Making Sense of Infants' Differential Responses to Incongruity.

Infants show strikingly different reactions to incongruity: looking (Baillargeon, 1998) or smiling (Mireault & Reddy, 2016). The former occurs in response to magical events and the latter to humorous events. We argue that these reactions depend largely on the respective experimental methodologies employed, including the popular Violation of Expectation (VOE) paradigm. Although both types of studies involve infants' reactions to incongruity, their literatures have yet to confront each other and researchers in each domain are drawing strikingly different conclusions regarding infants' understanding of the world. Here, we argue that infants are sensitive to and constrained by several contextual differences in the methodologies employed by incongruity researchers that afford one or the other reaction. We apply De Jaegher & Di Paolo's (2007) Participatory Sense Making framework to further understand what infants are sensitive to in these paradigms. Understanding infants' reactions to incongruity (i.e., VOE) is necessary to clear up claims regarding the sophisticatication of their knowledge of physical and social phenomena. Attention to several simple methodological details is recommended.

Push or Carry? Pragmatic Opportunities for Language Development in Strollers vs. Backpacks.

Strollers and backpacks are employed early, frequently and throughout the first year, with parents overwhelmingly using strollers. However, because these transport modalities put infants in different proximities to caregivers, postures, and states of alertness, their use may translate to different opportunities that are of developmental consequence, particularly with regard to language. We used GoPro technology in a within subjects counter-balanced design to measure dyadic vocalizations in strollers and backpacks with 7-to-11-month-old infants. Parent-infant dyads (N=36), who regularly used both transport modes took two 8-minute walks in their own neighborhoods using their own carriers while wearing lightweight head-mounted GoPros. There was significantly more parent speech, infant vocalizations, dyadic conversations and infant-initiated speech in backpacks, as well as more head motion consistent with visual scanning by infants. Backpacks appear to be a practical way to encourage more engaging, language-enriched developmental opportunities in the critical first year.

Social, cognitive, and physiological aspects of humour perception from 4 to 8 months: Two longitudinal studies.

Infants laugh by 4 months, but whether they understand humour based on social or cognitive factors is unclear. We conducted two longitudinal studies of 4-, 6-, and 8-month-olds (N = 60), and 5-, 6-, and 7-month-olds (N = 53) to pinpoint the onset of independent humour perception and determine when social and cognitive factors are most salient. Infants were shown six events in randomized repeated-measures designs: two ordinary events and two absurd iterations of those events, with parents' affect manipulated (laugh or neutral) during the latter. Four-month-olds did not smile/laugh more at absurd events, but exhibited a significant heart rate deceleration. Five-month-olds independently appraised absurd events as humorous, smiling/laughing despite their parents' neutrality. Parent laughter did not influence infants of any age to smile more, but captured 4-month-olds' attention. Results suggest that 4-month-olds laugh in response to social cues, while 5-month-olds' can laugh in response to cognitive features. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? By 6 months, infants can independently appraise absurd events as humorous, but it is not known whether younger infants can. What does this study add? This study replicated the finding on younger infants, showing that 5-month-olds are similarly capable of independent humour appraisal. These studies also found that although 4-month-olds do not respond to absurd events with positive affect, they do exhibit a heart rate decrease that is unrelated to looking. These studies help delineate when social and cognitive factors contribute to infant humour perception.

Laughing MATTERS.

An infant's laughter can reveal not only how babies think but also the serious reasons for this expression of joy.

Laughing matters: Infant humor in the context of parental affect.

Smiling and laughing appear very early during the first year of life, but little is known about how infants come to appraise a stimulus as humorous. This short-term longitudinal study explored infant humor perception from 5 to 7 months of age as a function of parental affect during an absurd event. Using a within-participants design, parents alternated smiling/laughing with emotional neutrality while acting absurdly toward their infants. Group comparisons showed that infants (N = 37) at all ages smiled at the event regardless of parental affect but did so significantly longer at 5 and 6 months, and more often and sooner at 7 months, when parents provided humor cues. Similarly, sequential analyses revealed that after gazing at the event, 7-month-olds were more likely to smile at it only when parents provided humor cues and were comparatively more likely to look away when parents were neutral. Thus, starting at 5 months of age, parental affect influenced infants' affect toward an absurd event, an effect that was magnified at 7 months. These results are discussed in the context of emotional contagion, regulation, and the emergence of social referencing.

Social looking, social referencing and humor perception in 6- and-12-month-old infants.

Social referencing refers to infants' use of caregivers as emotional referents in ambiguous situations (Walden, 1993). Studies of social referencing typically require ambulation, thereby over-looking younger, non-ambulatory infants (i.e., ≤8-months) and resulting in a widespread assumption that young infants do not employ this strategy. Using a novel approach that does not require mobility, we found that when parents provided unsolicited affective cues during an ambiguous-absurd (i.e., humorous) event, 6-month-olds employ one component of social referencing, social looking Additionally, 6-month-olds who did not laugh at the event were significantly more likely to look toward parents than their counterparts who found the event funny. Sequential analyses revealed that, following a reference to a smiling parent, 6-month olds were more likely to smile at the parent, but by 12 months were more likely to smile at the event suggesting that older infants are influenced by parental affect in humorous situations. The developmental implications of these findings are discussed, as well as the usefulness of studying humor for understanding important developmental phenomena.