This study used an ethological approach to explore the behavioural adaptation of nineteen infants during their first six weeks in Residential Care (RC), or a Foster Family (FF) or an Infant-Mother Centre (IMC). Direct observations were conducted once a week at bath time. Observed behaviours were: sleep-wake states, visual exploration, motor…

Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential…

Studies conducted in Western countries document the special role of mother--infant face-to-face exchanges for early emotional development including social smiling. A few cross-cultural studies have shown that the Western pattern of face-to-face communication is absent in traditional rural cultures, without identifying other processes that promote…

In human newborns, spontaneous visual preference for biological motion is reported to occur at birth, but the factors underpinning this preference are still in debate. Using a standard visual preferential looking paradigm, 4 experiments were carried out in 3-day-old human newborns to assess the influence of translational displacement on perception…

Objective: To assess impact of tactile stimulation on neurobehavioral development of premature infants in Assiut City. Design: Quasi-experimental research design. Setting: The study was conducted in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Assiut University Children Hospital, Assiut General Hospital, Health Insurance Hospital (ElMabarah Hospital) and…

In the present study, we investigated whether infants' own visual experiences affected their perception of the visual status of others engaging in goal-directed actions. In Experiment 1, infants viewed video clips of successful and failed goal-directed actions performed by a blindfolded adult, with half the infants having previously experienced…

The present eye-tracking study aimed to investigate the impact of auditory speech information on 12-month-olds' gaze behavior to silently-talking faces. We examined German infants' face-scanning behavior to side-by-side presentation of a bilingual speaker's face silently speaking German utterances on one side and French on the other side, before…

In the present study, we examined if young infants can extract information regarding the directionality of biological motion. We report that 6-month-old infants can differentiate leftward and rightward motions from a movie depicting the sagittal view of an upright human point-light walker, walking as if on a treadmill. Inversion of the stimuli…

An Italian translation of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) was developed and evaluated with 110 infants, demonstrating satisfactory internal consistency, discriminant validity, and construct validity in the form of gender and age differences, as well as factorial integrity. Cross-cultural differences were subsequently evaluated…

The ability of neonates to integrate auditory and visual information into a single percept was investigated using a signal detection methodology. Thirty-two infants ranging in age from 2 to 11 days served as subjects. (Author/MP)

This experiment investigated the impact of the path of approach of an object, from head on versus from the side, and the type of imminent contact with that object, a hit versus a miss, on young infants' perceptions of object looming. Consistent with earlier studies, we found that 4- to 5-month-old infants do indeed discriminate hits versus misses.…

Reported are three series of experiments analyzing the development of the visual function of infants. The first experimental series was aimed at the investigation of infants' reaction to moving objects. The second experimental series dealt with the analysis of the development of binocular vision in infants. The goal of the third series was to…

Tests the hypothesis that infants may learn to respond to cues which consistently specify the ultimate location of an object which is displaced while invisible. Subjects were 96 nine-month-old infants. (MP)

The development of sensory and perceptual ability in infants is an important area of infancy research. This book reflects current knowledge of perceptual development and points to some of the many questions that remain unanswered. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1, "How the Visual System Develops: Normal and Abnormal…

Infants' visual perception of number change was investigated in three studies. These studies focused on infants' perception of events in which the total number of objects in a small group was changed through addition of another object. Involving 60 infants 5 months of age, Study I attempted to determine whether subjects perceived the properties in…