Automatic imitation in school-aged children

Children imitate others for different reasons: To learn from others and to reach social goals such as affiliation or prosociality. So far, imitative acts have been measured using diverging methods in children and adults. Here, we investigated whether school-aged children’s imitation can be measured via their automatic imitation with a classical imitation-inhibition task (Brass et al., 2000) as has been used in adults. To this end, we measured automatic imitation in N = 94 7–8-year-olds and N = 10 adults. The results were similar in children and adults: Observing actions that are incongruent with participants’ actions interferes with their responses resulting in increased reaction times and error rates. This shows that assessing automatic imitation via the imitation-inhibition task is feasible in children, and creates the basis for future studies to compare the behaviour of different age groups with the same imitation task

How experience shapes infants' communicative behaviour: Comparing gaze following in infants with and without pandemic experience

The COVID-19 pandemic has been influencing people's social life substantially. Everybody, including infants and children needed to adapt to changes in social interactions (e.g., social distancing) and to seeing other people wearing facial masks. In this study, we investigated whether these pandemic-related changes influenced 12- to 15-months-old infants' reactions to observed gaze shifts (i.e., their gaze following). In two eye-tracking tasks, we measured infants' gaze-following behavior during the pandemic (with-COVID-19-experience sample) and compared it to data of infants tested before the pandemic (no-COVID-19-experience sample). Overall, the results indicated no significant differences between the two samples. However, in one sub-task infants in the with-COVID-19-experience sample looked longer at the eyes of a model compared to the no-COVID-19-experience sample. Within the with-COVID-19-experience sample, the amount of mask exposure and the number of contacts without mask were not related to infants' gaze-following behavior. We speculate that even though infants encounter fewer different people during the pandemic and are increasingly exposed to people wearing facial masks, they still also see non-covered faces. These contacts might be sufficient to provide infants with the social input they need to develop social and emotional competencies such as gaze following

Exploring the role of COVID-19 pandemic-related changes in social interactions on preschoolers' emotion labeling

During the COVID-19 pandemic people were increasingly obliged to wear facial masks and to reduce the number of people they met in person. In this study, we asked how these changes in social interactions are associated with young children's emotional development, specifically their emotion recognition via the labeling of emotions. Preschoolers labeled emotional facial expressions of adults (Adult Faces Task) and children (Child Faces Task) in fully visible faces. In addition, we assessed children's COVID-19-related experiences (i.e., time spent with people wearing masks, number of contacts without masks) and recorded children's gaze behavior during emotion labeling. We compared different samples of preschoolers (4.00–5.75 years): The data for the no-COVID-19-experience sample were taken from studies conducted before the pandemic (Adult Faces Task: N = 40; Child Faces Task: N = 30). The data for the with-COVID-19-experience sample (N = 99) were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland between June and November 2021. The results did not indicate differences in children's labeling behavior between the two samples except for fearful adult faces. Children with COVID-19-experience more often labeled fearful faces correctly compared to children with no COVID-19 experience. Furthermore, we found no relations between children's labeling behavior, their individual COVID-19-related experiences, and their gaze behavior. These results suggest that, even though the children had experienced differences in the amount and variability of facial input due to the pandemic, they still received enough input from visible faces to be able to recognize and label different emotions

Do you understand what I want to tell you? Early sensitivity in bilinguals' iconic gesture perception and production

Previous research has shown differences in monolingual and bilingual communication. We explored whether monolingual and bilingual pre‐schoolers (N = 80) differ in their ability to understand others' iconic gestures (gesture perception) and produce intelligible iconic gestures themselves (gesture production) and how these two abilities are related to differences in parental iconic gesture frequency. In a gesture perception task, the experimenter replaced the last word of every sentence with an iconic gesture. The child was then asked to choose one of four pictures that matched the gesture as well as the sentence. In a gesture production task, children were asked to indicate ‘with their hands’ to a deaf puppet which objects to select. Finally, parental gesture frequency was measured while parents answered three different questions. In the iconic gesture perception task, monolingual and bilingual children did not differ. In contrast, bilinguals produced more intelligible gestures than their monolingual peers. Finally, bilingual children's parents gestured more while they spoke than monolingual children's parents. We suggest that bilinguals' heightened sensitivity to their interaction partner supports their ability to produce intelligible gestures and results in a bilingual advantage in iconic gesture production

Seeing household chemicals through the eyes of children—Investigating influential factors of preschoolers’ perception and behavior

Introduction: Children who encounter household chemicals run the risk of unintentional injury. The aim of this study was to understand which factors heighten children’s attention or misguide their decision-making concerning household chemicals. We hypothesized that certain product attributes (i.e., label, packaging, closure types), storage context, and parental beliefs play a role in this setting. Method: We conducted a laboratory study with N = 114 children (M = 45 months, SD = 6.5) and their parents (M = 38 years, SD = 4.92). Children completed a series of behavioral tasks in which they had to choose between products with different attributes, identify products in different storage contexts, and sort household chemicals. Results: The results confirmed that the children preferred products with cartoon-style labels compared to products without such labels. However, children’s decision-making did not differ for products with different closure types (child-resistant vs sprayer-type closures). Regarding the storage context, our results showed that the children particularly struggled to identify dishwashing tabs when they were stored with other food items rather than household chemicals. In terms of parental beliefs, our study found that parents rated more household chemicals as child-safe than their children did. Practical Application: Parents should buy household chemicals with neutral labels and pay attention to how their household chemicals are stored. Manufacturers should consider potential adverse effects when developing new product designs

Household chemicals and pre-schoolers: Caretakers’ beliefs and perspectives on risks and responsibilities

Chemical products are present in most households and can endanger the health of humans, particularly toddlers and pre-school children. With a focus on accident prevention, this article investigates parents and other caretakers’ beliefs and perspectives on risks and responsibilities. A mixed method approach was applied, combining in-depth qualitative interviews (pre-study, N = 10) and a quantitative survey (main study, N = 688) with Swiss caretakers of pre-school children. The questionnaire of the main study was developed based on the findings from the pre-study, and measured beliefs, perceptions of product, environmental risks, and responsibilities. The main findings suggest some prevalent misconceptions among parents regarding the risks of products perceived to be natural and the safety of child-protective caps. Furthermore, relationships were uncovered between psychological factors, such as perceived responsibility, trust and risk perception, and caretakers’ beliefs about household chemicals and their role in accident prevention. These beliefs highlight the need for preventive efforts focused on caretakers exhibiting pragmatic/trusting beliefs, compared to caretakers exhibiting protective or educational beliefs

Childhood poisonings: Effects of ambiguous product characteristics on preschool children's categorization of household chemicals

This study investigated preschool children's categorization and risk perception of products with ambiguous product characteristics (e.g., food‐like packaging). These characteristics make it difficult for preschool children to categorize household chemicals correctly. This, therefore, increases the risk of unintentional poisoning. We hypothesized that ambiguity arises from different product characteristics, such as the type of packaging, the products’ scent, or the packaging's color and transparency. In four behavioral tasks, N = 108 preschool children (M = 43 months, SD = 3) categorized different products and household chemicals with various types of packaging, colors, and scents. Individually wrapped dishwasher tablets were more likely to be categorized as edible than unwrapped ones. Furthermore, children who had interacted with any type of dishwasher tablet in the last 6 months performed better in identifying dishwasher tablets, regardless of packaging type. Household chemicals with a fruity scent were more likely to be categorized as drinkable than those with a chlorine scent. Finally, the children considered black bottles more dangerous and preferred them less than bottles of a different color. In contrast, bottle transparency generally did not seem to affect risk perception and preference. These findings confirm that ambiguous product characteristics influence children's categorization of unknown products and, thus, their risk perception and decision‐making. Manufacturers and caregivers are advised to reduce the ambiguity of household chemicals by designing more neutral product packaging and choosing products with more neutral elements, respectively

A Multilab Study of Bilingual Infants: Exploring the Preference for Infant-Directed Speech

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) compared with adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multisite study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants’ IDS preference. As part of the multilab ManyBabies 1 project, we compared preference for North American English (NAE) IDS in lab-matched samples of 333 bilingual and 384 monolingual infants tested in 17 labs in seven countries. The tested infants were in two age groups: 6 to 9 months and 12 to 15 months. We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and the two groups did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. However, among bilingual infants who were acquiring NAE as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference. These findings extend the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger IDS preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Together, our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes similar contributions to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments

Atypical gaze-following behaviour in infants with congenital heart disease

BACKGROUND Neurodevelopmental impairments are the most prevalent non-cardiac long-term sequelae in children with complex congenital heart disease (CHD). Deficits include the social-emotional and social-cognitive domains. Little is known about the predecessors of social-cognitive development in infants with CHD during the first year of life. Gaze-following behaviour can be used to measure early social-cognitive abilities. AIMS To assess gaze-following development in infants with CHD compared to healthy controls. STUDY DESIGN Prospective cohort study. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-three infants who underwent neonatal correction for CHD and 84 healthy controls. OUTCOME MEASURES Gaze-following behaviour was assessed by eye tracking at 6 and 12 months. Difference scores for first fixation, fixation frequency and fixation duration towards the gaze-cued object were calculated across 6 trials and compared between groups at both testing time points while adjusting for known confounders. Linear mixed models were calculated to assess the longitudinal trajectory of gaze-following development while accounting for the nested and dependent data structure. RESULTS At 6 months, no difference in gaze-following behaviour between CHD and healthy controls was found. At 12 months, fixation frequency towards the gaze-cued was lower and looking duration was shorter in CHD compared to controls (p = 0.0077; p = 0.0068). Infants with CHD showed less increase with age in the fixation frequency towards the congruent object (p = 0.041) compared to controls. CONCLUSION During the first year of life, gaze-following development diverges in infants with CHD compared to healthy controls. Further research is needed to investigate the clinical relevance of these findings and the association with later social-cognitive development