Infant Cognition

From early on, infants show a preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS), and exposure to IDS has been correlated with language outcome measures such as vocabulary. The present multi-laboratory study explores this issue by investigating whether there is a link between early preference for IDS and later vocabulary size. Infants' preference for IDS was tested as part of the ManyBabies 1 project, and follow-up CDI data were collected from a subsample of this dataset at 18 and 24 months. A total of 341 (18 months) and 327 (24 months) infants were tested across 21 laboratories. In neither preregistered analyses with North American and UK English, nor exploratory analyses with a larger sample did we find evidence for a relation between IDS preference and later vocabulary. We discuss implications of this finding in light of recent work suggesting that IDS preference measured in the laboratory has low test-retest reliability.

The ability to make sense out of the actions of others is critical to people's daily functioning. Adults are social experts: They understand that people's actions are directed at goals and are driven by intentions. In this article, the authors highlight key findings from studies examining infants' understanding of human action. These findings suggest that infants come to understand that intentions and attention guide human action within the first few months of their lives. By 13 months, infants understand that intentions are specific to individuals, yet there are some actions that are shared by all individuals within a group. Taken together, the evidence suggests that infants are well on their way to becoming social experts by their second birthdays.

Collaboration is fundamental to our daily lives, yet little is known about how humans come to understand these activities. The present research was conducted to fill this void by using a novel visual habituation paradigm to investigate infants' understanding of the collaborative-goal structure of collaborative action. The findings of the three experiments reported here suggest that 14-month-old infants understand that the actions of collaborative partners are complementary and critical to the attainment of a common collaborative goal. Importantly, 14-month-olds do not interpret the actions of two individuals in terms of a collaborative goal when their actions are not causally related. The implications of our findings for theories of collaboration and folk psychology are discussed.

Skilled 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. ), yet it is not until the second year that infants seem to master the realtime implementation of their knowledge during social interactions (e.g. . 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 eyetracking 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.

As 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.

Early in life, infants possess an effective face-processing system which becomes specialized according to the faces present in the environment. Infants are also exposed to the voices and sounds of caregivers. Previous studies have found that face–voice associations become progressively more tuned to the types of association most prevalent in the environment. The present study investigated whether 6-month-old infants associate own-race faces with their native language and faces from a different race with a non-native language. Infants were presented with pictures of own- and other-race faces simultaneously, with a native or non-native language in a habituation paradigm. Results indicate that 6-month-olds are able to match other-race faces to a non-native language.

This article studies intrapersonal communication as a fundamental process for creating meaning. It argues that human beings lack instincts. It is precisely why this process evolves in our species in such a particular way. 
The article presents two basic models, the first corresponding to the pre-linguistic phase and the other to the linguistic stage of intrapersonal communication.  It unveils the relationship between the biogenetic and socio-cultural components, establishing the acquisition of language as the boundary between both.
The study of intrapersonal communication sets forth the foundation that brings together a variety of theories, since it requires us to delve into the common denominator of all human communicative activity: the brain.
If this presentation of two biosocial models of intrapersonal communication broadens up, even a little, our window of knowledge and comprehension and impels researchers to reflect and discuss this important and fundamental dimension in human communication, I would say that, to a great extent, I have achieved my goal.

The perceptual world of neonates is usually regarded as not yet being fully organized in terms of objects in the same way as it is for adults. Using a recently developed method based on electric brain responses, we found that, similarly to adults, newborn infants segregate concurrent streams of sound, allowing them to organize the auditory input according to the existing sound source. The segregation of concurrent sound streams is a crucial step in the path leading to the identification of objects in the environment. Its presence in newborn infants shows that the basic abilities required for the development of conceptual objects are available already at the time of birth.

How do children learn the meanings of simple spatial prepositions like in and on? In this paper, I argue that children come to spatial term learning with an a priori conceptual distinction between core versus non-core concepts of containment and support, and that they learn how language maps onto this distinction by considering both the simple prepositions and the company they keep-that is, the distributions of their co-occurrences with particular verbs. Core types of containment and support are largely expressed by in/on together with the light verb BE; non-core types are expressed by lexical verbs such as insert, hang, stick, and so on, which represent the specific mechanical means by which containment or support is achieved. These latter types arguably depend on extensive learning about the particular mechanisms of containment and support, many of which are invented by humans, as well as learning the specific lexical verbs that encode these mechanisms. The core versus non-core distinction is reflected in young children's and adults' linguistic descriptions of different spatial configurations, via different distributions of expression types across different configurations. Differences between children and adults are not likely to be rooted in either conceptual or semantic differences, but rather, in the probabilistic nature of available expressions, along with early limits on children's vocabulary of lexical verbs that express complex mechanical relationships between objects.

The analysis of conversational repair provides one route into understanding how young children learn the skills required for participating in talk. One key aspect of repair is the ability to respond appropriately to other participants. Employing a longitudinal case study approach, this article examines in detail the conversational repair skills of one child during the period where she is acquiring core conversational abilities and competencies (from 1;0 to 3;10). Focusing on the development of other-related conversational repair skills, 163 instances of other-related repair were examined and analysed. Extracts highlight the skills the child employed in self-repairs in response to others, as well as when repairing or correcting other people's conversation. The findings indicate that during the early years other-initiated self-repair is a more common occurrence than repairing others' talk. The findings provide insights into the significance of conversational repair for languag...

Is there a qualitative difference between apes' and human 'ability to estimate others' mental states', a.k.a. 'Theory-of-Mind'? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to 'vicarious expectations'-very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one's own (full) contents are distinguished without need of meta-representation. Then, I propose: First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes' Theory-of-Mind (including 'spontaneous altruism'). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to 'social order' and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible the human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others' mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me.

Introduction. A modern child often finds himself in a multilinguistic environment, and even within the family, parents can speak different languages, and therefore it is necessary to understand the consequences for the child's cognitive development of early learning of two languages. At the moment, there is no common view on the problem and there is significant inconsistency in published scientific works. The purpose of this review is to analyze studies that aimed to compare the cognitive development of children acquiring one or two languages in early childhood. Materials and methods. The research methodology was based on general scientific methods and methods of special sciences: psychology and pedagogy. To search for articles, the databases "PubMed", "Google Scholar", "ResearchGate" and Russian libraries "Elibrary.ru", "CyberLeninka" were used. The materials for the analysis were articles from the listed databases, describing the most significant results in the study of bilingualism Research results. The acquisition of any language has the same biological foundation, which is the basis for the interaction of languages. With the sequential acquisition of different languages, the mother language becomes a matrix that facilitates the acquisition of other languages, especially the most complex grammatical forms. In this case, some slowdown in the development of complex grammatical forms at the first stages of language acquisition will later be replaced by a significant advantage of bilinguals over monolinguals in cognitive development. Conclusion. An analysis of the literature led to the conclusion that bilinguals have an advantage in analyzing complex speech streams, although the processing of this information is somewhat slower. In children learning one language at 10-12 months, a perceptual reorganization occurs, according to which a decrease in the ability to perceive elements of a non-native language is detected. In bilinguals, this process does not occur at an early age, which allows them to distinguish the subtle features of unfamiliar languages. In general, in the early stages of exposure to two languages, bilinguals are slower to master many aspects of the two languages, but in later life, bilinguals are found to have an advantage in terms of level of psychological development.

This chapter focuses on the simultaneous acquisition of two languages from birth, or what is generally referred to as bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA). A major question in studies of BFLA, and a focus of our review, is whether the developmental path and time course of language development in BFL learners is the same as that of children learning only one language. Underlying this question is the theoretical issue of whether children's ability to learn language is challenged in any way by the acquisition of two languages at the same time. Evidence that the rate of language development is slowed down in BFL learners in comparison to monolingual learners would argue that the ability that all children have to learn language is compromised by the challenge of learning more than one language at the same time. An additional issue is whether exposure to two languages simultaneously influences the pattern of development so that it differs from that observed in monolingual learners. Evidence that the patterns are different could give us insights as to how the processes that underlie language acquisition cope with dual language input. The study of bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) has had a remarkably long history. In 1913, Ronjat published a detailed description of his son Louis' simultaneous acquisition of French and German. Louis showed remarkable progress in both his languages and little sign of confusion. Ronjat attributed Louis's lack of confusion to both parents' use of only one language with him. This conclusion was brought into doubt in 1949 when Leopold published the last volume of a detailed diary of his daughter's (Hildegard) simultaneous acquisition of

Research on social perception in monkeys may benefit from standardized, controllable, and ethologically valid renditions of conspecifics offered by monkey avatars. However, previous work has cautioned that monkeys, like humans, show an adverse reaction toward realistic synthetic stimuli, known as the “uncanny valley” effect. We developed an improved naturalistic rhesus monkey face avatar capable of producing facial expressions (fear grin, lip smack and threat), animated by motion capture data of real monkeys. For validation, we additionally created decreasingly naturalistic avatar variants. Eight rhesus macaques were tested on the various videos and avoided looking at less naturalistic avatar variants, but not at the most naturalistic or the most unnaturalistic avatar, indicating an uncanny valley effect for the less naturalistic avatar versions. The avoidance was deepened by motion and accompanied by physiological arousal. Only the most naturalistic avatar evoked facial expressions...

I argue that interpretations of non-symbolic numerical cognition (NSNC) small-quantity discrimination experiments with preverbal children (SQEP) claiming that preverbal children perceive, represent, or are sensitive to numerosities, numbers, or continuous magnitudes might be misguided. I contend that the experience of test participants has been unduly neglected in NSNC experiments in the last decades, in contrast to other areas of psychophysics. In pitch or colour perception for example, a distinction is usually drawn between the objective properties of the physical stimuli of quantitative nature (wavelength or frequency of sound or visible light) and what is experienced by the test participant (pitch or colour).

Recent studies on parental disciplinary practices focus on children's attributes that influence harshness of discipline. The present study examined the Effects of facial babyishness on parents' recommendations regarding the discipline of 4-and 11-year-old children who had perpetrated an act of commission or of omission. It was predicted that the actions of babyfaced children would be perceived as less intentional, and that babyfaced children would be punished less harshly than their maturefaced counterparts. A total of 32 mothers and 32 fathers of 10-to 12-year-old children participated. Each parent read eight vignettes describing either 4-or 11-year-old children's misdeeds. Attached to each vignette was a black-and-white photograph of a child, who had been rated as either babyfaced or maturefaced by introductory psychology students. As predicted, the misdeeds of babyfaced children were perceived as less intentional than those of maturefaced children. The severity of punishment recommended revealed "an age X facial babyishness interaction." Less severe punishment was recommended for babyfaced than maturefaced 4-year-olds. However, babyfaced 11-year-olds were punished more harshly ..han maturefaced ones. It is concluded that the findings have implications for parents and parent education. (Author/RH)

Much of our basic understanding of cognitive and social processes in infancy relies on measures of looking time, and specifically on infants’ visual preference for a novel or familiar stimulus. However, despite being the foundation of many behavioral tasks in infant research, the determinants of infants’ visual preferences are poorly understood, and differences in the expression of preferences can be difficult to interpret. In this large-scale study, we test predictions from the Hunter and Ames model of infants' visual preferences. We investigate the effects of three factors predicted by this model to determine infants’ preference for novel versus familiar stimuli: age, stimulus familiarity, and stimulus complexity. Drawing from a large and diverse sample of infant participants (N = XX), this study will provide crucial empirical evidence for a robust and generalizable model of infant visual preferences, leading to a more solid theoretical foundation for understanding the mechani...

This study investigated the effects of infant and maternal sensory processing on sleep, fussing, and crying in a sample of 55 firstborn, 4- to 7-month-old infants and their mothers. Mothers completed self-report questionnaires to assess maternal and infant sensory processing styles and a 4-day diary of infant behavior, including sleep, fussing, and crying. Higher levels of infant Sensation Avoiding were associated with less sleep, more fussing, and more crying whereas higher levels of Sensory Sensitivity were associated with less sleep and more fussing. The positive association between infant Sensation Avoiding and crying was strengthened by lower levels of Low Registration in mothers. The effect of infant Sensory Sensitivity on reducing total sleep also was strengthened by lower levels of maternal Low Registration. Assessment of infant sensory processing as well as the moderating effect of maternal sensory processing on the relationship between infant sensory processing and infant ...

This research investigates how children perceive and process language in a bilingual family environment. This research focuses on the interaction between language input and cognitive development, investigating how exposure to two languages affects language ability, cognitive flexibility, and cultural awareness. Using a case study approach, the findings of this study highlight the unique advantages and challenges that bilingual children face in their home environments. This study highlights the importance of the role of parents, consistency of language use, and cultural practices in shaping children's bilingual development.

We present a reinforcement learning model of gaze following that learns to incorporate eye cues in a developmental trajectory similar to that found in infants: older infants follow gaze more frequently when both the caregiver's eyes and head are turned than when only her head is turned. Similarly, infants learn to follow gaze less when the caregiver's eyes are closed than when her eyes are open. The model works through the maximization of visual reward, and not by representing an estimate of the other person's attentional state, as would be expected by adherents of a mentalist interpretation of gaze following. Within the debate about the age of onset in the use of eye cues for gaze following, we hypothesize that eye cues have an effect as soon as the infant learns to follow gaze, but at first it might be small and therefore difficult to measure. Finally, we propose this learning approach for modeling other aspects of theory of mind.

In their first year, infants' perceptual abilities zoom in on only those speech sound contrasts that are relevant for their language. Infants' lexicons do not yet contain sufficient minimal pairs to explain this phonetic categorization process. Therefore, researchers suggested a bottom-up learning mechanism: infants create categories aligned with the frequency distributions of sounds in their input. Recent evidence shows that this bottom-up mechanism may be complemented by the semantic context in which speech sounds occur, such as simultaneously present objects. To test this hypothesis, we investigated whether discrimination of a non-native vowel contrast improves when sounds from the contrast were paired consistently or randomly with two distinct visually presented objects, while the distribution of speech tokens suggested a single broad category. This was assessed in two ways: computationally, namely in a neural network simulation, and experimentally, namely in a group of 8-month-old infants. The neural network, trained with a large set of sound-meaning pairs, revealed that two categories emerge only if sounds are consistently paired with objects. A group of 49 real 8-month-old infants did not immediately show sensitivity to the pairing condition; a later test at 18 months with some of the same infants, however, showed that this sensitivity at 8 months interacted with their vocabulary size at 18 months. This interaction can be explained by the idea that infants with larger future vocabularies are more positively influenced by consistent training (and/or more negatively influenced by inconsistent training) than infants with smaller future vocabularies. This suggests that consistent pairing with distinct visual objects can help infants to discriminate speech sounds even when the auditory information does not signal a distinction. Together our results give computational as well as experimental support for the idea that semantic context plays a role in disambiguating phonetic auditory input.

To trace how age and language experience shape the discrimination of native and nonnative phonetic contrasts, we compared 4-year-olds learning either English or French or both and simultaneous bilingual adults on their ability to discriminate the English /d-D/ contrast. Findings show that the ability to discriminate the native English contrast improves with age. However, in the absence of experience with this contrast, discrimination of French children and adults remained unchanged during development. Furthermore, although simultaneous bilingual and monolingual English adults were comparable, children exposed to both English and French were poorer at discriminating this contrast when compared to monolingual English-learning 4-yearolds. Thus, language experience facilitates perception of the English /d-D/ contrast and this facilitation occurs later in development when English and French are acquired simultaneously. The difference between bilingual and monolingual acquisition have imp...

Since the mid-20th century, scientists have observed unique features in speech, facial expression, and content directed to infants and toddlers in comparison to speech directed to adults. Whereas much research has studied the characteristics of so-called infant-directed speech and speculated about its significance for language learning, research directly testing these ideas has been more limited until recently. Studies now suggest that infant-directed speech (a) promotes infant attention to language, (b) fosters social interaction between infants and caregivers, and (c) informs infants about various aspects of their native language by heightening distinctions relative to the speech addressed to adults. New developments focusing on the social role of infant-directed conversational interactions highlight the importance of caregiver responsiveness to the infant. Building a communicative foundation even prior to the time language emerges is crucial for fostering language development.

…there are no single effective pushes to the developing system, but rather a combination of influences that lead to observable change (Nelson 1996, p. 85). In this quotation, Katherine Nelson (1996) captured the spirit of this volume-and of this chapter. We live in a multifactorial world. If we are to understand the complex behaviors characteristic of humans, we will have to embrace systems-based models that offer a more comprehensive and integrative account of development than single-factor explanations. As Bronfenbrenner and Morris (1998) argued, systems operate at many levels, from the multiple proximal inputs that directly affect the child to the more distal effects including the time and context in which these inputs are encountered and evaluated by the child. Much of the current research in language development that does not rely on language production suffers from a more limited perspective on development, from what Bronfenbrenner (1974) suggested is the "science of the behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults" (p. 3). Indeed, much of our research is also conducted at a single point in time as opposed to longitudinally and on a single

Humans are ultra-social: they spontaneously incorporate others' mental states into their action-planning (Kaminski et al.,2008), and altercentric: their behavior is influenced by others' perspectives, even perspectives irrelevant to their instrumental goal (Kampis & Southgate, 2020). Recent evidence suggests that similarly to human infants, non-human great apes anticipate others' actions based on their beliefs (Krupenye et al.,2016; Kano et al, 2019); raising the critical question whether altercentrism is uniquely human. In two experiments, we tested chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans in a manual search paradigm adapted from Mendes et al. (2008). These experiments replicated findings demonstrating apes' first-person object-tracking abilities. Experiment 1 found no evidence for altercentrism: apes' search behavior was not spontaneously modulated by another agent's beliefs (unlike 14-month-old human infants; Kampis & Kovács, 2020). Experiment 2 found tentative evidence that apes inferred a person's actions based on her beliefs, and adapted their own actions based on this information.

Despite the central role of problem solving in cognition and despite the extensive study of problem solving in young children, we do not have a clear answer to the basic developmental question of the origins of broadly applicable "domain general" problem solving strategies. Do these strategies emerge gradually or all at once? Are these strategies innate or are they learned? This experiment teases apart some domain general strategies by presenting infants two types of toy-retrieval problems that differ only in which strategies may solve the problem. In each problem, a toy was placed on a cloth that extended through the entire length of a canal. When infants pulled on the cloth in the obtuse-canal problem, the toy continually moved closer to them. When they pulled the cloth in the acute-canal problem, the toy moved further away before moving closer to them. The obtuse-canal problem is solvable by hill-climbing or means-ends analysis. The acute-canal problem is solvable only by means-ends analysis, because it involves moving further from the goal. Results show that 9 months olds could not use either strategy and 16 month olds were comparatively better at using both strategies. The 12 month old infants could use hill-climbing just as well as the 16 month old infants but they were no better at using means-ends analysis than the 9 month old infants. This suggests that domain general problem solving strategies develop gradually throughout infancy. Twelve month old infants showed that with experience, they were able to solve the problem as well as 16 month olds. This suggests means-ends analysis can be learned within a particular context.

In their first year, infants' perceptual abilities zoom in on only those speech sound contrasts that are relevant for their language. Infants' lexicons do not yet contain sufficient minimal pairs to explain this phonetic categorization process. Therefore, researchers suggested a bottom-up learning mechanism: infants create categories aligned with the frequency distributions of sounds in their input. Recent evidence shows that this bottom-up mechanism may be complemented by the semantic context in which speech sounds occur, such as simultaneously present objects. To test this hypothesis, we investigated whether discrimination of a non-native vowel contrast improves when sounds from the contrast were paired consistently or randomly with two distinct visually presented objects, while the distribution of speech tokens suggested a single broad category. This was assessed in two ways: computationally, namely in a neural network simulation, and experimentally, namely in a group of 8-month-old infants. The neural network, trained with a large set of sound-meaning pairs, revealed that two categories emerge only if sounds are consistently paired with objects. A group of 49 real 8-month-old infants did not immediately show sensitivity to the pairing condition; a later test at 18 months with some of the same infants, however, showed that this sensitivity at 8 months interacted with their vocabulary size at 18 months. This interaction can be explained by the idea that infants with larger future vocabularies are more positively influenced by consistent training (and/or more negatively influenced by inconsistent training) than infants with smaller future vocabularies. This suggests that consistent pairing with distinct visual objects can help infants to discriminate speech sounds even when the auditory information does not signal a distinction. Together our results give computational as well as experimental support for the idea that semantic context plays a role in disambiguating phonetic auditory input.

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Background-ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters have been associated with methylmercury (MeHg) toxicity in experimental animal models. Aims-To evaluate the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in maternal ABC transporter genes with 1) maternal hair MeHg concentrations during pregnancy and 2) child neurodevelopmental outcomes. Materials and methods-Nutrition Cohort 2 (NC2) is an observational mother-child cohort recruited in the Republic of Seychelles from 2008-2011. Total mercury (Hg) was measured in maternal hair growing during pregnancy as a biomarker for prenatal MeHg exposure (N=1313) (mean 3.9 ppm). Infants completed developmental assessments by Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID-II) at 20 months of age (N=1331). Genotyping for fifteen SNPs in ABCC1, ABCC2 and ABCB1 was performed for the mothers. Results-Seven of fifteen ABC SNPs (ABCC1 rs11075290, rs212093, and rs215088; ABCC2 rs717620; ABCB1 rs10276499, rs1202169, and rs2032582) were associated with concentrations of maternal hair Hg (p<0.001 to 0.013). One SNP (ABCC1 rs11075290

This is a report about a pilot study that compares social support network patterns of adolescents of Mexican descent who use alcohol and adolescents of Mexican descent who do not use alcohol. This study examined the differences in social support networks between the two groups. Social support network describes how and by Whom social support is provided. The types of support examined were material support, behavioral support, intimate interaction, guidance and feedback, and positive social interaction. Also examined in this study were differences between the two groups associated with gender, level of acculturation and generational levels. Findings show some differences in social support between the two groups which have important implications for further research.

Because infants cannot undertake language-based tasks, researchers must rely on novel and innovative non-verbal methods to tap early social cognition. These methods, which typically capitalize on infants' social behaviour (either occurring in a natural or an experimental context), and infants' visual responses to simple social events, have yielded a wealth of information regarding early social cognition. However, as the findings from these methods are often open to multiple interpretations, 14 converging methods are needed to gain an accurate picture of social cognition in infancy. Infants' early social cognitive understanding is inferred via their spontaneous or elicited social behaviour in naturalistic and laboratory settings, and via their visual and manual responses to simple social events presented in the context of experimental paradigms. Carefully controlled experiments, with a range of different manipulations are necessary to reduce the number of potential alternate interpretations of research findings. 1. What is the range of socio-cognitive understandings that infants possess? How are these understandings similar to, and different than, the understandings of older children and adults? 2. To what extent do infants possess a sophisticated mentalistic understanding of other people's actions (e.g., understand behaviour in terms of psychological states) versus a more simple behavioural understanding (e.g., understanding behaviour in terms of contingencies and rules)? How can we distinguish between these different levels of understanding? 3. Are certain aspects of social cognition innate? If so, which ones? 4. What factors or experiences drive developmental change in early social cognitive understanding? 5. Are early social cognitive abilities universal or culturally specific? To the extent that there is variability in social cognition across cultures, when and how do these differences arise?

Origins of Mindreading Abilities in Children and Monkeys Judith Burkart (Judith.Burkart@access.unizh.ch), Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich, Switzerland Adolf Heschl (Adolf.Heschl@uni-graz.at), Zoological Institute, University of Graz, Austria Luca Surian & Stefania Caldi (surian@psico.univ.trieste.it), Dipartimento di Psycologia, Universita di Trieste, Trieste, Italy Claudia Thoermer (thoermer@edupsy.uni-muenchen.de) & Beate Sodian (sodian@edupsy.uni-muenchen.de); LMU, Munich, Germany Henrike Moll (moll@eva.mpg.de) & Michael Tomasello (tomas@)eva.mpg.de), Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany went to the same location as before and therefore to a new goal object. Infants looked at the two test trials differently in the two conditions, suggesting an implicit mindreading ability when interpreting the animation events. One central issue in research on precursors to a “theory of mind” and representation of intentional relations is how the ep...

In the world, the manners and paths of motion events take place together, but in language, these features are expressed separately. How do infants learn to process motion events in linguistically appropriate ways? Forty-six English-learning 7-to 9-month-olds were habituated to a motion event in which a character performed both a manner and a path, and then tested on events that changed the manner, path, both, or neither. Infants detected each type of change, but only the girls showed evidence of processing manner and path as independent features. This gender difference provides clues about the universal development of manner and path concepts from more basic perceptual skills. Results have implications for how representations of linguistically relevant semantic elements develop conceptually.

Three experiments investigated the perception of substance and shape as invariant properties of objects by three-month-old infants. In experiment 1, infants were habituated to two differently shaped objects undergoing a rigid motion. After habituation of the infants, the objects were presented undergoing a different rigid motion, or undergoing a deforming motion, or undergoing the same rigid motion. Habituation was maintained to the new rigid motion, indicating that the two rigid motions were perceived as sharing an invariant property. Dishabituation, on the other hand, occurred when a deforming motion followed a rigid one. In experiment 2, infants were habituated to one shape undergoing two different rigid motions. After habituation, the shape was changed but the same two motions continued. Dishabituation occurred, compared to a group with no shape change, indicating that shape is distinguished as an invariant property over two rigid motions. In experiment 3, habituation to a shape...

Language development and cognitive development are closely interconnected. In particular, vocabulary development in children below the age of three plays a significant role in determining their future learning capabilities. More specifically, the size of their productive vocabulary greatly influences their cognitive skills and academic achievement later in life. However, infants must first acquire the ability to separate words from continuous speech before they can begin comprehending their initial words. The ability to segment words directly impacts both overall language progression and vocabulary expansion. Hence, gaining insight into how infants begin and progress with word segmentation will significantly contribute to their vocabulary acquisition. In consideration of these factors, this work seeks to examine infant word segmentation from different perspectives through a review of existing literature with the aim of advancing understanding of the topic. The research findings indicate that word segmentation starts around 6 months and continues to improve. Infants use prosody, phoneme distribution, and syllable transition probabilities for word segmentation. Exposure to high-quality linguistic input, especially infant-directed speech, strengthens these skills. IDS offers benefits such as exaggerated prosody and frequent word repetition, making learning easier for babies. Similar to eye contact, bonding between the mother and baby also increases the impact of IDS. In conclusion, it is apparent that intervention programs related to word development in infants should consider the findings of the word segmentation process.

a continuing debt, which I always strive in vain to repay, to the Beng community. This chapter pertains to life in Beng villages before the major disruptions of the current civil war in Ivory Coast, which has caused enormous hardship and upheavals in villagers' lives.

Infants gradually learn to share attention, but it is unknown how they acquire skills such as gaze-following. Deák and Triesch (2006) suggest that gaze-following could be acquired if infants learn that adults’ gaze direction is likely to be aligned with interesting sights. This hypothesis stipulates that adults tend to look at things that infants find interesting, and that infants could learn by noticing this tendency. We tested the plausibility of this hypothesis through video-based micro-behavioral analysis of naturalistic parent–infant play. The results revealed that 3to 11-month-old infants strongly preferred watching caregivers handle objects. In addition, when caregivers looked away from their infant they tended to look at their own object-handling. Finally, when infants looked toward the caregiver while she was looking at her own hands, the infant’s next eye movement was often toward the caregiver’s object-handling. In this way infants receive adequate naturalistic input to l...

Infants gradually learn to share attention, but it is unknown how they acquire skills such as gaze‐following. Deák and Triesch () suggest that gaze‐following could be acquired if infants learn that adults&#39; gaze direction is likely to be aligned with interesting sights. This hypothesis stipulates that adults tend to look at things that infants find interesting, and that infants could learn by noticing this tendency. We tested the plausibility of this hypothesis through video‐based micro‐behavioral analysis of naturalistic parent–infant play. The results revealed that 3‐ to 11‐month‐old infants strongly preferred watching caregivers handle objects. In addition, when caregivers looked away from their infant they tended to look at their own object‐handling. Finally, when infants looked toward the caregiver while she was looking at her own hands, the infant&#39;s next eye movement was often toward the caregiver&#39;s object‐handling. In this way infants receive adequate naturalistic ...

The study of twin behavior offers the opportunity to study differential patterns of social and communicative interactions in a context where the adult partner and same-age peer are equally familiar. We investigated the development of social engagement, communicative gestures, and imitation in 7- to 25-month-old twins. Twin dyads (N=20 pairs) participated in 10-min, semi-structured play sessions, with the mother seated in a chair completing paperwork for half the session, and on the floor with her children for the other half. Overall, twins engaged more with their mothers than with their siblings: they showed objects and imitated speech and object use more frequently when interacting with their mothers than with their siblings. When the mother was otherwise engaged, the twins played with toys separately, observed each other&#39;s toy play, or were unengaged. These results demonstrate that adult scaffolding of social interactions supports increased communicative bids even in a context...