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AbstractRecent research has demonstrated that infants' attention towards novel objects is affected by an adult's emotional expression and eye gaze toward the object. The current event‐related potential (ERP) study investigated how infants at 3, 6, and 9 months of age process fearful compared to neutral faces looking toward objects or averting gaze away from objects. Furthermore, we examined how the processing of novel objects is affected by gaze direction and emotional expression. We hypothesized that an adult's fearful expression should be particularly salient when it is directed toward a referent in the environment. Furthermore, responses to objects should be increased if the face previously expressed fear toward the object. Three‐month‐olds did not show differential neural responses to fearful vs. neutral faces regardless of gaze direction. Six‐month‐olds showed an enhanced negative central (Nc) component for fearful relative to neutral faces looking toward objects, but not when eye gaze was averted away from the objects. Furthermore, 6‐month‐olds showed an enhanced Nc for objects that had been gaze‐cued by a fearful compared to a neutral face. Nine‐month‐olds showed an enhanced Nc for fearful relative to neutral faces in both eye gaze conditions and showed an enhanced Nc for objects that had been gaze‐cued by a neutral face. The findings are discussed in the context of social cognitive and brain development.

Abstract In Study 1, 54 3‐, 6‐ and 9‐month‐old infants interacted with an adult stranger who engaged in a face‐to‐face (dyadic) exchange. Dyadic interaction was halted when the adult turned away to look at an object. In a Joint Attention condition, the adult alternated visual attention between the infant and the object, and in a Look Away condition she looked away at the object only. Infants gazed and smiled more in the Joint Attention condition compared to in the Look Away condition. Infants' gazing to the target object interacted with age and condition. In Study 2, 37 3‐, 6‐ and 9‐month old infants interacted with an adult who coordinated visual attention and affect, affect only, visual attention only, or ignored the infant. Infants gazed reliably more at E when she coordinated both affect and attention and smiled reliably more when the adult coordinated affect and attention or attention only. The findings show a sensitivity to triadic attention by 3 months of age.

AbstractTo examine the influences of facial versus vocal cues on infants' behavior in a potentially threatening situation, 12‐month‐olds on a visual cliff received positive facial‐only, vocal‐only, or both facial and vocal cues from mothers. Infants' crossing times and looks to mother were assessed. Infants crossed the cliff faster with multimodal and vocal than with facial cues, and looked more to mother in the Face Plus Voice compared to the Voice Only condition. The findings suggest that vocal cues, even without a visual reference, are more potent than facial cues in guiding infants' behavior. The discussion focuses on the meaning of infants' looks and the role of voice in development of social cognition.

Two‐month‐olds and newborns were tested in a situation where they had the opportunity to experience different auditory consequences of their own oral activity on a dummy pacifier. Modulation of oral activity was scored and analyzed relative to two types of contingent auditory feedback, either analog or non‐analog to the effort exerted by the infant on the pacifier. The dummy pacifier was connected to an air pressure transducer for recording of oral action. In two different experimental conditions, each time the infant sucked above a certain pressure threshold they heard a perfectly contingent sound of varying pitch. In one condition, the pitch variation was analog to the pressure applied by the infant on the pacifier (analog condition). In another, the pitch variation was random (non‐analog condition). As rationale, a differential modulation of oral activity in these two conditions was construed as indexing some voluntary control and the sense of a causal link between sucking and its auditory consequences, beyond mere temporal contingency detection and response–stimulus association. Results indicated that 2‐month‐olds showed clear signs of modulation of their oral activity on the pacifier as a function of analog versus non‐analog condition. In contrast, newborns did not show any signs of such modulation either between experimental conditions (analog versus non‐analog contingent sounds) or between baseline (no contingent sounds condition) and experimental conditions. These observations are interpreted as evidence of self‐exploration and the emergence of a sense of self‐agency by 2 months of age.

Abstract Infants' sensitivity to social contingencies was assessed. In Study 1, 1‐month‐old infants and their mothers interacted face‐to‐face in three types of imperfect contingent interactions: Normal, Non‐Contingent and Imitation. One‐month‐old infants did not discriminate these conditions. In Study 2, 3‐month‐old infants were tested as in Study 1. At 3 months of age, infants gazed reliably longer in the Imitation condition and smiled reliably more in the Normal than in the Non‐Contingent and Imitation interactions. These findings suggest a developmental transition in the sensitivity to social contingencies between 1 and 3 months of age. The relationship between the developing sensitivity to social contingencies and social cognition is discussed.

AbstractThe focus of the present study was the role of cultural learning in infants' acquisition of pretense actions with objects. In three studies, 18‐ and 24‐month‐olds (n= 64) were presented with novel objects, and either pretense or instrumental actions were demonstrated with these. When children were then allowed to act upon the objects themselves, qualitatively similar patterns of cultural (imitative) learning both of pretend and of instrumental actions were observed, suggesting that both types of actions can be acquired in similar ways through processes of cultural learning involving one or another form of collective intentionality. However, both absolute imitation rates and creativity were lower in pretense compared to instrumental actions, suggesting that the collective intentionality that constitutes pretense is especially difficult for children to comprehend. An additional analysis of children's gazes to the experimenter during their actions revealed that 24‐month‐olds looked more often to the experimenter during pretense actions than during instrumental actions – suggesting that pretense is culturally learned in a similar fashion as practical actions, but that young children understand pretense as a more inherently social, intersubjective activity.

Abstract Twenty‐five newborn infants were tested for auditory–oral matching behavior when presented with the consonant sound /m/ and the vowel sound /a/ – a precursor behavior to vocal imitation. Auditory–oral matching behavior by the infant was operationally defined as showing the mouth movement appropriate for producing the model sound just heard (mouth opening for /a/ and mouth clutching for /m/), even when the infant produced no sound herself. With this new dependent measure, the current study is the first to show matching behavior to consonant sounds in newborns: infants showed significantly more instances of mouth opening after /a/ models than after /m/ models, and more instances of mouth clutching after /m/ models than after /a/ models. The results are discussed in the context of theories of active intermodal mapping and innate releasing mechanisms.

In this study we sought to determine the degree to which 2‐ to 3‐year‐old children use objects symbolically in the relative absence of adult symbolic actions or linguistic descriptions, and how the nature of objects influences symbolic play. Results revealed a dramatic increase in children's creative symbolic productions between 2 and 3 years of age, with the tendency to produce symbolic actions influenced to an equal degree by adult symbolic action models and verbal directions. Children of all ages were heavily influenced by the nature of the object to be used as a symbol, with the youngest children using only replica objects as symbols. In a second study, we examined children's looks to an adult as they engaged in different kinds of activities with objects. The main finding was that children looked to the adult immediately after performing a symbolic action more often than if they performed an instrumental action. We argue for the essentially social nature of symbolic play, both in terms of how children learn to use objects as symbols and in terms of the reasons they do so.

Abstract We examined 7‐month‐old infants' processing of emotionally congruent and incongruent face–voice pairs using ERP measures. Infants watched facial expressions (happy or angry) and, after a delay of 400 ms, heard a word spoken with a prosody that was either emotionally congruent or incongruent with the face being presented. The ERP data revealed that the amplitude of a negative component and a subsequent positive component in infants' ERPs varied as a function of crossmodal emotional congruity. An emotionally incongruent prosody elicited a larger negative component in infants' ERPs than did an emotionally congruent prosody. Conversely, the amplitude of infants' positive component was larger to emotionally congruent than to incongruent prosody. Previous work has shown that an attenuation of the negative component and an enhancement of the later positive component in infants' ERPs reflect the recognition of an item. Thus, the current findings suggest that 7‐month‐olds integrate emotional information across modalities and recognize common affect in the face and voice.

AbstractIn this study, relations between emotional resonance responses to another's distress, emotion regulation, and self‐other discrimination were investigated in infants three‐, six‐, and nine‐months‐old. We measured the emotional reactions to the pain cry of a peer, along with the ability to regulate emotions and to discriminate between self and other body movements. We found evidence that infants do regulate their emotional resonance responses to another's distress. This relation is age specific, with younger infants using more primitive self‐soothing behaviors, while in older participants attentional based strategies relate to affect sharing reactions. Only nine‐month‐old infants have shown self‐other differentiation abilities, and these were significantly connected to their emotions in response to a peer's distress. These findings have implications for our understanding of early empathy development.

In this study, relations between emotional resonance responses to another's distress, emotion regulation and self-other discrimination were investigated in infants 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old. We measured the emotional reactions to the pain cry of a peer, along with the ability to regulate emotions and to discriminate between self and other body movements. We found evidence that infants do regulate their emotional resonance responses to another's distress. This relation is age specific, with younger infants using more primitive self-soothing behaviors, while in older participants attentional based strategies relate to affect sharing reactions. Only 9-month-old infants have shown self-other differentiation abilities, and these were significantly connected to their emotions in response to a peer's distress. These findings have implications for our understanding of early empathy development.

Abstract Previous research suggests that by 4 months of age infants use the eye gaze of adults to guide their attention and facilitate processing of environmental information. Here we address the question of how infants process the relation between another person and an external object. We applied an ERP paradigm to investigate the neural processes underlying the perception of the direction of an adult's eye gaze in 4‐month‐old infants. Infants showed differential processing of an adult's eye gaze, which was directed at a simultaneously presented object compared to non‐object‐directed eye gaze. This distinction was evident in two ERP components: The Negative component, reflecting attentional processes, and the positive slow wave, which is involved in memory encoding. The implications of these findings for the development of joint attention and related social cognitive functions are discussed.