated with attachment outcomes. The findings suggest the importance of mid‐range levels of maternal responsivity in the development of organized attachment among infants facing high levels of prenatal and social risk.