The Role of Dyadic Coordination in Organizing Visual Attention in 5‐Month‐Old Infants

In human infants, the ability to share attention with others is facilitated by increases in attentional selectivity and focus. Differences in early attention have been associated with socio‐cognitive outcomes including language, yet the social mechanisms of attention organization in early infancy have only recently been considered. Here, we examined how social coordination between 5‐month‐old infants and caregivers relate to differences in infant attention, including looking preferences, span, and reactivity to caregivers’ social cues. Using a naturalistic play paradigm, we found that 5‐month‐olds who received a high ratio of sensitive (jointly focused) contingent responses showed strong preferences for objects with which their caregivers were manually engaged. In contrast, infants whose caregivers exhibited high ratios of redirection (attempts to shift focus) showed no preferences for caregivers’ held objects. Such differences have implications for recent models of cognitive development, which rely on early looking preferences for adults’ manually engaged objects as a pathway toward joint attention and word learning. Further, sensitivity and redirectiveness predicted infant attention even in reaction to caregiver responses that were non‐referential (neither sensitive nor redirective). In response to non‐referentials, infants of highly sensitive caregivers oriented less frequently than infants of highly redirective caregivers, who showed increased distractibility. Our results suggest that specific dyadic exchanges predict infant attention differences toward broader social cues, which may have consequences for social‐cognitive outcomes.     

The Effect of Social Responsiveness on Infants' Object‐Directed Imitation

Previous research has demonstrated that social interactions underlie the development of object‐directed imitation. For example, infants differentially learn object action sequences from a live social partner compared to a social partner over a video monitor; however, what is not well understood is what aspects of social interactions influence social learning. Previous studies have found variable influences of different types of caregiver responsiveness on attention, language, and cognitive development. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how the responsive style of a social partner influenced the learning of object‐directed action sequences. Infants interacted with either a sensitive or redirective experimenter before the learning trial. Results revealed infants changed their patterns of engagement; infants interacting with a sensitive experimenter had longer periods of attentional engagement than infants interacting with a redirective experimenter. Furthermore, during the learning trial, the amount of sensitivity during interaction with the social partner predicted learning scores. These findings suggest that infants' attention is influenced by social partners' interactive style during ongoing interaction, which subsequently affects how infants learn from these social partners.     

Twelve‐Month‐Olds Understand Social Intentions Based on Prosody and Gesture Shape

Infants infer social and pragmatic intentions underlying attention‐directing gestures, but the basis on which infants make these inferences is not well understood. Previous studies suggest that infants rely on information from preceding shared action contexts and joint perceptual scenes. Here, we tested whether 12‐month‐olds use information from act‐accompanying cues, in particular prosody and hand shape, to guide their pragmatic understanding. In Experiment 1, caregivers directed infants’ attention to an object to request it, share interest in it, or inform them about a hidden aspect. Caregivers used distinct prosodic and gestural patterns to express each pragmatic intention. Experiment 2 was identical except that experimenters provided identical lexical information across conditions and used three sets of trained prosodic and gestural patterns. In all conditions, the joint perceptual scenes and preceding shared action contexts were identical. In both experiments, infants reacted appropriately to the adults’ intentions by attending to the object mostly in the sharing interest condition, offering the object mostly in the imperative condition, and searching for the referent mostly in the informing condition. Infants’ ability to comprehend pragmatic intentions based on prosody and gesture shape expands infants’ communicative understanding from common activities to novel situations for which shared background knowledge is missing.     

Cultural Contributors to Ego‐Resiliency and Associations with Depressive Problems in Midwestern Latino Youth

Ego‐resiliency is an enduring psychological construct reflecting how individuals‐adapt to environmental stressors, conflict, and change which is linked to positive adjustment. Ego‐resiliency has not been examined in Latino youth, despite their high risk for mental health problems; nor have cultural precursors to ego‐resiliency been examined. Given these gaps, we examined whether familism values (supportive, obligation, and referent) were associated with ego‐resiliency and, in turn, depressive problems in Latino adolescents across two time points (N = 123, mean age = 11.53). Results indicated that supportive familism was associated positively with ego‐resiliency and negatively with depressive problems. Ego‐resiliency negatively predicted depressive problems across time, controlling for prior levels, suggesting that ego‐resiliency may have long‐term effects on depressive problems in Latino youth.     

STEREOTYPE THREAT AND THE STUDENT‐ATHLETE

Achievement gaps may reflect the cognitive impairment thought to occur in evaluative settings (e.g., classrooms) where a stereotyped identity is salient (i.e., stereotype threat). This study presents an economic model of stereotype threat that reconciles prior evidence on how student effort and performance are influenced by this social‐identity phenomenon. This study also presents empirical evidence from a framed field experiment in which students at a selective college were randomly assigned to a treatment that primed their awareness of a negatively stereotyped identity (i.e., student‐athlete). This social‐identity manipulation reduced the test‐score performance of athletes relative to non‐athletes by 12%. These negative performance effects were concentrated among male student‐athletes who also responded to the social‐identity manipulation by attempting to answer more questions. (JEL I2, C9, D0)     

WHEN DO SHELTER‐IN‐PLACE ORDERS FIGHT COVID‐19 BEST? POLICY HETEROGENEITY ACROSS STATES AND ADOPTION TIME

This study explores the impact of Shelter‐in‐Place Orders (SIPOs) on health, with attention to heterogeneity in their impacts. First, using daily state‐level social distancing data, we document that adoption of a SIPO was associated with a 9%–10% increase in the rate at which state residents remained in their homes full‐time. Using daily state‐level coronavirus case data, we find that approximately 3 weeks following the adoption of a SIPO, cumulative COVID‐19 cases fell by approximately 53.5%. However, this average effect masks important heterogeneity across states‐early adopters and high population density states appear to reap larger benefits from their SIPOs. (JEL H75, I12, I18)     

Olfactive frames of remembering: theorizing self,senses and society

By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta‐narratives including sensory relations (pertaining to familial and other ties), sensory memory, time and space, and sensoryscapes. This article also elucidates upon the various moral, cultural and aesthetic codes that may be discerned in biographical narrations of social actors drawn from narrative interviews. Furthermore, it highlights a need to consider sensorial‐bodily experiences in qualitative inquiry and thereby conceptualize how actors articulate their sense of self, and how they reformulate their experiences and relationships with others vis‐à‐vis emotional discourses of happiness, sadness and nostalgia in the maintenance and continuity of selfhood. The paper therefore contributes to sensuous scholarship by explicating how smells and memories operate in conjunction toward shaping self‐identity and social relations.     

Fast Mapping but Poor Retention by 24‐Month‐Old Infants

Four experiments explored the processes that bridge between referent selection and word learning. Twenty‐four‐month‐old infants were presented with several novel names during a referent selection task that included both familiar and novel objects and tested for retention after a 5‐min delay. The 5‐min delay ensured that word learning was based on retrieval from long‐term memory. Moreover, the relative familiarity of objects used during the retention test was explicitly controlled. Across experiments, infants were excellent at referent selection, but very poor at retention. Although the highly controlled retention test was clearly challenging, infants were able to demonstrate retention of the first 4 novel names presented in the session when referent selection was augmented with ostensive naming. These results suggest that fast mapping is robust for reference selection but might be more transient than previously reported for lexical retention. The relations between reference selection and retention are discussed in terms of competitive processes on 2 timescales: competition among objects on individual referent selection trials and competition among multiple novel name–object mappings made across an experimental session.     

Video Deficit in Toddlers’ Object Retrieval: What Eye Movements Reveal About Online Cognition

The purpose of this study was to determine whether toddlers exhibit different eye‐movement patterns when watching real events versus video demonstrations in an object‐retrieval task. Twenty‐four‐month‐olds (N = 36) searched for a sticker on a felt board after watching an experimenter hide it behind a felt object in person or via video. Eye movements during the hiding event were recorded. Compared to those watching in‐person events, children watching video spent more time looking at the target location overall, yet they had relatively poor search performance. Visual attention to the target location predicted search performance in the video condition only; children who watched in‐person hiding events had high success rates even if they paid relatively little visual attention to the correct location. Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that toddlers process information more quickly for in‐person (versus video) events, enabling them to learn as well (or better) despite relatively low selective attention. Thus, relatively poor encoding, as well as memory retrieval, may underlie the video deficit.     

Nineteen‐Month‐Olds' Understanding of the Conventionality of Object Labels Versus Desires

We assessed 19‐month‐olds' appreciation of the conventional nature of object labels versus desires. Infants played a finding game with an experimenter who stated her intention to find the referent of a novel word (word group), to find an object she wanted (desire group), or simply to look in a box (control group). A 2nd experimenter then administered a comprehension task to assess infants' tendency to extend information to a 2nd person who was not present at the time of learning. Results indicate that infants chose the target object when the 2nd experimenter asked for the referent of the novel label but not when she requested the referent of her desire. These findings demonstrate that 19‐month‐olds understand that words are conventional, but desires are not.     

Religion and Non‐traditional Families in the United States

Family forms that have historically been considered “nontraditional” and even “transgressive” are becoming increasingly accepted in the United States, bringing the United States into greater conformity with other western nations. The United States is still unique, however, in that religion continues to play an exceptionally powerful role in shaping Americans' perceptions of and engagement in non‐traditional families. Focusing our attention on same‐sex and interracial families specifically, we consider the recent work on how religion serves to stimulate and justify opposition or (in a minority of instances) support for such families. We contend that studies typically limit their focus to the cognitive aspects (beliefs, ideologies, identities, schemas, salience, etc.) of religion, while often ignoring the influence of religion's more structural aspects in shaping Americans' relationship to non‐traditional families. Given that religion impacts Americans' approaches to family formation at the micro, meso, and macro levels, we propose a more Durkheimian perspective on the topic, one that synthesizes social psychological and structural frameworks in future studies, thus allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of religion's evolving role in American family formation. We also call for more attention to how religion shapes the functioning of non‐traditional families.     

Cross‐Task Stability in Infant Attention: New Perspectives Using the Still‐Face Procedure

Infant visual attention has been studied extensively within cognitive paradigms using measures such as look duration and reaction time, but less work has examined how infant attention operates in social contexts. In addition, little is known about the stability of individual differences in attention across cognitive and social contexts. In this study, a cross‐sectional sample of 50 infants (4 and 6 months of age) were first tested in a look duration and reaction time task with static visual stimuli. Next, their mothers participated with the infants in the still‐face procedure, a mildly distressing social interaction paradigm that involves violation of expectancy. Individual differences in looking and emotion were stable across the phases of the still‐face task. Further, individual differences in looking measures from the visual attention task were related to the pattern of looking shown across the phases of the still‐face procedure. Results indicate that individual differences in attentional measures show moderate stability within cognitive and social contexts, and that the ability of infants to shift and disengage looks may affect their ability to regulate interaction in social contexts.     

A Longitudinal Examination of Support,Self‐Esteem,and Mexican‐Origin Adolescent Mothers' Parenting Efficacy

Guided by a risk and resilience framework, this study used a prospective longitudinal, multiple‐reporter design to examine how social support from a mother figure during pregnancy interacted with Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers' self‐esteem to inform their parenting efficacy when their children were 10 months old. Using reports of perceived social support by adolescent mothers (M_age = 16.24, SD = 0.99) and their mother figures (M_age = 40.84, SD = 7.04) in 205 dyads, and controlling for demographic factors (i.e., adolescent age, adolescent nativity, family income, mothers' educational attainment, adolescent – mother coresidence) and adolescents' social support from a significant other, the findings indicated that social support during pregnancy was positively associated with adolescent mothers' future parenting efficacy when adolescent mothers had relatively lower self‐esteem. The findings were consistent for adolescents' and mothers' reports and emphasize the value of social support from a mother figure among adolescent mothers with lower self‐esteem. Implications for interventions are presented.     

Coregulation and the Quality of the Relationship in Full‐Term and Very Low‐Birthweight Preterm Infant‐Mother Dyads During Face‐To‐Face Interactions

Interactions with parents build the foundation for infants' social–emotional development. This study investigated coregulation of the interaction and quality of relationship between mothers and their 6‐month‐old full‐term (n = 43) and very low‐birthweight/preterm (VLBW/preterm; n = 44; ages corrected for prematurity) infants. The objectives were to examine (1) how coregulation changed following a perturbed interaction, (2) how coregulation differed between full‐term and VLBW/preterm infant–mother dyads, and (3) the association between coregulation and relationship quality. Coregulation was coded using the Revised Relational Coding System (Fogel et al., 2003). Quality of the relationship was measured using the Emotional Availability scales (Biringen et al., 2014; Carter et al., 1998). Dyads participated in the Still‐Face (SF) procedure (Tronick et al., 1978) consisting of two natural and one SF period where mothers assumed a neutral expression, refraining from interacting with their infants. Following the SF period, dyads engaged in more symmetrical and more disruptive patterns of coregulation. While full‐term dyads engaged in more sequential‐symmetrical, VLBW/preterm dyads engaged in more resonant‐symmetrical coregulation. These results suggest that VLBW/preterm dyads may show more emotional reactivity in their interactions than full‐term dyads; however, in both groups infant responsiveness and parenting stress influenced the types of coregulation exhibited.     

Television Viewing Patterns in 6‐ to 18‐Month‐Olds: The Role of Caregiver–Infant Interactional Quality

The present study examines coviewing of Baby Mozart by 6‐ to 18‐month‐old infants and their caregivers under naturalistic conditions. We had two questions. First, extending the method of Barr, Zack, Garcia, and Muentener ( Infancy, 13 [2008], 30–56 ) to a younger population, we asked if age, prior exposure, and caregiver verbal input would predict infant looking to a Baby Mozart video from 6 to 18 months. Second, we asked if caregiver–infant interactional quality, defined as the amount of shared focus and turn taking between infant and caregiver, would be associated with infant looking time. We found that, in addition to the anticipated effect of prior exposure and caregiver verbal input, interactional quality measures were related to infant media‐directed looking. Infants who engaged in more shared focus and turn taking looked more to the program than infants who interacted less with their caregivers. These results are discussed in terms of social mediation of coviewing during early infancy.     

“Police,Public Safety,and Race‐Neutral Discourse”

In the final decades of the 20th century policing in America was refashioned in the public image of community policing. Race‐neutral discourses dominate public and professional support for community‐oriented policing philosophies. In the contemporary era of hyper‐incarceration a focus on ethnoracial divisions grounded in the sociology of peculiar institutions is essential for documenting transformations in how the municipal police services are legitimized. Here I analyze how the public discourses of law‐and‐order center on distortions of social fact and public safety. Today the criminalization of immigrants is the latest turn in public discourses shaping patterns of ethnoracial visions and divisions. The carceral breadth of the neoliberal penal state extends beyond social structure, repackaged as race‐neutral ideology across the public sphere.     

The Association Between Infants’ Attention Control and Social Inhibition is Moderated by Genetic and Environmental Risk for Anxiety

Infant social inhibition is associated with increased risk for anxiety later in life. Although both genetic and environmental factors are associated with anxiety, little empirical work has addressed how developing regulatory abilities work with genetic and environmental risk to exacerbate or mitigate problem behaviors. The current study was aimed at addressing this gap in research by investigating an early emerging regulatory behavior, attention control, in association with genetic and environmental risk for anxiety. Participants included 9‐month‐old adopted infants, their birth mothers, and adoptive parents (N = 361). Lifetime diagnosis of birth mother social phobia was obtained using structured interviews. Adoptive parents completed self‐report measures of anxiety symptoms. Infant social inhibition and attention control were coded during a stranger interaction and a barrier task, respectively. Neither adoptive nor birth parent anxiety was directly associated with social inhibition. The association of attention control with social inhibition in infants was moderated by birth and adoptive parent anxiety symptoms. When infants of birth mothers with social phobia were raised by adoptive parents with high self‐reported anxiety symptoms, greater attention control was associated with greater social inhibition. However, when raised by adoptive parents with low self‐reported anxiety, greater attention control was associated with less social inhibition.     

Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of the Gap‐Overlap Task in 10‐Month‐Old Infants

Understanding the development of attention is key to understanding cognitive maturation. The gap‐overlap task can be administered at all ages and is widely used to study the development of overt visual attention. However, studies using the gap‐overlap task report different measures and little is known about the tasks’ psychometric properties, especially in infants. We tested the 1‐week test–retest reliability of two frequently used gap‐overlap measures of attentional disengagement in 10‐month‐old infants; the gap effect as measured by the difference between the gap and overlap condition and the gap effect as measured by the difference between the gap and baseline condition. Sixty‐seven infants performed the gap‐overlap task twice, of which 45 infants had sufficient data quality for further analyses. Test–retest reliability of the overlap‐gap gap effect was higher (r = .50) than the baseline‐gap gap effect (r = .29). Moreover, the shared variance between overlap and baseline saccadic reaction times was moderate to high across sessions. In light of these results and the methodological challenges and limitations of infant research, we consider the overlap‐gap gap effect to be a good measure to study the development of attentional disengagement in infants and suggest the exclusion of the baseline condition in future studies.     

Reconsidering Explanations for Regional Convergence in Voter Registration and Turnout in the United States, 1956–20001

In the United States, voter turnout rates have been declining for the last 4 decades; however, this pattern differs substantially by region. Southern states have actually seen a fairly dramatic increase in turnout since the 1950s and currently the South and non‐South have almost identical rates of voter registration and turnout. Using a series of Heckman probit models, which examine voting as a two‐step process of registering and casting a vote, we systematically investigate differences in rates of registering and voting across regions and test explanations for regional convergence over time. Using data from the American National Election Studies (1956–2000), we find that regional convergence in voter registration is primarily due to the removal of formal and informal barriers to registration and voting in the South and declining efforts to mobilize potential voters in the non‐South. In addition, we find some fairly distinct differences in which predictors are important to each stage of the voting process; for example, race is a better predictor of registering to vote than voting. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results.     

The Value of Vocalizing: 10‐Month‐Olds' Vocal Usage Relates to Language Outcomes at 15 Months

The interaction between infant's communicative competence and responsiveness of caregivers facilitates the transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication. It is thus important to know how infants' communicative behavior changes in relation to different caregiver responses; furthermore, how infants' modification of communicative behavior relates to language outcomes. We investigated 39 10‐month‐old infants' communication as a function of mothers' attention and responses and the relationship to language outcomes at 15 months. We elicited infants' communicative behavior in three conditions: (1) joint attention: Mothers were visually attending and responding to infants' attention and interest; (2) available: Mothers were visually attending to infants, but not responding contingently to infants' attention and interest; (3) unavailable: Mothers were not attending to infants nor responding to them. Infants vocalized more when mothers attended and responded to them (conditions 1 and 2) than when mothers did not (condition 3), but infants' gesture and gesture‐vocal production did not differ across conditions. Furthermore, infants' production of a higher proportion of vocalizations in the unavailable condition relative to the joint attention condition correlated with, and predicted, infants' language scores at 15 months. Thus, infants who appear to be aware of the social effects of vocalizations may learn words better.