Not too shy to point! Exploring the relationship between shyness and pointing in the second year.

Infants' use of pointing gestures to direct and share attention develops during the first 2 years of life. Shyness, defined as an approach-avoidance motivational conflict during social interactions, may influence infants' use of pointing. Recent research distinguished between positive (gaze and/or head aversions while smiling) and non-positive (gaze and/or head aversions without smiling) shyness, which are related to different social and cognitive skills.

Automated facial expression measurement in a longitudinal sample of 4- and 8-month-olds: Baby FaceReader 9 and manual coding of affective expressions.

Facial expressions are among the earliest behaviors infants use to express emotional states, and are crucial to preverbal social interaction. Manual coding of infant facial expressions, however, is laborious and poses limitations to replicability. Recent developments in computer vision have advanced automated facial expression analyses in adults, providing reproducible results at lower time investment.

Predicting pointing from early socioemotional communication with mothers, fathers, and strangers through the lens of temperamental reactivity.

Socioemotional and referential communication are primary expressions of interpersonal engagement in infancy and beyond. Early socioemotional communication in dyadic interactions may form a foundation for triadic referential communication and gesture production, yet the role of temperament in moderating their association has not been examined. We investigated whether early socioemotional communication behaviors, and infant temperamental reactivity, were associated with later pointing production.

Maternal mind-mindedness during the first year of life: Developmental trajectories and moderators.

Mind-mindedness (MM) refers to caregivers' proclivity to treat a child as having an active and autonomous mental life. It has been shown to be a powerful predictor of many developmental outcomes and to mitigate the impact of risk conditions. However, longitudinal studies on MM reporting changes over time and individual differences among mothers have been scant and quite inconclusive, mainly due to the investigation of changes between only two time points.

Beyond the familial: The development of emotional communication with mothers, fathers, and strangers.

Interaction with unfamiliar partners is a component of social life from infancy onward. Yet little is known about preverbal communication with strangers. This study compared the development of infant communication with strangers to communication with mothers and fathers and examined the contribution of temperament to partner-specific communication patterns.

Infant Emotional Mimicry of Strangers: Associations with Parent Emotional Mimicry, Parent-Infant Mutual Attention, and Parent Dispositional Affective Empathy.

Emotional mimicry, the tendency to automatically and spontaneously reproduce others' facial expressions, characterizes human social interactions from infancy onwards. Yet, little is known about the factors modulating its development in the first year of life. This study investigated infant emotional mimicry and its association with parent emotional mimicry, parent-infant mutual attention, and parent dispositional affective empathy.

Does Mothers' Self-Reported Mindful Parenting Relate to the Observed Quality of Parenting Behavior and Mother-Child Interaction?

Objectives: Growing academic interest in mindful parenting (MP) requires a reliable and valid measure for use in research and clinical setting. Because MP concerns the way parents relate to, and nurture, their children, it is important to evaluate the associations between self-reported MP and observed parenting and parent-child interaction measures.

Methods: Seventy-three mothers who experience difficulties with their young children aged 0-48 months admitted for a Mindful with your baby/toddler training (63% in a mental health care and 27% in a preventative context) were included.

Probing the Strength of Infants' Preference for Helpers over Hinderers: Two Replication Attempts of Hamlin and Wynn (2011).

Several studies indicate that infants prefer individuals who act prosocially over those who act antisocially toward unrelated third parties. In the present study, we focused on a paradigm published by Kiley Hamlin and Karen Wynn in 2011. In this study, infants were habituated to a live puppet show in which a protagonist tried to open a box to retrieve a toy placed inside.