Play for success: A novel intervention to boost visual attention in low-socioeconomic-status infants.

Developmental differences in visual attention between infants of low and high socioeconomic status (SES) have been observed as early as 6 months of age. These deficits in low-SES infants may compound into the well-known achievement gap when children enter grade school. The current study implemented a novel intervention designed to boost early visual attention.

Play for Success: An intervention to boost object exploration in infants from low-income households.

Infants from low-income households typically spend less time exploring objects and use less mature strategies when they do explore compared to their higher-income peers (e.g., Clearfield et al.

Attentional Predictors of 5-month-olds' Performance on a Looking A-not-B Task.

In the first year of life, the ability to search for hidden objects is an indicator of object permanence and, when multiple locations are involved, executive function (i.e. inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory).

Socioeconomic status affects oral and manual exploration across the first year.

Oral and manual exploration are part of the foundation of problem solving and cognition in infancy. How these develop in an at-risk population, infants in poverty, is unknown. The current study tested exploratory behaviors longitudinally at 6, 9, and 12 months in infants from high- and low-socioeconomic (SES) families.

The effects of SES on infant and maternal diurnal salivary cortisol output.

The present study directly compared diurnal salivary cortisol output and maternal-infant synchrony in low and high socio-economic status (SES) mother-infant dyads. Saliva cortisol samples were collected from 32 6-12-month-old infants and their mothers on the same day in the morning, afternoon and evening, and assayed for free cortisol concentration. Low-SES infants and mothers exhibited higher average salivary cortisol output, without dysregulation, compared to high-SES infants.

SES affects infant cognitive flexibility.

Cognitive flexibility requires processing multiple sources of information and flexible adaptation of behavioral responses. Poverty negatively impacts cognitive control in young children, but its effects on infants are not well-understood. This study investigated longitudinally the development of cognitive flexibility in low-income infants.

Learning to walk changes infants' social interactions.

The onset of crawling marks a motor, cognitive and social milestone. The present study investigated whether independent walking marks a second milestone for social behaviors. In Experiment 1, the social and exploratory behaviors of crawling infants were observed while crawling and in a baby-walker, resulting in no differences based on posture.

Cue salience and infant perseverative reaching: tests of the dynamic field theory.

Skilled behavior requires a balance between previously successful behaviors and new behaviors appropriate to the present context. We describe a dynamic field model for understanding this balance in infant perseverative reaching. The model predictions are tested with regard to the interaction of two aspects of the typical perseverative reaching task: the visual cue indicating the target and the memory demand created by the delay imposed between cueing and reaching.

Learning by looking: Infants' social looking behavior across the transition from crawling to walking.

This study investigated how infants gather information about their environment through looking and how that changes with increases in motor skills. In Experiment 1, 9.5- and 14-month-olds participated in a 10-min free play session with both a stranger and ambiguous toys present.

A novel technology for investigating the dynamics of infant perseverative reaching.

We designed and tested a novel technology that enables us to capture the entire stream of behavior in perseverative reaching tasks. Beyond fitting the criteria of the conventional A-not-B task, the novel technology gives us better access to the core features of perseverative reaching, such as timing, behavior history, and reinforcement. The technology allows us to quantitatively manipulate reinforcement characteristics, to accurately program onsets, delays, and stimulus durations as well as locations and salience of the targets, and to automatically record the number of reaches to each target and compute timing.

The development of reaching across the first year in twins of known placental type.

This study explored the genetic and prenatal environmental influences on the development of reaching in twins. Detailed kinematic measures of arm movements and underlying muscle co-activation from two sets of monozygotic twins (MZ; one set was monochorionic; the other was dichorionic) and one set of dizygotic (DZ) were measured weekly from reach onset to 30 weeks, then bi-weekly to 1 year of age. Improvements in trajectories were not linear, but the MZ twins demonstrated higher correlations between kinematic variables compared to DZ twins and unrelated infants.

Young infants reach correctly in A-not-B tasks: on the development of stability and perseveration.

This paper examines the development of perseverative reaching in the A-not-B task. We describe two recent models that view perseveration as a sign of developmental progress toward stability. In Experiment 1, we test the novel prediction from both models that very young infants should not perseverate in the A-not-B task whereas older infants should.