Communication is commonly viewed as connecting people through conscious symbolic processes. Infants have an immature communication toolbox, raising the question of how they form a sense of connectedness. In this article, we propose a framework for infants' communication, emphasizing the subtle unconscious behaviors and autonomic contingent signals…

A considerable body of research has documented the emergence of what appears to be instrumental helping behavior in early childhood. The current study tested the hypothesis that one basic psychological mechanism motivating this behavior is a preference for completing unfinished actions. To test this, a paradigm was implemented in which 2-year-olds…

This study investigates infants' neural and behavioral responses to maternal ostensive signals during naturalistic mother-infant interactions and their effects on object encoding. Mothers familiarized their 9- to 10-month-olds (N = 35, 17 females, mainly White, data collection: 2018-2019) with objects with or without mutual gaze, infant-directed…

Does knowledge of other people's minds grow from concrete experience to abstract concepts? Cognitive scientists have hypothesized that infants' first-person experience, acting on their own goals, leads them to understand others' actions and goals. Indeed, classic developmental research suggests that before infants reach for objects, they do not…

Pacifier use during childhood has been hypothesized to interfere with language processing, but, to date, there is limited evidence revealing detrimental effects of prolonged pacifier use on infant vocabulary learning. In the present study, parents of 12- and 24-month-old infants were recruited in Oslo (Norway). The sample included 1187 monolingual…

Teaching an infant manual signs is beneficial as it promotes early communication, improves socialization, and can functionally replace behaviors such as crying and whining. Improving early communication also may reduce the probability of an infant engaging in dangerous behavior, like unsafe climbing. The purpose of this study was to extend…

The secure base phenomenon was ascribed to changes in exploration observed during Ainsworth's Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), related to the quality of the attachment relationship. However, infant temperament was not taken into consideration. The current study aims to replicate Ainsworth's findings regarding infant exploration and attachment…

Process praise (i.e., praise for effort) facilitates childhood persistence. However, less is known about the mechanism by which process praise influences persistence in infancy. Here, we propose that well-timed process praise reinforces the link between effort and success, thus promoting persistence in young children. In Experiment 1, U.S. infants…

Research suggests that women's autonomic nervous system responses to infant cries capture processes that affect their parenting behaviors. The aim of this study was to build on prior work by testing whether pregnant women's autonomic responses to an unfamiliar infant crying also predict their infants' emerging regulation abilities. Participants…

The current study explored the link between mouthing and fingering and vocal behaviours directed to objects and caregivers. Nine infants were tracked from the ages of 8-16 months by video recording their mouthing and fingering vignettes and vocal behaviours and vocal behaviours resulting in a total of 2,061 coded behaviours. Microanalysis revealed…

This study quantified the spatial exploration of 13 infants born very and extremely preterm (PT) at 4 months corrected age as they learned that moving their feet vertically to cross a virtual threshold activated an infant kick-activated mobile and compared results to 15 infants born full-term (FT) from a previously published study. Spatial…

Independent locomotion is associated with a range of positive developmental outcomes, but unlike cognitive, linguistic, and social skills, acquiring motor skills requires infants to generate their own input for learning. We tested factors that shape infants' spontaneous locomotion by observing forty 12- to 22-month-olds (19 girls, 21 boys) during…

Exposure to communicative gestures, through their parents' use of gestures, is associated with infants' language development. However, the mechanisms supporting this link are not fully understood. In adults, sensorimotor brain activity occurs while processing communicative stimuli, including both spoken language and gestures. Using…

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of the literature on the associated factors with infant sleep-wake behaviour during the first 12 months of life, namely (1) the factors positively and negatively associated with sleep-wake behaviour and (2) the factors positively and negatively affected by sleep-wake behaviour. This systematic review…

For those experiencing them, educational transitions include not only the present time but are embedded within institutions that precede and extend beyond the individuals. This article explores how, as an institutional space, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) setting is (re)produced within young children's encounters with others during…