Subset of data drawn from parent volume (https://nyu.databrary.org/volume/563) of 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, 23-month-old walking infants during natural activity in the home with caregivers. Infants build knowledge by... more
Subset of data drawn from parent volume (https://nyu.databrary.org/volume/563) of 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, 23-month-old walking infants during natural activity in the home with caregivers. Infants build knowledge by acting on the world. We conducted a rigorous, ecologically-grounded test of the active-word learner hypothesis—that infants' engagement with objects in the home environment elicits caregiver naming and cascades to learning object names. Our home-based study extends lab-based theories to identify real-world processes that support infant word learning. Frame-by-frame coding of 2-hour-video recordings of 32 mothers and their 18- to 23-months-olds focused on infant manipulation and mother and infant naming of 245 unique objects. Objects manipulated by infants and named by mothers during natural recordings were more likely to appear in infants' vocabularies and spontaneous speech relative to non-manipulated objects that were not named. Furthermore, vocabularies of 5,520 infants hosted on Wordbank revealed early age of acquisition for words of objects that mothers named and infants manipulated. Infants actively build object-word mappings from everyday engagements with objects in the context of social partners. Available under materials are coding manuals for transcription and infant object play coding developed as part of the Play & Learning Across a Year project (http://www.play-project.org; http://doi.org/10.17910/b7.876)
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How do infants learn language? Infants can only learn the words that they hear. We tested whether infants' actions affect the words that caregivers say—specifically whether infant locomotion influences caregivers' language about... more
How do infants learn language? Infants can only learn the words that they hear. We tested whether infants' actions affect the words that caregivers say—specifically whether infant locomotion influences caregivers' language about locomotion. Compared to crawling infants, walkers travel greater distances (Adolph, et al, 2012). Does enhanced locomotion in walkers influence the verbs that caregivers say? We hypothesized that walking creates new opportunities for verb learning. To disentangle locomotor ability from age, we observed same-aged crawlers and walkers (16 13-month-old crawlers and 16 13-month-old walkers) and an older group of walkers (16 18-month-olds) during two hours of activity at home. Mothers' language was transcribed verbatim. We then identified each "locomotor verb" (e.g., "come," "bring") that mothers said, and each bout of infant crawling and walking. Walkers' enhanced locomotion indeed opened new opportunities for verb l...
Joint engagement is a frequent, prompt, and multimodal phenomenon seen in lab-based structured play when caregivers jointly engage with the object of infant action. Researchers assume lab-based joint engagement is a "hotspot"... more
Joint engagement is a frequent, prompt, and multimodal phenomenon seen in lab-based structured play when caregivers jointly engage with the object of infant action. Researchers assume lab-based joint engagement is a "hotspot" for infant learning that generalizes to the real world; but virtually nothing is known about the properties of joint engagement in natural, unstructured infant-caregiver interactions. Behavioral and temporal features of joint engagement in the home environment were examined. Infant manual actions, mother manual and verbal behaviors, and dyad proximity were coded frame-by-frame in 2-hour naturalistic recordings of dyads (N = 38) at home. Results show infants experienced rich – and highly structured– multimodal mother input toward objects of infant action at home. Joint engagement occurred within seconds of infant action and in the context of interpersonal proximity. Findings suggest infant-caregiver shared object engagement is not a lab-made phenomenon...
Infants learn nouns during naming events—moments when caregivers name an object of infant play (e.g., "ball" as infant holds a ball). Do caregivers also label the actions of infants' play (e.g, "roll" as infant... more
Infants learn nouns during naming events—moments when caregivers name an object of infant play (e.g., "ball" as infant holds a ball). Do caregivers also label the actions of infants' play (e.g, "roll" as infant rolls a ball)? We investigated moment-to-moment connections between mothers' verb inputs and infants' motor actions. We video-recorded 32 infant-mother dyads (half 13-, half 18-months old) for two hours at home, and identified the manual verbs (e.g., press, shake) and whole-body verbs (e.g., bring, go) that mothers directed to infants. We coded whether infants displayed manual and/or whole-body actions during a 6-second window anchored by the verb. Mothers' verbs and infant actions tended to be congruent: Whole-body verbs co-occurred with whole-body actions, and manual verbs co-occurred with manual actions. Additionally, half of mothers' verbs corresponded precisely to the infants' concurrent action (e.g., infant pressed a button as...
Video excerpts of infants during natural, everyday play at home. Linked to blog post, "Discovery and Learning through Play at Home," for the Institute for Human Development and Social Change at New York University.
The Play & Learning Across a Year (PLAY) project serves as a model system for doing development science from a "big" data approach. Natural free play represents the foundation of infant learning, but we know little about how... more
The Play & Learning Across a Year (PLAY) project serves as a model system for doing development science from a "big" data approach. Natural free play represents the foundation of infant learning, but we know little about how infants play, how play unfolds in real time and across development, and how individual and group differences promote infant learning and development through play. To answer these questions, the PLAY project will collect, code, and share 900 hours of video collected in the homes of children at 12, 18, and 24 months of age drawn from 30 sites across North America. The aim of the project is to develop a new approach to developmental science that enables (1) "big" data science for researchers who would not otherwise have access; (2) a communal, low-cost means of collecting and coding data that retains the autonomy of individual labs; and (3) a plan for leveraging diverse expertise to address a common goal. This volume consists of materials discus...
Video and audio recordings of: Parent-child interactions around pictures. Child math assessments. Parent math assessments.
Inhibitory control in preschool predicts early math skills in first grade: Evidence
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Objective. This longitudinal investigation examines whether fathers ’ prenatal involvement (e.g., attending doctor appointments and discussing pregnancy with mother) and residence status at infant’s birth predict the first time a father... more
Objective. This longitudinal investigation examines whether fathers ’ prenatal involvement (e.g., attending doctor appointments and discussing pregnancy with mother) and residence status at infant’s birth predict the first time a father becomes inaccessible to his child (defined as seeing child fewer than a few times per month) at six developmental time points in children’s first 5 years. Design. Data were gathered from 2,160 ethnically diverse mothers (i.e., European American, African American, and Latin American) who participated in the National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. Survival analysis was used to predict the timing of father inaccessibility based on interviews. Results. By prekindergarten, fathers ’ residence at birth and prenatal involvement decreased their risk of being inaccessible to their children for the first time by 71 % and 47%, respectively, after adjusting for all other variables in the model. Residence at birth was a stronger predictor of th...
Object play yields enormous benefits for infant development. However, little is known about natural play at home where most object interactions occur. We conducted frame-by-frame video analyses of spontaneous activity in two 2-h home... more
Object play yields enormous benefits for infant development. However, little is known about natural play at home where most object interactions occur. We conducted frame-by-frame video analyses of spontaneous activity in two 2-h home visits with 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, and 23-month-old walking infants (N = 40; 21 boys; 75% White). Regardless of age, for every infant and time scale, across 10,015 object bouts, object interactions were short (median = 9.8 s) and varied (transitions among dozens of toys and non-toys) but consumed most of infants' time. We suggest that infant exuberant object play-immense amounts of brief, time-distributed, variable interactions with objects-may be conducive to learning object properties and functions, motor skill acquisition, and growth in cognitive, social, and language domains.
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Academic socialization by low-income immigrant mothers from Mainland China was investigated in two studies. Immigrant Chinese mothers of first graders (n = 52; Mage = 38.69) in the United States (Study 1) and kindergartners (n = 86; Mage... more
Academic socialization by low-income immigrant mothers from Mainland China was investigated in two studies. Immigrant Chinese mothers of first graders (n = 52; Mage = 38.69) in the United States (Study 1) and kindergartners (n = 86; Mage = 36.81) in Hong Kong (Study 2) tell stories that emphasized achieving the best grade through effort more than did African American (n = 39; Mage = 31.44) and native Hong Kong (n = 76; Mage = 36.64) mothers, respectively. The emphasis on achievement was associated with mothers' heightened discussion on discrimination (Study 1) and beliefs that education promotes upward mobility (Study 2), as well as children's expectations that a story protagonist would receive maternal criticism for being nonpersistent in learning (Study 2).
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ABSTRACT
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The present study compared American and Japanese toddlers and their mothers on dimensions of language and play when the toddlers were 13 months of age. In both cultures and in both domains, individual variation in toddlers was associated... more
The present study compared American and Japanese toddlers and their mothers on dimensions of language and play when the toddlers were 13 months of age. In both cultures and in both domains, individual variation in toddlers was associated with individual variation in mothers. In general, the frequency and variance of language and play activities were similar in the two groups. However, two notable cultural differences emerged. American toddlers were more advanced in both their productive and receptive vocabularies, and this cultural difference was matched by the tendency for American mothers to label and desciibe properties, objects, and events in the environment more frequently. In contrast, Japanese toddlers were more advanced on symbolic play, and their advanced play was matched by more advanced play in Japanese mothers, particularly for "other-directed" acts of pretence. These findings suggest that during this early period of symbolic development, as expressed through l...
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In this commentary on Osiurak and Reynaud's target article, we argue that action is largely missing in their account of the ascendance of human technological culture. We propose that an action-based developmental account can help to... more
In this commentary on Osiurak and Reynaud's target article, we argue that action is largely missing in their account of the ascendance of human technological culture. We propose that an action-based developmental account can help to bridge the cognitive-sociocultural divide in explanations of the discovery, production, and cultural transmission of human tool use.
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CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, SYMPOSIA, AND INVITED ADDRESSES (Over 300, available upon request) RESEARCH INTERESTS AND METHODS Infant and toddler language, communication, symbolic play, learning and development; Parenting in mothers and... more
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, SYMPOSIA, AND INVITED ADDRESSES (Over 300, available upon request) RESEARCH INTERESTS AND METHODS Infant and toddler language, communication, symbolic play, learning and development; Parenting in mothers and fathers; Cultural influences in development; Infant motor development; Children's school readiness and literacy/narrative skills. Naturalistic and structured observations of parent-child interactions; Transcriptions of child language; Narrative analysis of storytelling and booksharing; Qualitative and ethnographic work with mothers and fathers from culturally diverse families. Laboratory based studies of infant Action and social cognition; Large-scale survey research; Looking time studies.
In this article, we use data on biological fathers (n = 597) and mothers (N = 1,550) from 12 sites of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (EHS study) to examine the type and frequency of father involvement. We use a... more
In this article, we use data on biological fathers (n = 597) and mothers (N = 1,550) from 12 sites of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (EHS study) to examine the type and frequency of father involvement. We use a three-part model of father involvement to examine whether fathers participating in the EHS study are accessible to, engaged with, and show responsibil-ity for their two-year-old children. We also examine patterns of reported father involvement by relationship status and residency. We find that more than 80 % of all two-year-old children in the EHS study have accessible biological fathers, with the majority of nonresident boyfriends and nonresident friends and more than a 5
In this chapter, we highlight the ways that infants actively shape their social experiences around language—through their everyday behaviors and developmental advances. We review the perceptual, social, and cognitive capacities that... more
In this chapter, we highlight the ways that infants actively shape their social experiences around language—through their everyday behaviors and developmental advances. We review the perceptual, social, and cognitive capacities that infants bring to the task of learning language. We then show that infant real-time exploratory, play, communicative, and locomotor behaviors are impetuses for social interactions. As infants act on their worlds, they elicit temporally contingent, lexically rich, developmentally attuned, multimodal inputs from parents. Indeed, much of the speech that parents direct to infants is driven by what infants are doing in the moment. Finally, we examine how developmental changes in infants’ language, play, and motor skills expand infants’ opportunities for learning language. As infants progress in abilities such as talking and walking, they engage with the objects and people of their environments in new ways, thereby eliciting novel language inputs from parents and other caregivers.
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this time period; some developmentally increased, and some developmentally decreased. Infants' activities were unstable, but most increased over time. Specific mother and infant activities corresponded, and over time mothers and... more
this time period; some developmentally increased, and some developmentally decreased. Infants' activities were unstable, but most increased over time. Specific mother and infant activities corresponded, and over time mothers and infants influenced one another in specific ways. In die critical period of the first half year, infants appear to be flexible and plastic in their behavioral repertoires and are influenced by their mothers; mothers are somewhat consistent, but they also adapt to the
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This study examined factors that predicted children's gender intergroup attitudes at age 5 and the implications of these attitudes for intergroup behavior. Ethnically diverse children from low-income backgrounds (N = 246; Mexican-,... more
This study examined factors that predicted children's gender intergroup attitudes at age 5 and the implications of these attitudes for intergroup behavior. Ethnically diverse children from low-income backgrounds (N = 246; Mexican-, Chinese-, Dominican-, and African American) were assessed at ages 4 and 5. On average, children reported positive same-gender and negative other-gender attitudes. Positive same-gender attitudes were associated with knowledge of gender stereotypes. In contrast, positive other-gender attitudes were associated with flexibility in gender cognitions (stereotype flexibility, gender consistency). Other-gender attitudes predicted gender-biased behavior. These patterns were observed in all ethnic groups. These findings suggest that early learning about gender categories shape young children's gender attitudes and that these gender attitudes already have consequences for children's intergroup behavior at age 5.
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Methods can powerfully affect conclusions about infant experiences and learning. Data from naturalistic observations may paint a very different picture of learning and development from those based on structured tasks, as illustrated in... more
Methods can powerfully affect conclusions about infant experiences and learning. Data from naturalistic observations may paint a very different picture of learning and development from those based on structured tasks, as illustrated in studies of infant walking, object permanence, intention understanding, and so forth. Using language as a model system, we compared the speech of 40 mothers to their 13-month-old infants during structured play and naturalistic home routines. The contrasting methods yielded unique portrayals of infant language experiences, while simultaneously underscoring cross-situational correspondence at an individual level. Infants experienced substantially more total words and different words per minute during structured play than they did during naturalistic routines. Language input during structured play was consistently dense from minute to minute, whereas language during naturalistic routines showed striking fluctuations interspersed with silence. Despite thes...
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Motor development-traditionally described in terms of age-related stages-is typically studied in the laboratory with participants of Western European descent. Cross-cultural studies typically focus on group differences in age-related... more
Motor development-traditionally described in terms of age-related stages-is typically studied in the laboratory with participants of Western European descent. Cross-cultural studies typically focus on group differences in age-related stages relative to Western norms. We adopted a less traditional approach: We observed 5-month-olds and their mothers from six cultural groups around the world during one hour at home while they engaged in natural daily activities. We examined group differences in infants' sitting proficiency, everyday opportunities to practice sitting, the surfaces on which sitting took place, and mothers' proximity to sitting infants. Infants had opportunities to practice sitting in varied contexts-including ground, infant chairs, and raised surfaces. Proficiency varied considerably within and between cultural groups: 64% of the sample sat only with support from mother or furniture and 36% sat independently. Some infants sat unsupported for 20+ minutes, in some...
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Objective. The purpose of this investigation was to compare childrearing values in mothers of preschoolers from Greece, Taiwan and the United States. Design. Seventy-two middle-class mothers of 3- to 4-year-old children (24 per country)... more
Objective. The purpose of this investigation was to compare childrearing values in mothers of preschoolers from Greece, Taiwan and the United States. Design. Seventy-two middle-class mothers of 3- to 4-year-old children (24 per country) were interviewed about the values they wish to instill in their children using open-ended probes and an ordering task of values. Four broad categories of values were identified based on a modification of Harwood, Miller, and Irizarry's (1995) taxonomy: (1) Decency, referring to values emphasizing character, (2) Proper Demeanor, referring to values emphasizing appropriate relatedness and behaviors, (3) Self-maximization, referring to values emphasizing the development of self potential and individuality, and (4) Sociability/lovingness, referring to values emphasizing affective and social dimensions of relatedness. Results. Mothers from the three countries emphasized similar values in both tasks. However, cultural differences in value categories were evident, echoing the unique cultural frameworks of the three societies. Conclusions. Cultural ideologies are reflected in the values parents seek to instill in their young children, and different methodological approaches highlight cultural similarities and differences.
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Developmental Psychology, Communication, Child Development, Language Development, and 15 moreLinguistics, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Gestures, Humans, Female, Male, Infant, Mothers, Developmental, African Americans, Developmental Science, Maternal Behavior, MEXICO, and Mother child relations
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Developmental Psychology, Individuality, English, Family, and 15 moreLanguage Development, Language, Adolescent, Dominican Republic, Cultural Differences, Interviews, Humans, Language Use, Female, Child Language Development, Infant, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Language Exposure, and Child preschool
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Developmental Psychology, Parenting, Child Development, Attention, and 15 moreLanguage Development, Humans, Age, Female, Male, Infant, Modularity, Developmental, Longitudinal Studies, Maternal Behavior, Age Factors, Exploratory Behavior, Object Attachment, Infant Behavior, and Mother child relations
In line with evidence that variation in... more
In line with evidence that variation in children's vocabulary size facilitates learning, we asked whether growth in Mexican and Dominican children's expressive vocabularies in English and/or Spanish would predict later cognitive skills. Children and mothers were video-recorded sharing wordless books at 2, 3, 4, and 5 years, and children were assessed on language, literacy, and math skills at 5 years. Growth in children's English and Spanish vocabularies, based on transcriptions of booksharing interactions, predicted specific cognitive skills and was associated with changes to mothers' language use across time. Mothers' years in the United States predicted children's English vocabulary growth.
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Cognition, Language Development, Language, Bilingual Development, and 15 moreMedicine, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Humans, Child, Female, Male, Infant, Mothers, Developmental neuropsychology, Longitudinal Studies, Developmental Neuropsychology, MEXICO, Child Language, and Child preschool
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Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Child Development, Visual perception, Locomotion, and 15 moreSocial Perception, Humans, New York City, Female, Male, Infant, Interpersonal Relations, Psychological Tests, Longitudinal Studies, Adult, Age Factors, Video Recording, Motor Skills, Infant Behavior, and Mother child relations
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Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the... more
Everyday activities are replete with contextual cues for infants to exploit in the service of learning words. Nelson's (1985) script theory guided the hypothesis that infants participate in a set of predictable activities over the course of a day that provide them with opportunities to hear unique language functions and forms. Mothers and their firstborn 13-month-old infants (N = 40) were video-recorded during everyday activities at home. Transcriptions and coding of mothers' speech to infants-time-locked to activities of feeding, grooming, booksharing, object play, and transition-revealed that the amount, diversity, pragmatic functions, and semantic content of maternal language systematically differed by activity. The activities of everyday life shape language inputs to infants in ways that highlight word meaning.
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Parents’ responsiveness to infants’ exploratory and communicative behaviors predicts infant word learning during early periods of language development. We examine the processes that might explain why this association exists. We suggest... more
Parents’ responsiveness to infants’ exploratory and communicative behaviors predicts infant word learning during early periods of language development. We examine the processes that might explain why this association exists. We suggest that responsiveness supports infants’ growing pragmatic understanding that language is a tool that enables intentions to be socially shared. Additionally, several features of responsiveness—namely, its temporal contiguity, contingency, and multimodal and didactic content—facilitate infants’ mapping of words to their referents and, in turn, growth in vocabulary. We close by examining the generalizability of these processes to infants from diverse cultural communities.