ABSTRACTMost studies on child language acquisition occur in the minority world (countries which make up the minority of the world's population). Their findings are not generalizable to majority‐world contexts, where the majority of the world's population lives. The limited research in the latter contexts reveals the presence of differing child language socialization practices, not generalizable across Global South contexts, and that socio‐economic status (SES) and geographic location (rural/urban) can affect these practices. This study examined the language input to 5‐month‐olds in a low‐SES, Afrikaans‐speaking community in South Africa. Half of the 10 participating households were urban‐situated and half rural‐situated. Each home had a 1‐h video recording of household members interacting naturally with and around the infant; these recordings were transcribed and coded in ELAN. The amount of child‐directed speech (CDS) and number of (a) different utterance types, and (b) instances of contingent speech were determined. CDS comprised 76% of all utterances. Although there were no significant differences between urban and rural households when all CDS was considered collectively, more questions were directed at rural than urban infants, and more instances of speaking on behalf of the child occurred in the case of rural infants: in each recording, caregivers used “typical” CDS features (higher pitch, repetition, etc.) to speak in the first person but on behalf of infants, an infrequently reported phenomenon in CDS research. The types and number of utterances and the amount of CDS used did not pattern as reported by scholars for other low‐SES, majority‐world communities.

No abstract is available for this article.

ABSTRACTThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic required face masks to be worn in public spaces, changing daily face‐to‐face communication. This study investigated whether infants perceived masked faces as faces during the COVID‐19 pandemic, a time when wearing masks in public was nearly universal in Japan. Between July 2021 and November 2022, we conducted an experiment using a novel remote method to examine infants' preferences for upright versus inverted faces under both masked and unmasked conditions. Overall, infants aged 4–5 months and 7–8 months (n = 32 in each age group) preferred upright to inverted faces in both conditions. These results suggest that Japanese infants born during the COVID‐19 pandemic could recognize masked faces as faces. Furthermore, across both age groups, the preference was more pronounced in the masked‐face condition than in the unmasked‐face condition. These results possibly reflect the fact that infants had relatively frequent exposure to masked faces during the pandemic.

ABSTRACTThis study examined how social factors such as parental mental state language, sibling presence, and preschool attendance influence their expectations of fairness in 18‐month‐old toddlers. Fifty‐four toddlers participated in a nonverbal fairness task and a picture‐description task with their caregivers. We also collected questionnaire data concerning the presence of siblings and preschool attendance. The fairness task involved an animated scenario with a mouse distributing bananas to monkeys, measuring the infants' attention to equal and unequal outcomes. The picture‐description task evaluated how caregivers used mental state language when discussing morally relevant illustrations with their toddlers. We found no significant link between parents' use of mental state language and toddlers' fairness expectations. Similarly, having siblings did not appear to influence these expectations. In contrast, toddlers who attended preschool demonstrated increased sensitivity to unfair outcomes. These results highlight the importance of early social interactions involving peers in preschool environments in the development of fairness expectations in toddlers.

ABSTRACTThe relation between pointing and walking in infants was investigated through a 1‐year observation study at a daycare center in Tokyo, Japan. The participants were 23 Japanese infants (mean age 13.1 months, 8 boys and 15 girls) from middle‐SES families. Data from each infant were analyzed at 4 months before and after the onset of walking. It was shown that as infants develop locomotion, the frequency of pointing, the proportion of social pointing, and the proportion of social pointing accompanied by movement and looking behavior increase, while the proportion of pointing accompanied by prior interaction decreases. These changes were suggested to be more strongly associated with the acquisition of walking than with the infants' age itself. Furthermore, for pointing without prior interaction, it was shown that when pointing was combined with the infant's movement, it tended to increase the success of attentional sharing through pointing.

ABSTRACTSeeing adults use cellphones is a common daily experience for infants, yet little is known about how infants think about others’ cellphone use. Do infants recognize that phone usage can affect the user’s behavior? Here we asked whether infants expect a person’s task performance to be impaired by phone use. Twenty‐month‐old infants watched adults building block towers. One adult did this while also using a phone, either looking at the screen and scrolling (Experiment 1; N = 24) or simply talking (Experiment 2; N = 24). Across both experiments, infants looked longer when the person who had been using the phone built a taller tower than the person who had not been using the phone, compared to the reverse. This suggests that infants expected phone usage to negatively impact performance. Thus, early in development, children recognize that cell phone use can affect people's goal‐directed actions; this may be one example of a broader understanding of the impact of multitasking on performance.

No abstract is available for this article.

Parent‐infant interactions highlight the role of parental input, considering both the quality, infant‐directed speech, and quantity of interactions, adult words and communicative turns, in these interactions. However, communication is bidirectional, yet little is known about the infant's role in these interactions. This study (n = 35 4‐month‐old infants) explores how infant‐directed speech, the number of adult words and turn‐taking (both measured by the LENA system) are correlated with infants' temperament. Our findings reveal that, while mothers use the typical characteristics of infant‐directed speech, they are not correlated with the infant's temperament. However, we observe more adult‐infant turn‐taking in both introverted infants (with lower Surgency scores) and infants with lower attention regulation (with lower Regulatory/Orienting scores). The number of adult words was not correlated with infants' temperament. We suggest that infants with an introverted temperament prefer quieter exchanges that may lead to more turns and that infants with lower attention regulation might create more opportunities for interactions due to their lower level of self‐regulation. These findings suggest that infants' temperament is associated with how adults talk with infants (communicative turns) rather than how adults talk to infants (infant‐directed speech, number of adult words). Our results underscore the infant's role in parent‐infant communication.