The infant’s view redefines the problem of referential uncertainty in early word learning

The learning of first object names is deemed a hard problem due to the uncertainty inherent in mapping a heard name to the intended referent in a cluttered and variable world. However, human infants readily solve this problem. Despite considerable theoretical discussion, relatively little is known about the uncertainty infants face in the real world. We used head-mounted eye tracking during parent–infant toy play and quantified the uncertainty by measuring the distribution of infant attention to the potential referents when a parent named both familiar and unfamiliar toy objects. The results show that infant gaze upon hearing an object name is often directed to a single referent which is equally likely to be a wrong competitor or the intended target. This bimodal gaze distribution clarifies and redefines the uncertainty problem and constrains possible solutions.

Proactive or reactive? Neural oscillatory insight into the leader-follower dynamics of early infant-caregiver interaction

We know that infants’ ability to coordinate attention with others towards the end of the first year is fundamental to language acquisition and social cognition (Carpenter et al., 1998). Yet, we understand little about the neural and cognitive mechanisms driving infant attention in shared interaction: do infants play a proactive role in creating episodes of joint attention? Recording EEG from 12-month-old infants whilst they engaged in table-top play with their caregiver, we examined the ostensive signals and neural activity preceding and following infant- vs. adult-led joint attention. Contrary to traditional theories of socio-communicative development (Tomasello et al., 2007), infant-led joint attention episodes appeared largely reactive: they were not associated with increased theta power, a neural marker of endogenously driven attention, or ostensive signals before the initiation. Infants were, however, sensitive to whether their initiations were responded to. When caregivers joined their attentional focus, infants showed increased alpha suppression, a pattern of neural activity associated with predictive processing. Our results suggest that at 10-12 months, infants are not yet proactive in creating joint attention. They do, however, anticipate behavioural contingency, a potentially foundational mechanism for the emergence of intentional communication (Smith & Breazeal, 2007).

Attention Biases to Threat in Infants and Parents: Links to Parental and Infant Anxiety Dispositions

Parent-to-child transmission of information processing biases to threat is a potential causal mechanism in the family aggregation of anxiety symptoms and traits. This study is the first to investigate the link between infants’ and parents’ attention bias to dynamic threat-relevant (versus happy) emotional expressions. Moreover, the associations between infant attention and anxiety dispositions in infants and parents were explored. Using a cross-sectional design, we tested 211 infants in three age groups: 5-to-7-month-olds (n = 71), 11-to-13-month-olds (n = 73), and 17-to-19-month-olds (n = 67), and 216 parents (153 mothers). Infant and parental dwell times to angry and fearful versus happy facial expressions were measured via eye-tracking. The parents also reported on their anxiety and stress. Ratings of infant temperamental fear and distress were averaged across both parents. Parents and infants tended to show an attention bias for fearful faces with marginally longer dwell times to fearful versus happy faces. Parents dwelled longer on angry versus happy faces, whereas infants showed an avoidant pattern with longer dwell times to happy versus angry expressions. There was a significant positive association between infant and parent attention to emotional expressions. Parental anxiety dispositions were not related to their own or their infant’s attention bias. No significant link emerged between infants’ temperament and attention bias. We conclude that an association between parental and infant attention may already be evident in the early years of life, whereas a link between anxiety dispositions and attention biases may not hold in community samples.

A concert for babies: Attentional, affective, and motor responses in an infant audience

Many of our most powerful musical experiences are shared with others, and researchers have increasingly investigated responses to music in group contexts. Though musical performances for infants are growing in popularity, most research on infants’ responses to live music has focused on solitary caregiver-infant pairs. Here, we report infants’ attentional, affective, and sensorimotor responses to live music as audience members. Two groups of caregiver-infant (6-18 months) pairs (50 total) watched a short musical performance with two song styles – lullaby and playsong. Caregivers were instructed to watch passively or interactively. The playsong captured more attention and, especially in the interactive condition, elicited more smiles. Notably, infant attention synchronized more with their own caregiver than a random caregiver. Infants with enriched musical home environments spent more time moving rhythmically (“dancing”). Overall, infants’ responses to live musical performance in an audience were influenced by song style, caregiver behavior, and their own musical histories.

Bi-directional relations between maternal anxiety and infant affect-biased attention across the first 24-months of life

Introduction: Patterns of affect-biased attention are related to anxiety and anxiety risk. However, little is known regarding how affect-biased attention develops. Recent work suggests relations with both infant temperamental negative affect and maternal anxiety. The current paper examines potential bi-directional relations between infant attention, infant negative affect, and maternal anxiety to better understand a developmental process that may precede the emergence of anxiety. Method: Infant-mother pairs (N = 333) participated in a multi-site, longitudinal study providing eye-tracking and questionnaire data when infants were 4-, 8-, 12-, 18- and 24-months. A random intercepts cross-lag panel model assessed bi-directional relations between infant attention, infant negative affect and maternal anxiety.Results: Within-person deviations in maternal anxiety were prospectively, negatively related to within-person deviations in infant attention to angry face configurations at every assessment and within-person deviations in infant attention to happy face configurations at the final two assessments. Additionally, within-person deviations in infant negative affect were prospectively, positively related to within-person deviations in infant attention to angry face configurations at 12- and 18-months. Consistent bi-directional relations were not found.Conclusion: Our results suggest that infants do not display a stable bias to threat in the first 24 months of life. Rather, individual differences, in this case maternal anxiety and infant negative affect, shape patterns of attention biases over time. The current results provide an initial understanding of bi-directional relations in affect-biased attention development.

One-year old infants control bottom-up saliencies to purposely sustain attention

Salient stimuli attract gaze [1,2]. Mature perceivers internally suppress salient distractors to purposefully sustain attention on a visual target. Infants’ abilities to purposefully sustain gaze on an object, often measured in the context of play, is also assumed to require the internal suppression of distractors and is considered an early marker and risk point in the development of the internal regulatory processes mediated by the pre-frontal cortex [3,4]. Here we show that sustained attention by one-year-old infants includes a behavior-driven increase in the external salience of the target. Using head-mounted eye trackers, we measured infants’ gaze during object play and the momentary visual size of objects in the infant’s field of view. Visual size is well-known to robustly attract gaze [1]. We found that when infants directed gaze to an object, there was a simultaneous change in the the spatial relation of the head to the attended object increasing the target’s visual size relative to distractors. The onset, duration, and offset of the increased salience was time-locked with the onset, duration and offset of infant gaze to the object. The findings challenge characterizations of infant attention as a competition between bottom-up and top-down control and implicate instead a collaboration in which top-down goals drive infant’s externally-directed behaviors that suppress the salience of distractors at input. The top-down control of attention through externally directed behavior may serve as the training ground –and risk factor – in the development of internal control.

Behavioural Measures of Infant Activity but Not Attention Associate with Later Preschool ADHD Traits

Mapping infant neurocognitive differences that precede later ADHD-related behaviours is critical for designing early interventions. In this study, we investigated (1) group differences in a battery of measures assessing aspects of attention and activity level in infants with and without a family history of ADHD or related conditions (ASD), and (2) longitudinal associations between the infant measures and preschool ADHD traits at 3 years. Participants (N = 151) were infants with or without an elevated likelihood for ADHD (due to a family history of ADHD and/or ASD). A multi-method assessment protocol was used to assess infant attention and activity level at 10 months of age that included behavioural, cognitive, physiological and neural measures. Preschool ADHD traits were measured at 3 years of age using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) and the Child Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ). Across a broad range of measures, we found no significant group differences in attention or activity level at 10 months between infants with and without a family history of ADHD or ASD. However, parent and observer ratings of infant activity level at 10 months were positively associated with later preschool ADHD traits at 3 years. Observable behavioural differences in activity level (but not attention) may be apparent from infancy in children who later develop elevated preschool ADHD traits.

Attention recruits frontal cortex in human infants

Young infants learn about the world by overtly shifting their attention to perceptually salient events. In adults, attention recruits several brain regions spanning the frontal and parietal lobes. However, it is unclear whether these regions are sufficiently mature in infancy to support attention and, more generally, how infant attention is supported by the brain. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 24 sessions from 20 awake behaving infants 3 mo to 12 mo old while they performed a child-friendly attentional cuing task. A target was presented to either the left or right of the infant’s fixation, and offline gaze coding was used to measure the latency with which they saccaded to the target. To manipulate attention, a brief cue was presented before the target in three conditions: on the same side as the upcoming target (valid), on the other side (invalid), or on both sides (neutral). All infants were faster to look at the target on valid versus invalid trials, with valid faster than neutral and invalid slower than neutral, indicating that the cues effectively captured attention. We then compared the fMRI activity evoked by these trial types. Regions of adult attention networks activated more strongly for invalid than valid trials, particularly frontal regions. Neither behavioral nor neural effects varied by infant age within the first year, suggesting that these regions may function early in development to support the orienting of attention. Together, this furthers our mechanistic understanding of how the infant brain controls the allocation of attention.