Infant Preferences Research Articles

The role of sex and femininity in preferences for unfamiliar infants among Chinese adults.

Guided by parental investment theory and social role theory, this study aimed to understand current contradictory results regarding sex differences in response to infant faces by considering the effect of gender role orientation. We recruited 300 adults in China and asked them to complete an Interest in Infants questionnaire and a Bem Sex Role Inventory and then administered a behavioral assessment that used unfamiliar infant faces with varying expressions (laughing, neutral, and crying) as stimuli to gauge three components of motivation towards infants (i.e., liking, representational responding, and evoked responding). The results demonstrated that sex differences emerged only in self-reported interest in infants, but no difference was found between the sexes in terms of their hedonic reactions to infant faces. Furthermore, femininity was found to correlate with preferences for infants in both verbal and visual tests, but significant interactive effects of feminine traits and sex were found only in the behavioral test. The findings indicated that men's responses to infants were influenced more by their feminine traits than were women's responses, potentially explaining the greater extent to which paternal (vs. maternal) investment is facultative.

Use of the Theory of Planned Behavior Framework to Understand Breastfeeding Decision-Making Among Mothers of Preterm Infants.

Background: Mothers of preterm infants face significant challenges to breastfeeding. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a well-known framework comprising three domains (attitudes, perceived control, and social norms), which has been used to conceptualize the array of factors that influence health-related behaviors and develop interventions to promote behaviors. Aim: We used the TPB framework to determine the array of factors that contribute to breastfeeding among mothers of preterm infants. Materials and Methods: Using qualitative research methods, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with mothers regarding their experiences feeding their preterm infants according to TPB domains. We developed themes based on an iterative process of review of transcripts and conducted interviews until thematic saturation was reached. Results: We interviewed 23 mothers in 3 states 2 to 6 months after hospital discharge; 22 mothers initiated milk production and 6 were breastfeeding at the time of the interview. Factors that were positive and negative toward breastfeeding were present for all three TPB domains. Regarding attitudes, mothers felt that breastfeeding was a way to bond, that breast milk was healthy and protective, and that breast milk alone was insufficient for a growing preterm infant. Regarding perceived control, mothers felt empowered to breastfeed due to encouragement from hospital staff, friends, and family, and had difficulty overcoming their infant's immature oral feeding skills, competing responsibilities, and perceived infant preference for bottle feeding. Regarding social norms, mothers reported support for and against breastfeeding among hospital and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC) providers, family, friends, and the media. Conclusion: Interventional studies geared toward breastfeeding promotion among mothers of preterm infants may focus on addressing barriers to direct breastfeeding during the neonatal intensive care unit and early post-discharge time periods.

Face Preference in Infants at Six and Nine Months Old: The Effects of Facial Attractiveness and Observation Experience

Attractiveness is perceived based on both facial physical features and prior experience for adults. Infants also prefer attractive or familiar faces, but it is unclear whether facial physical features and prior experience affect their preference. In this study, we investigated whether infants’ preference for faces was shaped by both facial physical features and facial looking experience. This experiment comprised two tasks, observation and preference looking. We manipulated fixation durations in the first task (observation experience) to differ between presented faces and measured the preference for faces in the second task right after the observation task. We conducted two experiments: the same faces in the same positions through both tasks in Experiment 1, and the same faces in different positions in Experiment 2, and analyzed the interaction between observation experience and attractiveness of face images in terms of preference. Observation experience and facial attractiveness only affected preference in Experiment 2: Infants generally looked longer at the flickered position but different face, but looked for the attractive face when the face in the flickered position changed from attractive to unattractive. We suggest that observation experience arouses spatial attention, and that facial attractiveness attracts infants’ attention only when they notice changes of faces.

Contrasting behavioral looking procedures: a case study on infant speech segmentation

This paper compared three different procedures common in infant speech perception research: a headturn preference procedure (HPP) and a central-fixation (CF) procedure with either automated eye-tracking (CF-ET) or manual coding (CF-M). In theory, such procedures all measure the same underlying speech perception and learning mechanisms and the choice between them should ideally be irrelevant in unveiling infant preference. However, the ManyBabies study (ManyBabies Consortium, 2019), a cross-laboratory collaboration on infants’ preference for child-directed speech, revealed that choice of procedure can modulate effect sizes. Here we examined whether procedure also modulates preference in paradigms that add a learning phase prior to test: a speech segmentation paradigm. Such paradigms are particularly important for studying the learning mechanisms infants can employ for language acquisition. We carried out the same familiarization-then-test experiment with the three different procedures (32 unique infants per procedure). Procedures were compared on various factors, such as overall effect, average looking time and drop-out rate. The key observations are that the HPP yielded a larger familiarity preference, but also reported larger drop-out rates. This raises questions about the generalizability of results. We argue that more collaborative research into different procedures in infant preference experiments is required in order to interpret the variation in infant preferences more accurately.

A novel, short and easy-to-perform method to evaluate newborns' social olfactory preferences.

Humans' early olfactory perception has been studied mainly within the framework of mother-offspring interactions and only a few studies have focused on newborns' abilities to discriminate body odors per se. The aim of this study was to develop a method to evaluate olfactory social preferences of infants at term-equivalent age. Twenty dyads of infants (10 born preterm and 10 born at term) at term-equivalent age and their mothers were included. We analyzed the behavioral reactions of infants to their mother's upper-chest odor (that bears social, non-food related information). The two impregnated gauzes and a control gauze were presented to the infants for 10s each, in a random order. We compared two durations of gauze impregnation: 30min and 12h. This study reveals that mothers' upper chest emits sufficient olfactory information to induce reactions in infants born full-term or born preterm and that a short impregnation is preferable to evaluate their perception of body odors, notably for those born preterm.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELECTION OF FIRST COMPLEMENTARY FOODS WITH FOOD PREFERENCES IN INFANTS AND TODDLERS

Giving complementary food at the right time is very beneficial for meeting the nutritional needs and growth and development of infants. However, if the child is difficult to eat or choose to eat, the child's growth will be disrupted It also becomes stressful for his parents. Food picking habits are included in the term food preference. In addition to being picky about food, rejection of certain foods is also included in this term. In this study, we want to know the relationship between First complementary food selection with Food Preference in infants and toddlers. The research design used is correlational analytic with a retrospective approach. The population is mothers who have babies and toddlers under the age of 5 years in the Rw 11 region of Jagir sub-district. The sampling technique uses purposive sampling technique. From data analysis with the Spearman test. in this study the selection of the first complementary food and Food Preference has a significant relationship with p value 0.044. It is expected that the results of this study will make mothers who have toddlers understand even more about choosing the right complemetary foodnamely with a complete menu that we feel we call a 4 star menu Keywords : complementary food, picky eater, food preference

Effects of Baby Schema and Mere Exposure on Explicit and Implicit Face Processing.

In an increasingly multicultural society, the way people perceive individuals from the same vs different ethnic groups greatly affects their own and societal well-being. Two psychological effects that influence these perceptions are the Mere-Exposure Effect (MRE), wherein familiarity with certain objects or persons suffices for people to develop a preference for them, and the Baby Schema (BS), a set of specific facial features that evokes caregiving behaviors and an affective orientation in adults. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether these two effects play a role in implicit physiological responses to babies vs. adults faces belonging to participants in-group vs. out-group. In study 1, the pupillary diameter of 62 Caucasian participants (M = 31; F = 31) who observed adult and infant faces of different ethnic groups (Caucasian, Chinese) was measured. In study 2, brain waves of 38 Caucasian participants (M = 19; F = 19), who observed the same set of faces, were recorded using EEG. In both studies, adults explicit preferences (i.e., attitudes) toward faces were assessed using questionnaires. In Study 1, females showed greater attention to infant than adult faces (BS effect) in both pupils, regardless of the ethnic group of the face. By contrast, males attended to infant more than adult faces for out-group faces only (BS effect). In Study 2, greater left posterior-parietal alpha activation toward out-group compared to in-group adult faces was found in males (MRE). Participants with a low BS effect toward in-group baby faces exhibited greater left posterior alpha activation to out-group than in-group baby faces (MRE). These findings reveal how different levels of sensitivity to in-group infants may moderate perceptions of both in-group and out-group baby faces. Questionnaire measures on attitudes showed that males and females preferred in-group to out-group adult faces (MRE). Participants in Study 2 also reported a greater preference for infants than adults faces (BS effect). These findings explicate the roles of gender and the Baby Schema effect in moderating implicit processing of in-group and out-group faces, despite their lack in moderating explicit reports. Contradictory findings at the implicit (physiological) and explicit (self-report) levels suggest that differential processing of faces may occur at a non-conscious level.

Mediation effect of adult attachment orientations between perceived parental warmth and the preference for infants

Parenting motivation includes positive affect, a strong preference, and willingness to care for infants. In this series of studies, we investigated the formation of adult attachment, and its influence on parenting motivation. In Study 1, 975 emerging adults (Mage = 20.51, SD = 1.74) completed a survey about perceived parental warmth, adult attachment, and interest in infants to determine if adult attachment mediates the relationship between perceived parental warmth and interest in infants. In Study 2, 270 emerging adults (Mage = 21.58, SD = 1.96) assessed the preference for infant faces including pleasure, cuteness, and willingness to care to examine how adult attachment affects this preference. Attachment avoidance mediated the relationship between perceived parental warmth and the preference for infants including interest in infants (95% CI study1, study2 = [.072, .310], [.158, .806]) and preference for infant faces (95% CI pleasure, cuteness, willingness = [.018, .172], [.053, .290], [.029, .240]). These findings suggest emerging adults with decreased attachment avoidance who perceived emotional warmth from their parents during childhood displayed elevated parenting motivation, have implications for these adults with insecure attachment during the parent-child relationship and can provide the basis for conducting corresponding brain mechanism research.

Chimpanzees, but not bonobos, attend more to infant than adult conspecifics

Primate infants have several physical features that distinguish them from adults in appearance. One such feature is the well-known ‘baby schema,’ in which the infant has a relatively large head and eyes, and a small nose and mouth. Humans typically prefer infants of both conspecifics and heterospecifics with a strong baby schema. In nonhuman primates, infants of some (e.g. chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes) but not all species (e.g. bonobos, Pan paniscus) have species-specific conspicuous skin and fur coloration, in addition to species-common infantile features. This study examined whether closely related chimpanzees and bonobos have a preference for infants, and, if so, whether they are attracted to species-common features (e.g. the relatively large head and eyes) or species-specific features (e.g. conspicuous coloration). We used eye tracking to measure eye movements while participants viewed naturalistic images of a mother–infant pair. We adopted a cross-species design, so that both species viewed images of chimpanzees, bonobos and an outgroup primate species. We found that chimpanzees viewed the faces of infants for longer than those of adults when presented with conspecific images, but not when presented with heterospecific images. Chimpanzees also did not show any preference when facial coloration was matched between conspecific infants and adults in a follow-up experiment. Chimpanzees thus seem to respond particularly to the special infantile coloration of conspecifics. Bonobos clearly differed from chimpanzees in that they did not view conspecific infants for longer than adults and viewed heterospecific adults for longer than infants. These observed species differences may be related to their species-typical social and rearing styles. In conclusion, the preference for infants is species-specific in bonobos and chimpanzees, with a general lack of preference for the species-common baby schema.

The role of prosody in infants' preference for speech: A comparison between speech and birdsong.

Speech preferences emerge very early in infancy, pointing to a special status for speech in auditory processing and a crucial role of prosody in driving infant preferences. Recent theoretical models suggest that infant auditory perception may initially encompass a broad range of human and nonhuman vocalizations, then tune in to relevant sounds for the acquisition of species-specific communication sounds. However, little is known about sound properties eliciting infants' tuning-in to speech. To address this issue, we presented a group of 4-month-olds with segments of non-native speech (Mandarin Chinese) and birdsong, a nonhuman vocalization that shares some prosodic components with speech. A second group of infants was presented with the same segment of birdsong paired with Mandarin played in reverse. Infants showed an overall preference for birdsong over non-native speech. Moreover, infants in the Backward condition preferred birdsong over backward speech whereas infants in the Forward condition did not show clear preference. These results confirm the prominent role of prosody in early auditory processing and suggest that infants' preferences may privilege communicative vocalizations featured by certain prosodic dimensions regardless of the biological source of the sound, human or nonhuman.

Effects of attentional behaviours on infant visual preferences and object choice.

Many developmental studies have examined the effects of joint attention. However, it has been difficult to compare effects of initiating joint attention and responding to joint attention in infants. Here, we compared the effects of initiating joint attention and responding joint attention on object information processing, object preference, and facial preferences in infants. Thirty-seven infants (10 to 12 months of age) were shown stimuli in which a female gazed towards or away from an object. Participants were assigned to initiating joint attention condition or responding joint attention condition. Results suggest that initiating joint attention promoted object information processing, whereas responding joint attention did not. Both joint attention conditions affected the facial preference for the person who engaged joint attention. In addition, after initiating joint attention, infants chose objects gazed by other person more often than after responding joint attention. It appears that attentional behaviours that precede the perception of certain stimuli affect infants' cognitive responses to those stimuli.

Contextual influences on infants' attention to child-directed speech

Initial publications of infants' preference for infant (child)-directed speech (CDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS) produced a swift generalization to all early development. In fact, a recent meta-analysis found that the CDS preference to be robust (Dunst et al., 2012) and the ManyBabies I replication effort extends this view across labs, methods, and samples (Frank et al., 2018). Nonetheless, there are important demonstrations of how this preference gets attenuated and augmented by various factors. For example, Cooper et al. (1997) found that 1-mo-olds did not prefer CDS over ADS when both recordings were of the infants' own mothers, but did prefer CDS when the speakers were unfamiliar women. Other studies on CDS perception find influences of the language being spoken, the modality of presentation, the age of the infant, the clinical status of the mother and/or of the infant. The influence of context on infants' attention to speech is an underappreciated and understudied aspect of early language learning. This presentation will summarize contextual moderators of the CDS preference that emanate from the infant and from the infant's developmental milieu, and offer suggestions for other contexts that most likely impact infants' attention to CDS but have yet to be investigated (e.g., poverty).

ManyBabies1 part 2: Influences of language experience on infant-directed speech preference

ManyBabies1, our first effort at a large scale collaborative infant experimental study, provided a conceptual replication of the well-known phenomenon of infant preference for the characteristics of Infant-directed speech (IDS). One important question that has largely been unanswered by extant literature is how much the IDS preference is dependent on experience with a specific language. How do infants respond to IDS that is in a non-native variety, and how does their listening affect this preference? ManyBabies 1 used a consistent stimulus set of North-American English (NAE), which allowed us to answer this questions using two approaches. First, because participating ManyBabies 1 labs were located around the world, we were able to compare monolingual infants from a range of native-language backgrounds. We found that the preference for North American English IDS was larger for infants whose native language was NAE than for infants who had a different native language. Second, we conducted a sister project, ManyBabies 1 Bilingual, which tested infants from a variety of bilingual backgrounds. Bilinguals have similar total language experience and maturation as monolinguals, but their experience is divided across two or more languages. Planned analyses will examine monolingual-bilingual differences, and “dose-response” effects of exposure to NAE.

ManyBabies1: Infants' preference for infant-directed speech

There is growing concern about the replicability of basic findings in psychology, including in infancy research (Frank et al., 2017). ManyBabies is a large-scale international collaboration to replicate basic empirical findings in infancy. Our first project is ManyBabies1, which examines infant preference for infant-directed speech (IDS). Over 70 laboratories collaborated to collect data from over 2500 infants aged 3–15 months. Stimuli consisted of speech produced in a semi-naturalistic elicitation task where fifteen different mothers who spoke North American English talked about a series of novel and familiar objects to their infant and separately to an experimenter. A set of 8 passages each in IDS and adult-directed speech (ADS) were created after a comprehensive norming process. Infants were tested in 3 primary methods: eyetracking, central fixation and headturn preference. Overall, the effect of preference for IDS was replicated, although the calculated effect was smaller than that reported by meta-analysis (Dunst et al., 2012, metalab.stanford.edu). Preference for IDS increased across development. The success of this project shows that infant research conducted collaboratively and at-scale can answer new questions about the replicability and generalizability of infant findings across different laboratory, methodological, and infant participant characteristics.

Early Development of Taste and Flavor Preferences and Consequences on Eating Behavior.

The first 1,000 days of life constitute an important period for the development of health and eating behavior. While the feeding mode drastically evolves, the child learns "how", "what," and "how much" food to eat. When orally exposed, infants discover food properties, with a variety of tastes, flavors, textures, as well as energy densities. Here, we focus on deciphering the involvement of taste and olfaction in the early establishment of eating behavior. In the OPALINE French birth cohort (Observatory of Food Preferences in Infants and Children), taste and flavor preferences were studied in relation to food preferences over the first 2 years. Both taste and flavor preferences evolved during this period. At weaning, a higher preference for sweet, sour, and umami tastes was associated with a higher acceptance of sweet-, sour- and umami-tasting foods, respectively. At 12 months, rejection of the odor of trimethylamine and dimethyl disulfide was related to the rejection of fish and sulfurous cheeses, respectively. Further, at 20 months, food neophobia was associated with odor but not taste differential reactivity, revealing the importance of olfaction in neophobic reactions. Further studies are ongoing to examine the long-term effect of early taste and flavor exposure on food preferences.

Impact of a modified version of baby-led weaning on dietary variety, nutrients and food preferences in infants

Impact of a modified version of baby-led weaning on dietary variety, nutrients and food preferences in infants

Language or music? Environmental influences on infants' handedness from 5 to 12 months

The main purpose of this study was to test the influence of music environment on hand-use preference in infants from 5 to 12 months, compared to speech environment. According to hemispheric specialization, our hypothesis was that infants would reach for objects more with their right hand in a speech context (left hemisphere), and more with their left hand in a music context (right hemisphere). 61 full-term infants aged from 5 to 12 months participated in this study. A prehension task was proposed successively in two sound environments (music and speech) in a counterbalanced order. Left-, right-movement and/or bimanual movements were scored. Results show that whatever the sound context, from 8 months a lateral right bias occurs and increases strongly. However, 5- to 7-months-old infants used more their left hand when they listen to a piece of classical music that an adult speech. Bimanual movements were more frequent at 6 and 7 months than unimanual movements in the speech condition. Results are discussed in terms of manual specialization.

Logistical, cultural, and structural barriers to immediate neonatal care and neonatal resuscitation in Bihar, India

BackgroundIn India, the neonatal mortality rate is nearly double the Sustainable Development Goal target with more than half of neonatal deaths occurring in only four states, one of which is Bihar. Evaluations of immediate neonatal care and neonatal resuscitation skills in Bihar have demonstrated a need for significant improvement. However, barriers to evidence based practices in clinical care remain incompletely characterized.MethodsTo better understand such barriers, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 nurses who participated as mentors in the AMANAT maternal and child health quality improvement project, implemented by CARE India and the Government of Bihar. Nurse-mentors worked in primary health centers throughout Bihar facilitating PRONTO International emergency obstetric and neonatal simulations for nurse-mentees in addition to providing direct supervision of clinical care. Interviews focused on mentors’ perceptions of barriers to evidence based practices in immediate neonatal care and neonatal resuscitation faced by mentees employed at Bihar’s rural primary health centers. Data was analyzed using the thematic content approach.ResultsMentors identified numerous interacting logistical, cultural, and structural barriers to care. Logistical barriers included poor facility layout, supply issues, human resource shortages, and problems with the local referral system. Cultural barriers included norms such as male infant preference, traditional clinical practices, hierarchy in the labor room, and interpersonal relations amongst staff as well as with patients’ relatives. Poverty was described as an overarching structural barrier.ConclusionInteracting logistical, cultural and structural barriers affect all aspects of immediate neonatal care and resuscitation in Bihar. These barriers must be addressed in any intervention focused on improving providers’ clinical skills. Strategic local partnerships are vital to addressing such barriers and to contextualizing skills-based trainings developed in Western contexts to achieve the desired impact of reducing neonatal mortality.

A Novel Method to Investigate How Dimensions Interact to Inform Perceptual Salience in Infancy

How physical dimensions govern children's perception, language acquisition, and cognition is an important question in developmental science. Here, we use the psychophysical technique of maximum likelihood conjoint measurement (MLCM) as a novel approach to investigate how infants combine information distributed along two or more dimensions. MLCM is based on a signal detection model of decision that allows testing of several models of how observers integrate information to make choices. We tested 6‐month‐old infants’ preferential looking to “green” stimuli that covaried in lightness and chroma and analyzed infant preferences using MLCM. The findings show that infant looking is driven primarily by lightness, with darker stimuli having a greater preference than lighter, plus a small but significant positive contribution of chroma. This study demonstrates that the technique of MLCM can be used in conjunction with preferential looking to investigate the salience of physical dimensions during development. The technique could now be applied to investigate the role of physical dimensions in key aspects of perceptual and cognitive development such as face recognition, language acquisition, and object recognition.

Impact of a Modified Version of Baby-Led Weaning on Dietary Variety and Food Preferences in Infants.

The aim of this study was to determine whether food variety and perceived food preferences differ in infants following baby-led instead of traditional spoon-feeding approaches to introducing solids. A total of 206 women (41.3% primiparous) were recruited in late pregnancy from a single maternity hospital (response rate 23.4%) and randomized to Control (n = 101) or BLISS (n = 105) groups. All participants received government-funded Well Child care. BLISS participants also received support to exclusively breastfeed to 6 months and three educational sessions on BLISS (Baby-Led Weaning, modified to reduce the risk of iron deficiency, growth faltering, and choking) at 5.5, 7, and 9 months. Food variety was calculated from three-day weighed diet records at 7, 12, and 24 months. Questionnaires assessed infant preference for different tastes and textures at 12 months, and for ‘vegetables’, ‘fruit’, ‘meat and fish’, or ‘desserts’ at 24 months. At 24 months, 50.5% of participants provided diet record data, and 78.2% provided food preference data. BLISS participants had greater variety in ‘core’ (difference in counts over three days, 95% CI: 1.3, 0.4 to 2.2), ‘non-core’ (0.6, 0.2 to 0.9), and ‘meat and other protein’ (1.3, 0.8 to 1.9) foods at 7 months, and in ‘fruit and vegetable’ foods at 24 months (2, 0.4 to 3.6). The only differences in perceived food preferences observed were very small (i.e., <5% difference in score, at 12 months only). Infants following the modified Baby-Led Weaning were exposed to more varied and textured foods from an early age, but only an increased variety in ‘fruit and vegetable’ intake was apparent by two years of age.