Publications by authors named "Samantha Mitsven"

Article Synopsis
  • - Recent studies on animal movements show different thermodynamic phases, but similar insights for human movement, especially at low speeds, are lacking.
  • - Using ultrawideband RFID technology, researchers gathered detailed movement data from children in various settings, identifying two unique phases: a gaslike phase of freedom and a liquid-vapor phase indicating small social group formations.
  • - The study introduces a statistical physics model that replicates these observed phases and suggests that UWB-RFID can also aid research in broader areas like animal behavior and human interactions in complex systems.
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Classroom engagement plays a crucial role in preschoolers' development, yet the correlates of engagement, especially among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental delays (DD), remains unknown. This study examines levels of engagement with classroom social partners and tasks among children in three groups ASD, DD, and typical development (TD). Here, we asked whether children's vocal interactions (vocalizations to and from peers and teachers) were associated with their classroom engagement with social partners (peers and teachers) and with tasks, and whether the association between classroom engagement and vocal interactions differed between children in the ASD group and their peers in the DD and TD groups.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, mask-wearing in classrooms has become commonplace. However, there are little data on the effect of face-masks on children's language input and production in educational contexts, like preschool classrooms which over half of United States children attend. Leveraging repeated objective measurements, we longitudinally examined child and teacher speech-related vocalizations in two cohorts of 3.

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We tested 6- and 8-month-old White and non-White infants ( = 53 total, 28 girls) from Northern California in a visual search task to determine whether a unique item in an otherwise homogeneous display (a ) attracts attention because it is a unique singleton and "pops out" in a categorical manner, or whether attention instead varies in a graded manner on the basis of quantitative differences in physical salience. Infants viewed arrays of four or six items; one item was a singleton and the other items were identical distractors (e.g.

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Children with hearing loss often attend inclusive preschool classrooms aimed at improving their spoken language skills. Although preschool classrooms are fertile environments for vocal interaction with peers, little is known about the dyadic processes that influence children's speech to one another and foster their language abilities and how these processes may vary in children with hearing loss. We used new objective measurement approaches to identify and quantify children's vocalizations during social contact, as determined by children's proximity and mutual orientation.

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Article Synopsis
  • Infant attachment significantly influences later social and emotional development, but the impact of how parents respond to infant behavior on attachment outcomes is not fully understood.
  • A study involving 625 infant-mother pairs found that mothers with extreme levels of responsivity (either very reactive or very unresponsive) were more likely to have infants with disorganized attachment styles, particularly in high-risk environments.
  • The research emphasizes that moderate maternal responsivity is crucial for fostering secure attachment in infants, especially those exposed to prenatal and social risks.
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Over half of US children are enrolled in preschools, where the quantity and quality of language input from teachers are likely to affect children's language development. Leveraging repeated objective measurements, we examined the rate per minute and phonemic diversity of child and teacher speech-related vocalizations in preschool classrooms and their association with children's end-of-year receptive and expressive language abilities measured with the Preschool Language Scales (PLS-5). Phonemic diversity was computed as the number of unique consonants and vowels in a speech-related vocalization.

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Humans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality.

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Article Synopsis
  • Human observations miss many aspects of classroom social interactions and spatial organization among children.
  • This study utilized radio frequency identification to continuously track the location and movement of 16 five-year-olds during free play sessions.
  • Results showed boys and girls clustered differently in the classroom, but similar movement speeds; the analysis revealed consistent social contact patterns, indicating potential cliques based on gender and social ties.
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Adults' visual attention is guided by the contents of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Here we asked whether 10-month-old infants' (N = 41) visual attention is also guided by the information stored in VSTM. In two experiments, we modified the one-shot change detection task (Oakes, Baumgartner, Barrett, Messenger, & Luck, 2013) to create a simplified cued visual search task to ask how information stored in VSTM influences where infants look.

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The goal of the current study is to assess the temporal dynamics of vision and action to evaluate the underlying word representations that guide infants' responses. Sixteen-month-old infants participated in a two-alternative forced-choice word-picture matching task. We conducted a moment-by-moment analysis of looking and reaching behaviors as they occurred in tandem to assess the speed with which a prompted word was processed (visual reaction time) as a function of the type of haptic response: Target, Distractor, or No Touch.

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