Biological Motion Primes the Animate/Inanimate Distinction in Infancy

Given that biological motion is both detected and preferred early in life, we tested the hypothesis that biological motion might be instrumental to infants’ differentiation of animate and inanimate categories. Infants were primed with either point-light displays of realistic biological motion, random motion, or schematic biological motion of an unfamiliar shape. After being habituated to these displays, 12-month-old infants categorized animals and vehicles as well as furniture and vehicles with the sequential touching task. The findings indicated that infants primed with point-light displays of realistic biological motion showed better categorization of animates than those exposed to random or schematic biological motion. These results suggest that human biological motion might be one of the motion cues that provide the building blocks for infants’ concept of animacy

Crosslinguistic Developmental Consistency in the Composition of Toddlers' Internal State Vocabulary: Evidence from Four Languages

Mental state language, emerging in the second and third years of life in typically developing children, is one of the first signs of an explicit psychological understanding. While mental state vocabulary may serve a variety of conversational functions in discourse and thus might not always indicate psychological comprehension, there is evidence for genuine references to mental states (desires, knowledge, beliefs, and emotions) early in development across languages. This present study presents parental questionnaire data on the composition of 297 toddler-aged (30-to 32-month-olds) children's internal state vocabulary in four languages: Italian, German, English, and French. The results demonstrated that across languages expressions for physiological states (e.g., hungry and tired) were among the most varied, while children's vocabulary for cognitive entities (e.g., know and think) proved to be least varied. Further, consistent with studies on children's comprehension of these concepts, across languages children's mastery of volition terms (e.g., like to do and want) preceded their mastery of cognition terms. These findings confirm the cross-linguistic consistency of children's emerging expression of abstract psychological concepts

Bilingual and monolingual children prefer native-accented speakers

Adults and young children prefer to affiliate with some individuals rather than others. Studies have shown that monolingual children show in-group biases for individuals who speak their native language without a foreign accent (Kinzler et al., 2007). Some studies have suggested that bilingual children are less influenced than monolinguals by language variety when attributing personality traits to different speakers (Anisfeld and Lambert, 1964), which could indicate that bilinguals have fewer in-group biases and perhaps greater social flexibility. However, no previous studies have compared monolingual and bilingual children's reactions to speakers with unfamiliar foreign accents. In the present study, we investigated the social preferences of 5-year-old English and French monolinguals and English-French bilinguals. Contrary to our predictions, both monolingual and bilingual preschoolers preferred to be friends with native-accented speakers over speakers who spoke their dominant language with an unfamiliar foreign accent. This result suggests that both monolingual and bilingual children have strong preferences for in-group members who use a familiar language variety, and that bilingualism does not lead to generalized social flexibility

The eyes know it: Toddlers' visual scanning of sad faces is predicted by their theory of mind skills

The current research explored toddlers’ gaze fixation during a scene showing a person expressing sadness after a ball is stolen from her. The relation between the duration of gaze fixation on different parts of the person’s sad face (e.g., eyes, mouth) and theory of mind skills was examined. Eye tracking data indicated that before the actor experienced the negative event, toddlers divided their fixation equally between the actor’s happy face and other distracting objects, but looked longer at the face after the ball was stolen and she expressed sadness. The strongest predictor of increased focus on the sad face versus other elements of the scene was toddlers’ ability to predict others’ emotional reactions when outcomes fulfilled (happiness) or failed to fulfill (sadness) desires, whereas toddlers’ visual perspective- taking skills predicted their more specific focusing on the actor’s eyes and, for boys only, mouth. Furthermore, gender differences emerged in toddlers’ fixation on parts of the scene. Taken together, these findings suggest that top-down processes are involved in the scanning of emotional facial expressions in toddlers

Les précurseurs d'une théorie de l'esprit dans la première enfance : mythes et réalités

Precursors of a theory of mind in infancy : myths and reality The search for the precursors of a theory of mind in infancy has been the focus of a growing number of studies over the last few years. We provide a brief review of this literature and conclude that it might be premature to ascribe a high level of mindreading competence to 12-month-old infants. Our recent research on understanding of desires and emotions, as well as that of others, indicate that infants have developed some implicit concept of the human mind toward the middle of the second year.La recherche des précurseurs d'une théorie de l'esprit au cours de la petite enfance a fait l'objet d'un nombre croissant de travaux au cours des dernières années. Nous en faisons un bref résumé en suggérant qu'il serait prématuré d'attribuer une compétence de lecture mentale très avancée chez le nourrisson âgé de 12 mois. Cependant, nos récentes recherches sur la compréhension du désir et des émotions suggèrent qu'une conception implicite de l'esprit humain a commencé à prendre forme vers le milieu de la deuxième année.Poulin-Dubois Diane. Les précurseurs d'une théorie de l'esprit dans la première enfance : mythes et réalités. In: Enfance, n°3, 1999. Comment l'esprit vient aux enfants, sous la direction de Anne-Marie Melot et Jacqueline Nadel. pp. 322-326

Le développement lexical précoce: hypothèses cognitivistes, sociopragmatiques et linguistiques

Poulin-Dubois Diane. Le développement lexical précoce: hypothèses cognitivistes, sociopragmatiques et linguistiques. In: Enfance, n°4, 1997. pp. 501-519

Testing the Bilingual Cognitive Advantage in Toddlers Using the Early Executive Functions Questionnaire

The present study aims to assess differences in executive functioning between monolingual and multilingual 23-month-old toddlers, both when dichotomizing multilingualism and assessing it on a continuum. It is hypothesized that multilinguals, individuals with greater non-dominant language exposure, and individuals with more translation equivalents, would perform better in the following domains: response inhibition, attentional flexibility, and regulation. No differences are expected for working memory. The Early Executive Functions Questionnaire, a newly developed parental report, is used to measure the four executive functions of interest. Multilinguals and individuals with greater non-dominant language exposure have significantly higher response inhibition; however, no differences are noted for any other executive function. Additionally, no associations between translation equivalents and executive functioning are found. Post-hoc analyses reveal that non-dominant language production had a positive correlation with working memory. The present findings support the notion of a domain-specific cognitive advantage for multilingual toddlers