Preverbal Infants Research Articles

Third-party punishment-like behavior in a rat model

Third-party punishment (TPP) is an altruistic behavior or sense willing to punish transgressors as a third party not directly involved in the transgression. TPP is observed worldwide, regardless of tradition and culture, and is essential for morality in human society. Moreover, even preverbal infants display TPP-like judgement, suggesting that TPP is evolutionarily conserved and innate. Thus, it is possible that non-human animals display TPP-like behavior, although TPP has been said to be human-specific. We investigated whether or not male mature Wistar rats displayed TPP-like behaviors when they witnessed deadly aggression by an unknown aggressive mouse toward another unknown victim mouse. Normally reared rats did not display TPP-like behaviors, but rats reared with extensive affectionate handling by human caretakers as beloved pets contacted the unknown aggressive mice in a gentle manner leading to reduced aggression toward the unknown victim mice, even when the aggressive mice fought back. Furthermore, the handled rats touched unknown rat pups that were drowning in water and anesthesia-induced comatose rats more frequently than control rats. These findings suggest a possibility that TPP is not in fact human-specific and innate but rather an acquired behavior that flourishes in affectionate circumstances.

11-month-olds recognize the teacher–student relationship

Understanding how preverbal infants perceive and differentiate the roles of teachers and students can provide profound insights into the early stages of human learning and cognition. We thus developed a paradigm based on the task order and the interactive position to determine if infants understand teacher–student relationships. Five experiments (N = 104), reveal that, after watching the teacher agent instruct the student agent from failure to success, 11-month-old infants looked at the teacher for a longer time when they watched a new naïve agent seek information in a new ambiguous scenario. Three additional control experiments excluded alternative interpretations of infants’ selective looking, suggesting that agents’ order-related actions influenced infants’ identification. Another control experiment demonstrated the importance of the position when the teacher and the student had interactive exchanges. These findings indicate that preverbal infants can recognize the teacher–student relationship, which is crucial to accessing effective information in early life.

Emerging Adults Mirror Infants' Emotions and Yawns.

Infants' nonverbal expressions-a broad smile or a sharp cry-are powerful at eliciting reactions. Although parents' reactions to their own infants' expressions are relatively well understood, here we studied whether adults more generally exhibit behavioral and physiological reactions to unfamiliar infants producing various expressions. We recruited U.S. emerging adults (N=84) prior to parenthood, 18-25 years old, 68% women, ethnically (20% Hispanic/Latino) and racially (7% Asian, 13% Black, 1% Middle Eastern, 70% White, 8% multiracial) diverse. They observed four 80-s audio-video clips of unfamiliar 2- to 6-month-olds crying, smiling, yawning, and sitting calmly (emotionally neutral control). Each compilation video depicted 9 different infants (36 clips total). We found adults mirrored behaviorally and physiologically: more positive facial expressions to infants smiling, and more negative facial expressions and pupil dilation-indicating increases in arousal-to infants crying. Adults also yawned more and had more pupil dilation when observing infants yawning. Together, these findings suggest that even nonparent emerging adults are highly sensitive to unfamiliar infants' expressions, which they naturally "catch" (i.e., behaviorally and physiologically mirror), even without instructions. Such sensitivity may have-over the course of humans' evolutionary history-been selected for, to facilitate adults' processing of preverbal infants' expressions to meet their needs.

Abstract thematic roles in infants’ representation of social events

Infants' thoughts are classically characterized as iconic, perceptual-like representations.1,2,3 Less clear is whether preverbal infants also possess a propositional language of thought, where mental symbols are combined according to syntactic rules, very much like words in sentences.4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 Because it is rich, productive, and abstract, a language of thought would provide a key to explaining impressive achievements in early infancy, from logical inference to representation of false beliefs.18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31 A propositional language-including a language of thought5-implies thematic roles that, in a sentence, indicate the relation between noun and verb phrases, defining who acts on whom; i.e., who is the agent and who is the patient.32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39 Agent and patient roles are abstract in that they generally apply to different situations: whether A kicks, helps, or kisses B, A is the agent and B is the patient. Do preverbal infants represent abstract agent and patient roles? We presented 7-month-olds (n= 143) with sequences of scenes where the posture or relative positioning of two individuals indicated that, across different interactions, A acted on B. Results from habituation (experiment 1) and pupillometry paradigms (experiments 2 and 3) demonstrated that infants showed surprise when roles eventually switched (B acted on A). Thus, while encoding social interactions, infants fill in an abstract relational structure that marks the roles of agent and patient and that can be accessed via different event scenes and properties of the event participants (body postures or positioning). This mental process implies a combinatorial capacity that lays the foundations for productivity and compositionality in language and cognition.

Perceptual Awareness in Human Infants: What is the Evidence?

Perceptual awareness in infants during the first year of life is understudied, despite the philosophical, scientific, and clinical importance of understanding how and when consciousness emerges during human brain development. Although parents are undoubtedly convinced that their infant is conscious, the lack of adequate experimental paradigms to address this question in preverbal infants has been a hindrance to research on this topic. However, recent behavioral and brain imaging studies have shown that infants are engaged in complex learning from an early age and that their brains are more structured than traditionally thought. I will present a rapid overview of these results, which might provide indirect evidence of early perceptual awareness and then describe how a more systematic approach to this question could stand within the framework of global workspace theory, which identifies specific signatures of conscious perception in adults. Relying on these brain signatures as a benchmark for conscious perception, we can deduce that it exists in the second half of the first year, whereas the evidence before the age of 5 months is less solid, mainly because of the paucity of studies. The question of conscious perception before term remains open, with the possibility of short periods of conscious perception, which would facilitate early learning. Advances in brain imaging and growing interest in this subject should enable us to gain a better understanding of this important issue in the years to come.

Evidence for core social goal understanding (and, perhaps, core morality) in preverbal infants.

Spelke's What Babies Know masterfully describes infants' impressive repertoire of core cognitive concepts, from which the suite of human knowledge is eventually built. The current commentary argues for the existence of a core concept that Spelke claims preverbal infants lack: social goal. Core social goal concepts, operative extremely early in human development, underlie infants' basic abilities to interpret and evaluate entities within the moral world; such abilities support claims for a core moral domain.

The utility and reliability of the PreViAs questionnaire forthe assessment of vision in Turkish neonates and infants.

Introduction: Evaluating the visual functions of children with an easy-to-use and evidence-based method during the preverbal period will enable early diagnosis and intervention of visual impairments. The aim of this study is to determine the utility and reliability of the Turkish version of the Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire, which was developed to evaluate the visual functioning of preverbal infants. Population and Methods: The PreViAs questionnaire was administered to primary caregivers of term infants under 24 months of age, and their responses were recorded. Results: Data from the 278 participating infants were analyzed to assess the internal consistency of the PreViAs questionnaire. Results showed a high level of consistency with Cronbach's alpha value of 0.958 for the total score, suggesting strong internal coherence. In addition, the Cronbach's alpha values for each domain were 0.890, 0.913, 0.951, and 0.922 for visual attention, visual communication, visual processing, and visual-motor coordination, respectively, indicating good internal consistency for each subdomain. Conclusion: The Turkish version of the PreViAs questionnaire is useful and reliable for assessing functional vision during the preverbal period.

Visual statistical learning in preverbal infants at a higher likelihood of autism and its association with later social communication skills.

Visual statistical Learning (SL) allows infants to extract the statistical relationships embedded in a sequence of elements. SL plays a crucial role in language and communication competencies and has been found to be impacted in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This study aims to investigate visual SL in infants at higher likelihood of developing ASD (HL-ASD) and its predictive value on autistic-related traits at 24-36 months. At 6 months of age, SL was tested using a visual habituation task in HL-ASD and neurotypical (NT) infants. All infants were habituated to a visual sequence of shapes containing statistically predictable patterns. In the test phase, infants viewed the statistically structured, familiar sequence in alternation with a novel sequence that did not contain any statistical information. HL-ASD infants were then evaluated at 24-36 months to investigate the associations between visual SL and ASD-related traits. Our results showed that NT infants were able to learn the statistical structure embedded in the visual sequences, while HL-ASD infants showed different learning patterns. A regression analysis revealed that SL ability in 6-month-old HL-ASD infants was related to social communication and interaction abilities at 24-36 months of age. These findings indicate that early differences in learning visual statistical patterns might contribute to later social communication skills.

An interactive shared reading intervention designed for preverbal infants: A feasibility study exploring early language and cognitive development

Creating an environment suitable for language acquisition through shared reading significantly contributes to improving a child's language development and parent–child relationship. Reading in an interactive way, such as dialogic reading, is favorable. Nevertheless, dialogic reading is designed for children above the age of two and shared reading is recommended to start during the child's first year. The present study aimed to explore the feasibility of an interactive shared reading intervention, inspired by dialogic reading, where the reading techniques were designed to complement infants’ preverbal developmental level. The study further intended to explore its preliminary effect on infants’ cognitive and language development. Eleven parent–infant dyads participated, bi-monthly, in four in-depth intervention sessions where the shared reading techniques were modeled. Between sessions, parents and infants engaged in shared reading using these techniques. Post-intervention interviews served to reflect the feasibility of the intervention. Infant cognitive and language assessments were conducted pre- and post-intervention using BAYLEY-III and CSBS DP ITC. Favorable results regarding feasibility and infant language development were found, however, for cognitive development the results were non-significant. We discuss clinical considerations and the scope for conducting future studies.

In search of a prerequisite for infant participation in pregnancy: a depth-hermeneutical interpretation of conversations between coming mothers and midwives

Based on the fact that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) gives the right to participate and be heard in situations that affect their lives to all children, even pre-verbal infants, we have looked for the infant voice in parental narratives about their child. Conversations between 16 mothers and a professional at two stages were videotaped and transcribed. The first conversation between mother and midwife took place in pregnancy and, the second, between mother and health nurse, was completed when the child was about six months old. We wanted to invent a method that could find the voice of pre-verbal children, even before birth, a method capable of registering the child’s impact on us and decoding this influence into common language and practical action. Based on infant research on intersubjectivity and qualitative methodology from psychosocial research, we developed a procedure of depth-hermeneutical interpretation of the parental narratives. In this article we describe the results from the interpretation of the narratives made in pregnancy. Through the procedure of Scenic-Narrative Microanalysis, a very suitable method of depth-hermeneutic group interpretation, we identified three different areas of conflict or tension in the data material: container versus oneness; openness versus narrowness; and control versus curiosity. A description of the epistemological foundations and the research procedures from data collection to interpretation will be given. The results from the second round of interpretation will be analysed and compared with the results from the pregnancy narratives, and published in a future article.

Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs

Using words to refer to objects in the environment is a core feature of the human language faculty. Referential understanding assumes the formation of mental representations of these words.1,2 Such understanding of object words has not yet been demonstrated as a general capacity in any non-human species,3 despite multiple behavior-based case reports.4,5,6,7,8,9,10 In human event-related potential (ERP) studies, object word knowledge is typically tested using the semantic violation paradigm, where words are presented either with their referent (match) or another object (mismatch).11,12 Such mismatch elicits an N400 effect, a well-established neural correlate of semantic processing.12,13 Reports of preverbal infant N400 evoked by semantic violations14 assert the use of this paradigm to probe mental representations of object words in nonverbal populations. Here, measuring dogs' (Canis familiaris) ERPs to objects primed with matching or mismatching object words, we found a mismatch effect at a frontal electrode, with a latency (206-606ms) comparable to the human N400. A greater difference for words that dogs knew better, according to owner reports, further supported a semantic interpretation of this effect. Semantic expectations emerged irrespective of vocabulary size, demonstrating the prevalence of referential understanding in dogs. These results provide the first neural evidence for object word knowledge in a non-human animal. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Spontaneous playful teasing in four great ape species.

Joking draws on complex cognitive abilities: understanding social norms, theory of mind, anticipating others' responses and appreciating the violation of others' expectations. Playful teasing, which is present in preverbal infants, shares many of these cognitive features. There is some evidence that great apes can tease in structurally similar ways, but no systematic study exists. We developed a coding system to identify playful teasing and applied it to video of zoo-housed great apes. All four species engaged in intentionally provocative behaviour, frequently accompanied by characteristics of play. We found playful teasing to be characterized by attention-getting, one-sidedness, response looking, repetition and elaboration/escalation. It takes place mainly in relaxed contexts, has a wide variety of forms, and differs from play in several ways (e.g. asymmetry, low rates of play signals like the playface and absence of movement-final 'holds' characteristic of intentional gestures). As playful teasing is present in all extant great ape genera, it is likely that the cognitive prerequisites for joking evolved in the hominoid lineage at least 13 million years ago.

Preverbal infants’ understanding of social norms

Social norms are foundational to human cooperation and co-existence in social groups. A crucial marker of social norms is that a behavior is not only shared, but that the conformity to the behavior of others is a basis for social evaluation (i.e., reinforcement and sanctioning), taking the is, how individuals usually behave, to an ought, how individuals should behave to be socially approved by others. In this preregistered study, we show that 11-month-old infants grasp this fundamental aspect about social norms already in their first year. They showed a pupillary surprise response for unexpected social responses, namely the disapproval and exclusion of an individual who showed the same behavior like others or the approval and inclusion of an individual who behaved differently. That preverbal infants link the conformity with others’ behavior to social evaluations, before they respond to norm violations themselves, indicates that the foundations of social norm understanding lie in early infancy.

The Innate Capacity for Representing Subjective Experience: The Infant's Mind is Neither Primitive nor Prerepresentational.

The author cites the prominence of theories that locate serious adult psychopathology in the preverbal infant's inability to formulate or represent traumatic experience. The work of two such authors, H. Levine and D. B. Stern, is briefly considered. The frame of reference for this investigation is that clinical and academic research findings are highly relevant to psychoanalytic theorizing. It is argued that when such findings are considered, a view of the infant with "primordial and unrepresented" states of mind has little evidence to support it. In fact, research findings summarized herein point to an opposite view: that of the "competent infant," one with highly accurate perceptual discrimination capacities and an innate ability to register and represent subjective experience in both procedural and declarative memory, even prenatally. Given the infant's competencies, it seems implausible to hold that representational deficits are at the heart of serious adult psychopathology, which is instead seen to be the result of defensive maneuvers against unknowable and unspeakable truth rather than the absence of a preverbal representational capacity. Current research findings seem to pose a significant challenge for psychoanalytic theories that espouse "primitive mental states"; "unrepresented," "unformulated," or "unsymbolized" experience; or "nonconscious" states.

Dog brains are sensitive to infant- and dog-directed prosody

When addressing preverbal infants and family dogs, people tend to use specific speech styles. While recent studies suggest acoustic parallels between infant- and dog-directed speech, it is unclear whether dogs, like infants, show enhanced neural sensitivity to prosodic aspects of speech directed to them. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging on awake unrestrained dogs we identify two non-primary auditory regions, one that involve the ventralmost part of the left caudal Sylvian gyrus and the temporal pole and the other at the transition of the left caudal and rostral Sylvian gyrus, which respond more to naturalistic dog- and/or infant-directed speech than to adult-directed speech, especially when speak by female speakers. This activity increase is driven by sensitivity to fundamental frequency mean and variance resulting in positive modulatory effects of these acoustic parameters in both aforementioned non-primary auditory regions. These findings show that the dog auditory cortex, similarly to that of human infants, is sensitive to the acoustic properties of speech directed to non-speaking partners. This increased neuronal responsiveness to exaggerated prosody may be one reason why dogs outperform other animals when processing speech.

Toddlers’ affective responses to sociomoral scenes: Insights from physiological measures

A growing literature suggests that preverbal infants are sensitive to sociomoral scenes and prefer prosocial agents over antisocial agents. It remains unclear, however, whether and how emotional processes are implicated in infants’ responses to prosocial/antisocial actions. Although a recent study found that infants and toddlers showed more positive facial expressions after viewing helping (vs. hindering) events, these findings were based on naïve coder ratings of facial activity; furthermore, effect sizes were small. The current studies examined 18- and 24-month-old toddlers’ real-time reactivity to helping and hindering interactions using three physiological measures of emotion-related processes. At 18 months, activity in facial musculature involved in smiling/frowning was explored via facial electromyography (EMG). At 24 months, stress (sweat) was explored via electrodermal activity (EDA). At both ages, arousal was explored via pupillometry. Behaviorally, infants showed no preferences for the helper over the hinderer across age groups. EMG analyses revealed that 18-month-olds showed higher corrugator activity (more frowning) during hindering (vs. helping) actions, followed by lower corrugator activity (less frowning) after hindering (vs. helping) actions finished. These findings suggest that antisocial actions elicited negativity, perhaps followed by brief disengagement. EDA analyses revealed no significant event-related differences. Pupillometry analyses revealed that both 18- and 24-month-olds’ pupils were smaller after viewing hindering (vs. helping), replicating recent evidence with 5-month-olds and suggesting that toddlers also show less arousal following hindering than following helping. Together, these results provide new evidence with respect to whether and how arousal/affective processes are involved when infants process sociomoral scenarios.

You can't play with us: First-person ostracism affects infants' behavioral reactivity.

Ostracism negatively affects fundamental psychological needs, induces physiological and behavioral changes, and modulates the processing of social information in adults. Yet little is known about children and preverbal infants' responses to first-person experiences of ostracism. The current study aimed to explore the efficacy of a triadic ball-tossing game in manipulating social inclusion and ostracism with 13-month-old infants (N = 84; 44% males; mostly White; tested from 2019 to 2022) by developing an observational coding system. Infants' behaviors were recorded while participating in a ball-tossing game where they were either included or ostracized from the game. Ostracized, but not included, infants showed an increase in negative emotionality and involvement behaviors, thus suggesting that behavioral responses to being ostracized emerge early in life.

Reading minds or reading scripts? De-intellectualising theory of mind.

Understanding the origins of human social cognition is a central challenge in contemporary science. In recent decades, the idea of a 'Theory of Mind' (ToM) has emerged as the most popular way of explaining unique features of human social cognition. This default view has been progressively undermined by research on 'implicit' ToM, which suggests that relevant precursor abilities may already be present in preverbal human infants and great apes. However, this area of research suffers from conceptual difficulties and empirical limitations, including explanatory circularity, over-intellectualisation, and inconsistent empirical replication. Our article breaks new ground by adapting 'script theory' for application to both linguistic and non-linguistic agents. It thereby provides a new theoretical framework able to resolve the aforementioned issues, generate novel predictions, and provide a plausible account of how individuals make sense of the behaviour of others. Script theory is based on the premise that pre-verbal infants and great apes are capable of basic forms of agency-detection and non-mentalistic goal understanding, allowing individuals to form event-schemata that are then used to make sense of the behaviour of others. We show how script theory circumvents fundamental problems created by ToM-based frameworks, explains patterns of inconsistent replication, and offers important novel predictions regarding how humans and other animals understand and predict the behaviour of others.

Neural signatures to prosocial and antisocial interactions in young infants.

Preverbal infants appear to be more attracted by prosocial characters and events, as typically assessed using preferential looking times and manual choice. However, infants' neural correlates of observed prosocial and antisocial interactions are still scarce. Here, we familiarized 5-month-old (N = 24) infants with a prosocial and antisocial scene (i.e., a character either helping or hindering) and infants' Event-Related Potentials (ERP) were recorded in response to the presentation of short video clips of the prosocial and antisocial interaction. On a neural level, results revealed that infants could discriminate between helping and hindering events at an early stage of processing, as shown by a larger N290 response to the former compared to the latter. Further, while the Nc - typically indexing attentional processes - was larger for antisocial over prosocial events, the LPP, indexing cognitive evaluation of the stimuli, was larger for prosocial over antisocial actions. Finally, infants' higher scores on the effortful control temperamental subscale were related to infants' increased N290 neural sensitivity to antisocial scenes. Together, these findings provide new evidence of the time course of infants' ERP responses during the observation of helping and hindering interactions, which involves both attentional and socially relevant processes.

Color Categorization and its Electroencephalography Correlates: A Review of Neuro-Linguistic Oddball Paradigm Research

This paper presents a review of neuro-linguistic studies on color categorization, developed using the oddball paradigm. The selection of research sources was conducted through Russian National Corpus, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science. This study undertook a comprehensive analysis of all relevant articles published within the last 15 years (with the earliest dating back to 2007). Through this analysis, traditional methodologies were identified and five thematic groups of research were established, all of which employed the oddball paradigm. The focus of neuro-linguistic research has been shown to be directed towards (1) studying the neurophysiological mechanisms of color categorization and their temporal parameters; (2) investigating the mechanisms of color categorization in preverbal infants; (3) examining the effect of lateralization; (4) analyzing inter- and intra-linguistic differences in color categorization; and (5) determining the neurophysiological correlates of artificial color categories. Paying particular attention to experimental design, principles of stimulus chromatic characteristics selection, and the results obtained by the authors will enable specialists in the field of theoretical, applied, and comparative linguistics to use the review presented in this article as a basis for planning and developing new experimental research in this area.