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AbstractThree studies investigated infants' understanding that gaze involves a relation between a person and the object of his or her gaze. Infants were habituated to an event in which an actor turned and looked at one of two toys. Then, infants saw test events in which (1) the actor turned to the same side as during habituation to look at a different toy, or (2) the actor turned to the other side to look at the same toy as during habituation. The first of these involved a change in the relation between actor and object. The second involved a new physical motion on the part of the actor but no change in the relation between actor and object. Seven‐ and 9‐month‐old infants did not respond to the change in relation between actor and object, although infants at both ages followed the actor's gaze to the toys. In contrast, 12‐month‐old infants responded to the change in the actor–object relation. Control conditions verified that the paradigm was a sensitive index of the younger infants' representations of action: 7‐ and 9‐month‐olds responded to a change in the actor–object relation when the actor's gaze was accompanied by a grasp. Taken together, these findings indicate that gaze‐following does not initially go hand in hand with understanding the relation between a person who looks and the object of his or her gaze, and that infants begin to understand this relation between 9 and 12 months.

AbstractIn several previous studies, 18‐month‐old infants who were directly addressed demonstrated more robust imitative behaviors than infants who simply observed another's actions, leading theorists to suggest that child‐directed interactions carried unique informational value. However, these data came exclusively from cultural communities where direct teaching is commonplace, raising the possibility that the findings reflect regularities in infants' social experiences rather than responses to innate or a priori learning mechanisms. The current studies consider infants' imitative learning from child‐directed teaching and observed interaction in two cultural communities, a Yucatec Mayan village where infants have been described as experiencing relatively limited direct instruction (Study 1) and aUScity where infants are regularly directly engaged (Study 2). Eighteen‐month‐old infants from each community participated in a within‐subjects study design where they were directly taught to use novel objects on one day and observed actors using different objects on another day. Mayan infants showed relative increases in imitative behaviors on their second visit to the lab as compared to their first visit, but there was no effect of condition.USinfants showed no difference in imitative behavior in the child‐directed vs. observed conditions; however, infants who were directly addressed on their first visit showed significantly higher overall imitation rates than infants who observed on their first visit. Together, these findings call into question the idea that child‐directed teaching holds automatic or universal informational value.

AbstractAs with all culturally relevant human behaviours, words are meaningful because they are shared by the members of a community. This research investigates whether 9‐month‐old infants understand this fundamental fact about language. Experiment 1 examined whether infants who are trained on, and subsequently habituated to, a new word–referent link expect the link to be consistent across a second speaker. Experiment 2 examined whether 9‐month‐old infants distinguish between behaviours that are shared across individuals (i.e. words) from those that are not (i.e. object preferences). The present findings indicate that infants as young as 9 months of age expect new word–referent links, but not object preferences, to be consistent across individuals. Thus, by 9 months, infants have identified at least one of the aspects of human behaviour that is shared across individuals within a community. The implications for children's acquisition of language and culture are discussed.

AbstractPredicting the actions of others is critical to smooth social interactions. Prior work suggests that both understanding and anticipation of goal‐directed actions appears early in development. In this study, on‐line goal prediction was tested explicitly using an adaptation of Woodward's (1998) paradigm for an eye‐tracking task. Twenty 11‐month‐olds were familiarized to movie clips of a hand reaching to grasp one of two objects. Then object locations were swapped, and the hand made an incomplete reach between the objects. Here, infants reliably made their first look from the hand to the familiarized goal object, now in a new location. A separate control condition of 20 infants familiarized to the same movements of an unfamiliar claw revealed the opposite pattern: reliable prediction to the familiarized location, rather than the familiarized object. This study suggests that by 11 months infants actively use goal analysis to generate on‐line predictions of an agent's next action.

AbstractSkilled social interactions require knowledge about others' intentions and the ability to implement this knowledge in real‐time to generate appropriate responses to one's partner. Young infants demonstrate an understanding of other people's intentions (e.g. Woodward, Sommerville, Gerson, Henderson & Buresh, 2009), yet it is not until the second year that infants seem to master the real‐time implementation of their knowledge during social interactions (e.g. Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). The current study investigates the possibility that developments in social competence during the second year are related to increases in the speed with which infants can employ their understanding of others' intentions. Twenty‐ to 22‐month‐old infants (N = 23) viewed videos of goal‐directed actions on a Tobii eye‐tracker and then engaged in an interactive perspective‐taking task. Infants who quickly and accurately anticipated another person's future behavior in the eye‐tracking task were more successful at taking their partner's perspective in the social interaction. Success on the perspective‐taking task was specifically related to the ability to correctly predict another person's intentions. These findings highlight the importance of not only being a 'smart' social partner but also a 'fast' social thinker.

This study utilized data from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) to investigate the use of professional services and informal support among African American and Caribbean black men with a lifetime mood, anxiety, or substance use disorder. Thirty-three percent used both professional services and informal support, 14% relied on professional services only, 24% used informal support only, and 29% did not seek help. African American men were more likely than Caribbean Blacks to rely on informal support alone. Having co-occurring mental and substance disorders, experiencing an episode in the past 12 months, and having more people in the informal network increased the likelihood of using professional services and informal supports. Marital status, age, and socioeconomic status were also significantly related to help seeking. The results suggests potential unmet need. However, the reliance on informal support also suggests a strong protective role that informal networks play in the lives of Black men.

AbstractIn the current study, we tested whether 7‐month‐old infants would selectively imitate the goal‐relevant aspects of an observed action. Infants saw an experimenter perform an action on one of two small toys and then were given the opportunity to act on the toys. Infants viewed actions that were either goal‐directed or goal‐ambiguous, and that represented either completed or uncompleted goals. Infants reproduced the goal of the experimenter only in those cases where the action was goal‐directed, in both the complete and incomplete goal conditions. These results provide the first evidence that infants as young as 7 months of age selectively imitate actions based on their goal‐directedness, and that they are able to analyze the goals of even uncompleted actions. Even during the first year of life, infants' sensitivity to goal‐directed action is expressed not only in their responses in visual habituation procedures, but also in their overt actions.

AbstractThe extent to which toddlers have opportunities to learn in interactive, observational, and independent contexts is thought to vary by culture. However quantitative assessments of cultural variability and of the factors driving intra‐ and inter‐cultural differences in toddler's time allocation are lacking. This paper provides a comparative and quantitative examination of how toddlers spend their time and with whom (adults or children) in two communities (rural Yucatec Maya, urban United States). Additionally, it considers individual factors that predict time allocation. Results demonstrated that Maya toddlers spent more time in independent contexts compared to US toddlers and spent more time exclusively with other children than did US toddlers. Maya toddlers were more likely than US toddlers to spend time observing other people, however, when given the opportunity to observe others there were no differences in visual attentional allocation across cultures. For Maya toddlers maternal schooling related negatively to both time spent with other children and time spent in interactive contexts. The findings highlight the need for researchers to include diverse populations when considering early social experiences as well as assessing factors that may contribute differentially to variations in early experience across cultures.

AbstractThe mechanisms that support infant action processing are thought to be involved in the development of later social cognition. While a growing body of research demonstrates longitudinal links between action processing and explicit theory of mind (TOM), it remains unclear why this link emerges in some measures of action encoding and not others. In this paper, we recruit neural measures as a unique lens into which aspects of human infant action processing (i.e., action encoding and action execution; age 7 months) are related to preschool TOM (age 3 years; n = 31). We test whether individual differences in recruiting the sensorimotor system or attention processes during action encoding predict individual differences in TOM. Results indicate that reduced occipital alpha during action encoding predicts TOM at age 3. This finding converges with behavioral work and suggests that attentional processes involved in action encoding may support TOM. We also test whether neural processing during action execution draws on the proto‐substrates of effortful control (EC). Results indicate that frontal alpha oscillatory activity during action execution predicted EC at age 3—providing strong novel evidence that infant brain activity is longitudinally linked to EC. Further, we demonstrate that EC mediates the link between the frontal alpha response and TOM. This indirect effect is specific in terms of direction, neural response, and behavior. Together, these findings converge with behavioral research and demonstrate that domain general processes show strong links to early infant action processing and TOM.

AbstractEarly exposure to multiple languages can enhance children's communication skills, even when children are effectively monolingual (Fan, Liberman, Keysar & Kinzler, ). Here we report evidence that the social benefits of multilingual exposure emerge in infancy. Sixteen‐month‐old infants participated in a communication task that required taking a speaker's perspective to understand her intended meaning. Infants were presented with two identical toys, such as two cars. One toy was mutually visible to both the infant and the speaker, but the other was visible only to the infant and was blocked from the speaker's view by an opaque barrier. The speaker requested the mutually visible toy and we evaluated whether infants understood the speaker's request. Whereas monolingual infants were at chance in choosing between the two toys, infants with multilingual exposure reliably chose the toy the speaker requested. Successful performance was not related to the degree of exposure to other languages, suggesting that even minimal multilingual exposure may enhance communication skills.

AbstractWhen children first meet a stranger, there is great variation in how much they will approach and engage with the stranger. While individual differences in this type of behavior—called social wariness—are well‐documented in temperament research, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the social groups (such as race) of the stranger and how these characteristics might influence children's social wariness. In contrast, research on children's social bias and interracial friendships rarely examines individual differences in temperament and how temperament might influence cross‐group interactions. The current study bridges the gap across these different fields of research by examining whether the racial group of an unfamiliar peer or adult moderates the association between temperament and the social wariness that children display. Utilizing a longitudinal dataset that collected multiple measurements of children's temperament and behaviors (including parent‐reported shyness and social wariness toward unfamiliar adults and peers) across early childhood, we found that 2‐ to 7‐year‐old children with high parent‐reported shyness showed greater social wariness toward a different‐race stranger compared to a same‐race stranger, whereas children with low parent‐reported shyness did not. These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research and the potential role that temperament might play in children's cross‐race interactions.Research Highlights
Previous research on temperament has not considered how the race of strangers could influence children's social wariness.
We find evidence that 2‐ to 7‐year‐old children with high parent‐reported shyness show greater social wariness toward a different‐race stranger compared to a same‐race stranger.
These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research.
Our findings also suggest temperament may play a role in children's cross‐race interactions.

This study examined differences in kin and nonkin networks among African Americans, Caribbean Blacks (Black Caribbeans), and non‐Hispanic Whites. Data are taken from the National Survey of American Life, a nationally representative study of African Americans, Black Caribbeans, and non‐Hispanic Whites. Selected measures of informal support from family, friendship, fictive kin, and congregation/church networks were utilized. African Americans were more involved in congregation networks, whereas non‐Hispanic Whites were more involved in friendship networks. African Americans were more likely to give support to extended family members and to have daily interaction with family members. African Americans and Black Caribbeans had larger fictive kin networks than non‐Hispanic Whites, but non‐Hispanic Whites with fictive kin received support from them more frequently than African Americans and Black Caribbeans. The discussion notes the importance of examining kin and nonkin networks, as well as investigating ethnic differences within the Black American population.

AbstractTwo processes describe racially ambiguous Black/White Biracial categorization—the one‐drop rule, or hypodescent, whereby racially ambiguous people are categorized as members of their socially subordinated racial group (i.e., Black/White Biracial faces categorized as Black) and the ingroup overexclusion effect, whereby racially ambiguous people are categorized as members of a salient outgroup, regardless of the group's status. Without developmental research with racially diverse samples, it is unclear when these categorization patterns emerge. Study 1 included White, Black, and racially diverse Biracial children (aged 3‐ to 7‐years) and their parents to test how racial group membership and social context influence face categorization biases. To provide the clearest test of hypodescent and ingroup overexclusion, White participants came from majority White neighborhoods and Black participants from majority Black neighborhoods (with Biracial participants from more racially diverse neighborhoods)—two samples with prominent racial ingroups. Study 2 aimed to replicate the parent findings with a separate sample of White, Black, Black/White Biracial, and Asian adults. Results suggest the ingroup overexclusion effect is present across populations early in development and persists into adulthood. Additionally, categorization was meaningfully related to parental context, pinpointing a pathway that potentially contributes to ingroup overexclusion.Research HighlightsWhite, Black, and racially diverse Biracial children and adults tended to categorize racially ambiguous Black/White Biracial faces as racial outgroup members, even if the outgroup was White.This contradicts most work arguing Black/White Biracial racially ambiguous people are more often seen as Black.Children and parents' categorizations were related, though children's categorizations were not related to socialization above and beyond parents' categorizations.Children showed similar categorization patterns across dichotomous and continuous measures.