Six-month-old infants' communication in a comparative perspective: Do maternal attention and interaction matter?

Developmental precursors of the prelinguistic transition from gestures to word use can be found in the early pragmatic usage of auditory and visual signals across contexts. This study examined whether 6-month-old infants are capable of attention-sensitive communication with their mother, that is, adjusting the sensory modality of their communicative signals to their mother's attention. Proxies of maternal attention implemented in experimental conditions were the mother's visual attention (attentive/inattentive), interaction directed at the infant (interactive/non-interactive), and distance (far/close). The infants' signals were coded as either visual or auditory, following an ethological coding. Infants adjusted the sensory modality of their communicative signals mostly to maternal interaction. More auditory signals were produced when the mother was non-interactive than when she was interactive. Interactive conditions were characterized by higher rates of visual signaling and of gaze-coordinated non-vocal oral sounds. The more time infants spent looking at their attentive mother, the more they produced auditory signals, specifically non-vocal oral sounds. These findings are discussed within the articulated frameworks of evolutionary developmental psychology and early pragmatics.

[Differences between parental burnout and postpartum depression]. / Différences entre burn-out parental, dépression du post-partum et dépression majeure.

Parental burnout, postpartum depression and major depression are conditions that share common symptomologies, but are not to be confused with each other. It is therefore important to define each of these disorders before documenting the similarities, differences and the issue of differential diagnosis in each of these conditions.

Differences in Parental Burnout: Influence of Demographic Factors and Personality of Parents and Children.

Parental burnout is a syndrome related to parenthood and characterized by three dimensions: emotional and physical exhaustion, emotional distancing of parents from their children, and loss of parental accomplishment. Many factors can explain the interindividual differences in parental burnout (Roskam et al., 2017). In a study conducted among 372 French parents, we examined the relationship between parental burnout, demographic factors (age of parent and child(ren), age of parent at first birth, total number of children, and number of children present in the family home) and parent-assessed dispositional factors (personality traits of parent and child(ren)). Results for demographic factors showed that the younger the parents we surveyed, the higher their reported sense of parental accomplishment, although they also tended to feel more exhausted. We observed a similar pattern of results when we looked at the children's ages. In addition, the number of children at home slightly increased the emotional distance between parent and child(ren). Results for the parents' dispositional factors showed that all three personality traits we investigated, as well as their different facets (lack of emotional control and lack of impulse control for neuroticism, meticulousness and perseverance for conscientiousness, and cooperation and friendliness for agreeableness), were related to parental burnout and its three dimensions. More specifically, parental meticulousness and lack of emotional control were both risk factors for developing parental burnout. By contrast, agreeableness and perseverance were protective factors. With regard to the children, the same three personality traits were linked to the three dimensions of parental burnout. Having children they perceived as having a high level of neuroticism reduced parents' sense of parental accomplishment and increased their emotional exhaustion and distancing. The opposite relationships were found for agreeableness and conscientiousness. There were no significant relationships between parental assessments of their children' extraversion and openness and parental burnout and its three dimensions. The parent's personality explained 42.3% of the variance in parental burnout, and the child(ren)'s personality (parent-assessed) explained 13.8%. Taken together, these results demonstrate the importance of considering the personality of both parents and children in the study of parental burnout.

Infants' preference for prosocial behaviors: A literature review.

In 2007, a study carried out by Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom provided concrete evidence that infants as young as 6 months were capable of social evaluation, displaying an early preference for agents performing a prosocial behavior. Since then the development of early social abilities to judge other's behavior has been the topic of a growing body of research. The present paper reviews studies conducted between 2007 and 2015 that experimentally examined infants' social evaluation abilities by testing their preference for agents acting prosocially. We performed a detailed analysis of a corpus of 16 research studies including 59 experimental results, scrutinizing their methods and findings, and identifying their convergent and divergent features. This analysis showed that a preference for agents who perform prosocial behaviors (as opposed to antisocial or neutral) was present in a majority of infants, but some conflicting results have also been reported. The rich interpretation that infants are endowed with mature socio-moral evaluation abilities has not really been sufficiently discussed. In order to deepen this debate, we assessed other studies that have further explored infants' understanding of the social value of behaviors. Many of the studies provide evidence that young infants manage to identify and prefer the prosocial agent by taking into account the context and agents' mental states beyond the behavior itself. In this study two specific areas are assessed: (1) studies that have previously explored social evaluation abilities beyond a basic preference for prosocial behavior and (2) current theories which attempt to explain how and why such preferences could exist so early in infancy. Future directions for research on social evaluation abilities in infants are also discussed as well as a review of the literature.

Social interaction is associated with changes in infants' motor activity.

BACKGROUND: In developmental research, infants are commonly assumed to be early stakeholders in interactions with their caregivers. The tools that infants can use to interact with others vary from visual contact to smiling or vocalizing, and also include motor activity. However, surprisingly few studies have explored how the nature and context of social interactions affect infants' engagement in motor activity. METHODS: We investigated the kinematic properties of foot and face movements produced by 11 infants aged between 5 and 9 months during six contrasting dyadic episodes (i.e. passive presence of a stranger or the infant's mother, weak or intense interaction with the stranger/mother as she sings a nursery play song). RESULTS: The infants' face and foot motor activity was significantly reduced during the interactive episodes, compared with the episodes without any interaction, in both the mother and stranger conditions. Furthermore, the level of their motor activity was significantly lower in the stranger condition than in the mother one for some parameters. CONCLUSION: These results are in line with those reported by previous studies and confirm the relevance of using motor activity to delineate the early forms of interactive episodes in infants.

Humans and chimpanzees attend differently to goal-directed actions.

Humans comprehend the actions of others by making inferences about intentional mental states of another. However, little is known about how this capacity develops and whether this is shared with other animals. Here we show the ontogenetic and evolutionary foundations of this ability by comparing the eye movements of 8- and 12-month-old human infants, adults and chimpanzees as they watched videos presenting goal-directed and non-goal-directed actions by an actor. We find that chimpanzees anticipate action goals in the same way as do human adults. Humans and chimpanzees, however, scan goal-directed actions differently. Humans, particularly infants, refer to actors' faces significantly more than do chimpanzees. In human adults, attentional allocation to an actor's face changes as the goal-directed actions proceed. In the case of non-goal-directed actions, human adults attend less often to faces relative to goal-directed actions. These findings indicate that humans have a predisposition to observe goal-directed actions by integrating information from the actor.

Is infant holding-side bias related to motor asymmetries in mother and child?

Studies have revealed a preference for the left hemibody in infant holding in 65-85% of cases. Several investigations have linked this preference to maternal asymmetries. The main goal of the present study was to assess manual and hemispheric asymmetries in both mother and child and delineate their respective influence on holding-side biases. Holding side was assessed by direct observation, and by use of a questionnaire within populations of mother-child dyads. Maternal asymmetries were handedness and hemispheric specialization for perceiving emotions. Infant asymmetries were fetal position, asymmetric tonic neck reflex (ATNR) at birth and handedness at 19 months of age. To that purpose a longitudinal study has been made with infants observed at 2 and 19 months of age. A significant relationship was found between maternal handedness and holding preferences, but no significant relation was obtained between hemispheric specialization and holding preferences. Fetal position in utero but not ATNR, was significantly related to holding-side preferences. Finally, holding side at 2 months was significantly associated with infants' unimanual preferences.