Integration of Thought and Action: Arm Weights Facilitate Search Accuracy in 24‐Month‐Old Children

Search errors are common in cognitive tasks with infants and toddlers, and these errors reveal important insights to the development of competence and performance. Rivière and Lécuyer (2008, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 100, 1) demonstrated that 29‐month‐olds typically make an error during a search task involving invisible displacement. However, performance improves significantly when children wear weighted wrist bands while doing the task. To investigate this phenomenon further, we tested 24‐month‐old children in an identical search task (N = 35). Half the children wore weighted wrist bands, and the rest were in a no‐weight condition. To test how far this phenomenon generalizes, we also tested the same children in a second search task where they needed to find a ball that had rolled behind one of four doors. The results showed that children in the no‐weight condition replicated previous findings of poor performance on both search tasks. Unlike 29‐month‐olds, the 24‐month‐olds in the weighted condition did not immediately show improvement on the search tasks. However, after an initial search attempt, children wearing weights performed significantly better than chance. The findings shed new light on the interplay between thought and action.     

Young Infants Match Facial and Vocal Emotional Expressions of Other Infants

Research has demonstrated that infants recognize emotional expressions of adults in the first half year of life. We extended this research to a new domain, infant perception of the expressions of other infants. In an intermodal matching procedure, 3.5‐ and 5‐month‐old infants heard a series of infant vocal expressions (positive and negative affect) along with side‐by‐side dynamic videos in which one infant conveyed positive facial affect and another infant conveyed negative facial affect. Results demonstrated that 5‐month‐olds matched the vocal expressions with the affectively congruent facial expressions, whereas 3.5‐month‐olds showed no evidence of matching. These findings indicate that by 5 months of age, infants detect, discriminate, and match the facial and vocal affective displays of other infants. Further, because the facial and vocal expressions were portrayed by different infants and shared no face–voice synchrony, temporal, or intensity patterning, matching was likely based on detection of a more general affective valence common to the face and voice.     

Emergence of a consonant bias during the first year of life: New evidence from own‐name recognition

Recent evidence suggests that during the first year of life, a preference for consonant information during lexical processing (consonant bias) emerges, at least for some languages like French. Our study investigated the factors involved in this emergence as well as the developmental consequences for variation in consonant bias emergence. In a series of experiments, we measured 5‐, 8‐, and 11‐month‐old French‐learning infants orientation times to a consonant or vowel mispronunciation of their own name, which is one of the few word forms familiar to infants at this young age. Both 5‐ and 8‐month‐olds oriented longer to vowel mispronunciations, but 11‐month‐olds showed a different pattern, initially orienting longer to consonant mispronunciations. We interpret these results as further evidence of an initial vowel bias, with consonant bias emergence by 11 months. Neither acoustic‐phonetic nor lexical factors predicted preferences in 8‐ and 11‐month‐olds. Finally, counter to our predictions, a vowel bias at the time of test for 11‐month‐olds was related to later productive vocabulary outcomes.     

Language Experience Shapes the Development of the Mutual Exclusivity Bias

Halberda (2003) demonstrated that 17‐month‐old infants, but not 14‐ or 16‐month‐olds, use a strategy known as mutual exclusivity (ME) to identify the meanings of new words. When 17‐month‐olds were presented with a novel word in an intermodal preferential looking task, they preferentially fixated a novel object over an object for which they already had a name. We explored whether the development of this word‐learning strategy is driven by children’s experience of hearing only one name for each referent in their environment by comparing the behavior of infants from monolingual and bilingual homes. Monolingual infants aged 17–22 months showed clear evidence of using an ME strategy, in that they preferentially fixated the novel object when they were asked to “look at the dax.” Bilingual infants of the same age and vocabulary size failed to show a similar pattern of behavior. We suggest that children who are raised with more than one language fail to develop an ME strategy in parallel with monolingual infants because development of the bias is a consequence of the monolingual child’s everyday experiences with words.     

Older Motherhood and the Changing Life Course in the Era of Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Midlife, once a focus of particular interest to gerontologists because of its implications for later life, has recently received little attention. But as new reproductive technologies have expanded in the United States, motherhood is occurring at older ages. While older motherhood is not a new social practice, what is unique is that an increasing number of women are becoming pregnant through technological means, often for the first time, at the end of their reproductive cycle. These women can be understood as part of a new middle age, engaging in new life course possibilities that respond to changing social, cultural, physical, and economic realities, and potentially extending much later in the life course. Drawing on interviews with 79 couples, we utilize symbolic interactionist conceptualizations of identity and stigma to consider how women negotiate the shifting social identities associated with older motherhood. We conclude that older motherhood will be one phenomenon contributing to an enduring change in views of what constitutes old age, and that it will be seen as occurring much later in the life course.     

Race‐Based Perceptual Asymmetry in Face Processing Is Evident Early in Life

Adults’ processing of own‐race faces differs from that of other‐race faces. The presence of an “other‐race” feature (ORF) has been proposed as a mechanism underlying this specialization. We examined whether this mechanism, which was previously identified in adults and in 9‐month‐olds, is evident at 3.5 months. Caucasian 3.5‐month‐olds looked longer at a pattern containing a single Asian face among seven Caucasian faces than at a pattern containing a single Caucasian face among seven Asian faces. Homogenous and inverted face control conditions indicated that infants’ preference was not driven by the majority of faces in arrays or by low‐level features. Thus, 3.5‐month‐olds found the presence of an other‐race face among own‐race faces to be more salient than the reverse configuration. This asymmetry suggests sensitivity to an ORF at 3.5 months. Thus, a key mechanism of race‐based processing in adults has an early onset, indicating rapid development of specialization early in life.     

Month of Birth and Dementia Late in Life

Dementia is one of the most common, still incurable diseases of old age, with high costs for the patient, the family and the society. Scholars of dementia have identified important risk factors in mid-life but little attention has been devoted to the earliest period in life. This article extends the research about risk factors of dementia to the time around birth. We start by discussing the influential theories of fetal programming and of the thrifty phenotype, and briefly contrast these theories with life-course approaches and the theory of the accumulation of advantage or disadvantage over the life course. Our own empirical study is based on an exogenous indicator of the early life environment, namely the month of birth. We present the theoretical background of using this indicator and discuss others such as famines, epidemics, and macro-economic fluctuations. Using data from the largest public health insurer in Germany we explore the relationship between the month of birth and dementia and find that the winter-born have the lowest risk of developing dementia. We present the pros and cons of using claims data in the study of dementia and discuss research findings that may shed light on the biological mechanisms underlying our finding.     

Age‐Specific Preferences for Infant‐Directed Affective Intent

This study examined the developmental course of infants' attentional preferences for 3 types of infant‐directed affective intent, which have been shown to be commonly used at particular ages in the first year of life. Specifically, Kitamura and Burnham (2003) found mothers' tone of voice in infant‐directed speech is most comforting between birth and 3 months, most approving at 6 months, and most directive at 9 months. Thus, the aim of this study was to assess whether there is a relation between the type of affective intent used by mothers at each age point, and infants' affective intent preferences. Each infant group, 3‐, 6‐, and 9‐month‐olds, was played the 3 types of affective intent alternating across a single test session. When analyzed across age, the interactions revealed the predicted developmental trajectory; that is, infant preferences transformed between 3 and 6 months from comforting to approving, and between 6 and 9 months, from approving to directive. However, when analyzed separately by age, it was shown that 3‐month‐olds preferred comforting to other types; 6‐month‐olds preferred approving to directive, but listened equally to approving and comforting; and 9‐month‐olds showed no preference for any type of affective intent. Because it was possible that 9‐month‐olds were more focused on phonetic and phonotactic information, a new group of 9‐month‐olds was tested with intonation‐only versions of the 3 affective intent types. Under these conditions, they were found to prefer directive to comforting, but not directive to approving types. The results of this study have implications for what infants pay attention to in their social and linguistic environment over the course of the first year.     

Do Pathways Matter? Linking Early Immigrant Employment Sequences and Later Economic Outcomes: Evidence from Canada

Employment mobility is a critical feature of immigrants’ settlement experiences and longer‐term life chances. While current research typically treats mobility as a singular outcome, becoming established in a new labor market is a complex process that can entail multiple transitions in and out of employment and between different types of jobs over time. This article advances understanding of the process of immigrant labor market incorporation by engaging with its potentially multidimensional, cumulative, and path‐dependent aspects. Using data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, I test the impact of an empirically derived typology of month‐by‐month immigrant employment trajectories on the odds of occupational degradation and on weekly wages. I find that the pathways immigrants take through the labor market in their first four years constitute a distinct and important mechanism shaping later employment outcomes.     

Body Representation in the First Year of Life

Like faces, bodies are significant sources of social information. However, research suggests that infants do not develop body representation (i.e., knowledge about typical human bodies) until the second year of life, although they are sensitive to facial information much earlier. Yet, previous research only examined whether infants are sensitive to the typical arrangement of body parts. We examined whether younger infants have body knowledge of a different kind, namely the relative size of body parts. Five‐ and 9‐month‐old infants were tested for their preference between a normal versus a proportionally distorted body. Nine‐month‐olds exhibited a preference for the normal body when images were presented upright but not when they were inverted. Five‐month‐olds failed to exhibit a preference in either condition. These results indicate that infants have knowledge about human bodies by the second half of the first year of life. Moreover, given that better performance on upright than on inverted stimuli has been tied to expertise, the fact that older infants exhibited an inversion effect with body images indicates that at least some level of expertise in body processing develops by 9 months of age.     

Differences in How 12‐ and 24‐Month‐Olds Interpret the Gaze of Adults

This study examined the hypothesis that toddlers interpret an adult's head turn as evidence that the adult was looking at something, whereas younger infants interpret gaze based on an expectancy that an interesting object will be present on the side to which the adult has turned. Infants of 12 months and toddlers of 24 months were first shown that an adult head turn to the side predicted the activation of a remote‐controlled toy on that side of the room. After this connection had been demonstrated, participants were assigned to 2 conditions. In the head turn condition the toys were removed but the adult continued to produce head turns to the side. In the toy condition the adult stopped turning but the toys continued to be activated when the participant turned toward them. Results showed that, compared to 12‐month‐olds, 24‐month‐olds were more likely to continue to turn to the side when the adult continued to turn even though there was no longer anything of interest to see. In contrast, compared to 24‐month‐olds, 12‐month‐olds were, if anything, more likely to continue to turn to the side in the condition in which the adult stopped turning. The latter result was replicated in a condition in which the activation of the toy was not contingent on the child's own head turn. These results imply that the meaning of gaze following may change significantly over the 2nd year of life. For 12‐month‐olds, gaze is a useful predictor of where interesting sights may occur. In contrast, for 24‐month‐olds, gaze may be a signal that the adult is looking at something.     

Infant Imitation From Televised Peer and Adult Models

Developmental changes in learning from peers and adults during the second year of life were assessed using an imitation paradigm. Independent groups of 15‐ and 24‐month‐old infants watched a prerecorded video of an unfamiliar child or adult model demonstrating a series of actions with objects. When learning was assessed immediately, 15‐month‐old infants imitated the target actions from the adult, but not the peer whereas 24‐month‐old infants imitated the target actions from both models. When infants’ retention was assessed after a 10‐min delay, only 24‐month‐old infants who had observed the peer model exhibited imitation. Across both ages, there was a significant positive correlation between the number of actions imitated from the peer and the length of regular peer exposure reported by caregivers. Length of peer exposure was not related to imitation from the adult model. Taken together, these findings indicate that a peer‐model advantage develops as a function of age and experience during the second year of life.     

Environmental Influences on Infants’ Native Vowel Discrimination: The Case of Talker Number in Daily Life

Both quality and quantity of speech from the primary caregiver have been found to impact language development. A third aspect of the input has been largely ignored: the number of talkers who provide input. Some infants spend most of their waking time with only one person; others hear many different talkers. Even if the very same words are spoken the same number of times, the pronunciations can be more variable when several talkers pronounce them. Is language acquisition affected by the number of people who provide input? To shed light on the possible link between how many people provide input in daily life and infants’ native vowel discrimination, three age groups were tested: 4‐month‐olds (before attunement to native vowels), 6‐month‐olds (at the cusp of native vowel attunement) and 12‐month‐olds (well attuned to the native vowel system). No relationship was found between talker number and native vowel discrimination skills in 4‐ and 6‐month‐olds, who are overall able to discriminate the vowel contrast. At 12 months, we observe a small positive relationship, but further analyses reveal that the data are also compatible with the null hypothesis of no relationship. Implications in the context of infant language acquisition and cognitive development are discussed.     

Lunacy revisited. The influence of the moon on mental health and quality of life

The idea that the stars and planets may influence human health and behavior can be traced to at least Roman times, and research suggests a high proportion of health professionals continue to hold this belief. Nevertheless, evidence for the supposed influence of the moon on human behavior has proved particularly elusive, and research has tended to suffer from weaknesses in methodology and data analysis. This article reports findings drawn from a re-analysis of data from a research study into the functioning of a sample of mentally ill people living in the community. The mental health and quality of life of a sample of 100 people were assessed on four occasions during a 30-month period. Data were aggregated to represent the span of one lunar month, with scores being allocated to the relevant week of the lunar cycle during which each assessment was made. Comparison of mean values across the weeks of the lunar cycle was preformed using the ANOVA, Results showed significant change at the time of the full moon only in subjects with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (n = 56), where deterioration was observed in three areas of psychopathology and one area of quality of life. Some implications for nursing practice are discussed, and it is suggested that future research into the possibility of a lunar effect on human life should focus on the direct measurement of functioning in people with schizophrenia.     

Reflexivity over and above convention: the new orthodoxy in the sociology of personal life, formerly sociology of the family

There is a new orthodoxy in the field that was once understood as the sociology of the family, and is increasingly understood as the sociology of 'personal life', 'intimacy', 'relationships' and 'families'. The orthodoxy highlights the open-endedness of intimate relations at the expense of the family as an institution; that is, reflexivity over and above convention. This article argues that the new orthodoxy not only overstates reflexivity at the expense of convention, but abdicates understanding to frameworks grounded in biologistic and economistic understandings of human behaviour. The article makes its point through attention to three areas of research at odds with the new orthodoxy: paternity uncertainty, inheritance and family business. It then proposes that conceptualization of the family as an institutional regime gives due weight to the reflexive reconfiguration of family relationships and practices on the one hand, and their institutional embeddedness on the other.     

Memory for One‐Time Experiences in the Second Year of Life: Implications for the Status of Episodic Memory

Memory based on a one‐time experience is an important element of its definition as “episodic.” Infants' memories for one‐time experiences over long delays are largely unexplored. Using elicited imitation, we tested 20‐ and 16‐month‐olds' (Experiment 1) and 13‐month‐olds' (Experiment 2) memories as a function of number of experiences and delay. Over 1 month, 20‐ and 16‐month‐olds remembered individual actions of one‐time events; 20‐month‐olds also remembered temporal order; with verbal reminders, 16‐month‐olds did as well. Over 3 months, recall depended on multiple experiences. Thirteen‐month‐olds' required multiple experiences, even over 1 month. The findings speak to the gradual emergence of an important element of episodic memory, namely the ability to preserve memories of one‐time experiences over long periods of time.     

Learning Words Over Time: The Role of Stimulus Repetition in Mutual Exclusivity

During the second year of life, infants develop a preference to attach novel labels to novel objects. This behavior is commonly known as “mutual exclusivity” (Markman, 1989). In an intermodal preferential looking experiment with 19.5‐ and 22.5‐month‐olds, stimulus repetition was critical for observing mutual exclusivity. On the first occasion that a novel label was presented with 1 familiar object and 1 novel object, looking behavior was unsystematic. However, on reexposure to the same stimuli, 22.5‐month‐olds looked preferentially at the novel object prior to the re‐presentation of the novel label. These findings suggest a powerful memory mechanism for novel labels and objects, enabling mutual exclusivity to emerge across repeated exposures to potential referents.     

Visual Attention to Dynamic Spatial Relations in Infants and Adults

Previous research has found that kinematic features of interactions, such as spatial proximity, capture adult visual attention. The current research uses online measures of gaze behavior to determine attentional capture to objects with reduced interobject spacing in adults as well as infants at 5 and 12 months. The three age groups observed three identical geometrical shapes that moved randomly. Relative distance between the objects was mapped and intervals of high and low spatial proximity were identified. Findings demonstrate that only adults and 12‐month‐olds look significantly more at the objects that are close during instances of high spatial proximity, while 5‐month‐olds look at chance. The findings speak for a developmental trend in oculomotor processes, where a bias to look at objects with high spatial proximity develops within the first year of life.     

18‐Month‐Olds Predict Specific Action Mistakes Through Attribution of False Belief,Not Ignorance,and Intervene Accordingly

This study employed a new “anticipatory intervening” paradigm to tease apart false belief and ignorance‐based interpretations of 18‐month‐olds’ helpful informing. We investigated in three experiments whether 18‐month‐old infants inform an adult selectively about one of the two locations depending on the adult’s belief about which of the two locations held her toy. In experiments 1 and 2, the adult falsely believed that one of the locations held her toy. In experiment 3, the adult was ignorant about which of the two locations held her toy. In all cases, however, the toy had been removed from the locations and the locations contained instead materials which the adult wanted to avoid. In experiments 1 and 2, infants spontaneously and selectively informed the adult about the aversive material in the location the adult falsely believed to hold her toy. In contrast, in experiment 3, infants informed the ignorant adult about both locations equally. Results reveal that infants expected the adult to commit a specific action mistake when she held a false belief, but not when she was ignorant. Further, infants were motivated to intervene proactively. Findings reveal a predictive action‐based usage of “theory‐of‐mind” skills at 18 months of age.     

Speed of Processing and Face Recognition at 7 and 12 Months

This research examined developmental and individual differences in infants' speed of processing faces and the relation of processing speed to the type of information encoded. To gauge processing speed, 7‐ and 12‐month‐olds were repeatedly presented with the same face (frontal view), each time paired with a new one, until they showed a consistent preference for the new one. Subsequent probe trials assessed recognition of targets that either preserved configural integrity (Study 1: 3/4 profile and full profile poses) or disrupted it while preserving featural information (Study 2: rotations of 160° or 200° and fracturings). There were developmental differences in both speed and in infants' appreciation of information about faces. Older infants took about 60% fewer trials to reach criterion and had more mature patterns of attention (i.e., looks of shorter duration and more shifts of gaze). Whereas infants of both ages recognized the familiar face in a 3/4 pose, the 12‐month‐olds also recognized it in profile and when rotated. Twelve‐month‐olds who were fast processors additionally recognized the fractured faces; otherwise, processing speed was unrelated to the type of information extracted. At 7 months then, infants made use of some configural information in processing faces; at 12 months, they made use of even more of the configural information, along with part‐based or featural information.