The two functions of imitation in the second year of life: A longitudinal study.

Infant imitation serves a cognitive and a social function. As part of their temperament, infants' attention and social orientation mirror these two functions. This longitudinal study investigated the development of the two functions within the second year of life in German infants ( = 136, 74 female), using standardized tests at the ages of 12, 18, and 24 months, conducted in 2018 and 2019.

Do Facial Masks Impact Infants' Joint Attention? A Within-Participant Laboratory Study.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, children were repeatedly confronted with people wearing facial masks. Little is known, however, about how this affected young children's interactions with their caregivers. This preregistered experimental within-participants study explored whether facial masks influence young children's initiation and response to joint attention.

Infants' Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large-Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study.

Evaluating whether someone's behavior is praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental human trait. A seminal study by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluations based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life: infants preferred a character who helped, over hindered, another who tried but failed to climb a hill. This sparked a new line of inquiry into the origins of social evaluations; however, replication attempts have yielded mixed results.

Humans and great apes visually track event roles in similar ways.

Human language relies on a rich cognitive machinery, partially shared with other animals. One key mechanism, however, decomposing events into causally linked agent-patient roles, has remained elusive with no known animal equivalent. In humans, agent-patient relations in event cognition drive how languages are processed neurally and expressions structured syntactically.