Anticipatory adjustments to being picked up in infancy

Anticipation of the actions of others is often used as a measure of action understanding in infancy. In contrast to studies of action understanding which set infants up as observers of actions directed elsewhere, in the present study we explored anticipatory postural adjustments made by infants to one of the most common adult actions directed to them - picking them up. We observed infant behavioural changes and recorded their postural shifts on a pressure mat in three phases: (i) a prior Chat phase, (ii) from the onset of Approach of the mother's arms, and (iii) from the onset of Contact. In Study 1, eighteen 3-month-old infants showed systematic global postural changes during Approach and Contact, but not during Chat. There was an increase in specific adjustments of the arms (widening or raising) and legs (stiffening and extending or tucking up) during Approach and a decrease in thrashing/general movements during Contact. Shifts in postural stability were evident immediately after onset of Approach and more slowly after Contact, with no regular shifts during Chat. In Study 2 we followed ten infants at 2, 3 and 4 months of age. Anticipatory behavioural adjustments during Approach were present at all ages, but with greater differentiation from a prior Chat phase only at 3 and 4 months. Global postural shifts were also more phase differentiated in older infants. Moreover, there was significantly greater gaze to the mother's hands during Approach at 4 months. Early anticipatory adjustments to being picked up suggest that infants' awareness of actions directed to the self may occur earlier than of those directed elsewhere, and thus enable infants' active participation in joint actions from early in life

Adoption et retrouvailles

Suite au phénomène des retrouvailles suscité par le journal Le Soleil de Québec, l'auteur nous expose ses réflexions à ce propos. Il nous explique qu'il existe déjà chez les parents et enfants d'une famille naturelle un phénomène d'adoption dont il nous indique les fondements. À partir de cette constatation, il discutera des 6 faits importants que le phénomène proprement dit des «retrouvailles» a dévoilé pour conclure finalement par cette question : la recherche des parents biologiques représente-t-elle, pour l'enfant, la recherche d'une alternative actuelle à ses parents actuels, comme l'est parfois la religion, ou est-elle plutôt un effort en vue de récupérer l'histoire complète de sa naissance et des premiers jours de sa vie?Following the phenomenon of reunions instigated by the newspaper Le Soleil of Quebec, the author provides us with his reflections on this subject. He explains that there exists already in parents and children of a natural family, an adoption phenomenon whose bases he indicates. From this finding he discusses the six (6) important facts that the reunion phenomenon has uncovered, and concludes with this question : does the search for biological parents represent a search for a real alternative to the child's actual parents, as religion is at times, or, is it more an effort aimed at the retrieval of the complete history of his birth and the first days of his life

Recurrence quantification analysis of processes and products of discourse: A tutorial in R

Processes of naturalistic reading and writing are based on complex linguistic input, stretch-out over time, and rely on an integrated performance of multiple perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes. Hence, naturalistic reading and writing performance is nonstationary and exhibits fluctuations and transitions. However, instead of being just complications for the analysis of such data, they are also informative about cognitive change, fluency, and reading or writing skill. To use and quantify such dynamics, one needs appropriate statistics that capture these aspects. In this article I introduce Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) as a tool to capture such dynamic structure. After a conceptual introduction of the analysis, I present a step-by-step tutorial on how to run RQA using R. Guidance is given with regard to common issues and best practices using this time-series analysis technique. Finally, I review previous results from studies applying RQA to reading and writing and summarize current hypotheses and interpretations of RQA measures in the context of reading and writing