Language familiarity influences own-race face recognition in 9- and 12-month-old infants.

During their first year, infants attune to the faces and language(s) that are frequent in their environment. The present study investigates the impact of language familiarity on how French-learning 9- and 12-month-olds recognize own-race faces. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with the talking face of a Caucasian bilingual German-French speaker reciting a nursery rhyme in French (native condition) or in German (non-native condition). In the test phase, infants' face recognition was tested by presenting a picture of the speaker's face they were familiarized with, side by side with a novel face. At 9 and 12 months, neither infants in the native condition nor the ones in the non-native condition clearly recognized the speaker's face. In Experiment 2, we familiarized infants with the still picture of the speaker's face, along with the auditory speech stream. This time, both 9- and 12-month-olds recognized the face of the speaker they had been familiarized with, but only if she spoke in their native language. This study shows that at least from 9 months of age, language modulates the way faces are recognized.

The positive influence of manual object exploration on predictive grasping for a moving object in 9-month-old infants.

The present study examined whether infants' manual prediction ability is related to different types of their manual object exploration behavior. Thirty-two 9-month-old infants were tested in a manual prediction task, in which they were encouraged to reach for a temporarily occluded moving object. All infants also participated in a manual exploration task, in which they could freely explore five toy blocks. Infants with a high number of haptic scans in the manual exploration task showed a higher prediction rate in the manual prediction task compared to infants with a low haptic scan score. Reaction times of all infants decreased during the test blocks. However, the reaction time of infants with a high haptic scan score was faster in general. Our findings suggest that object experiences gathered by specific manual exploratory actions, such as haptic scans, are related to infants' predictive abilities when reaching and grasping for a temporarily occluded moving object.

Training of 7-month-old infants' manual object exploration skills: Effects of active and observational experience.

In the present study, a fine motor training was developed and evaluated in which infants were trained to manually explore objects in an advanced manner. Fifty 7-month-old infants were randomly assigned to three different training conditions: (1) to an active manual exploration training, in which they learned to explore objects efficiently, (2) to an observational manual exploration training, in which they observed how an adult performed sophisticated actions on objects, or (3) to a control group receiving no training. The results impressively indicate that infants with a low level of object exploration skill prior to the training showed the most training effects as compared to infants with proficient object exploratory actions. Interestingly, this differential training effect was true for both the active and observational training, highlighting the role of social learning in infancy. Importantly, our study shows for the first time the impact of normal individual variation in infants' manual object exploration skills on the effects of a fine motor training.

The relation between crawling and 9-month-old infants' visual prediction abilities in spatial object processing.

We examined whether 9-month-old infants' visual prediction abilities in the context of spatial object processing are related to their crawling ability. A total of 33 9-month-olds were tested; half of them crawled for 7.6weeks on average. A new visual prediction paradigm was developed during which a three-dimensional three-object array was presented in a live setting. During familiarization, the object array rotated back and forth along the vertical axis. While the array was moving, two target objects of it were briefly occluded from view and uncovered again as the array changed its direction of motion. During the test phase, the entire array was rotated around 90° and then rotated back and forth along the horizontal axis. The targets remained at the same position or were moved to a modified placement. We recorded infants' eye movements directed at the dynamically covered and uncovered target locations and analyzed infants' prediction rates. All infants showed higher prediction rates at test and when the targets' placement was modified. Most importantly, the results demonstrated that crawlers had higher prediction rates during test trials as compared with non-crawlers. Our study supports the assumption that crawling experience might enhance 9-month-old infants' ability to correctly predict complex object movement.

Associations between musical abilities and precursors of reading in preschool aged children.

The association between music and language, in particular, the overlap in their processing results in the possibility to use one domain for the enhancement of the other. Especially in the preschool years music may be a valuable tool to train language abilities (e.g., precursors of reading). Therefore, detailed knowledge about associations between musical abilities and precursors of reading can be of great use for designing future music intervention studies that target language-related abilities. Hence, the present study investigated the association between music perception as well as music production and precursors of reading. Thereby, not only phonological awareness, the mostly studied precursor of reading, was investigated, but also other precursors were examined. We assessed musical abilities (production and perception) and precursors of reading (phonological awareness, working memory, and rapid retrieval from long-term memory) in 55 preschoolers (27 boys). Fluid intelligence was measured and controlled in the analyses. Results showed that phonological awareness, working memory, and rapid retrieval from long-term memory were related to music perception as well as to music production. Our data suggest that several precursors of reading were associated with music perception as well as music production.

The influence of infant-directed speech on 12-month-olds' intersensory perception of fluent speech.

The present study examined whether infant-directed (ID) speech facilitates intersensory matching of audio-visual fluent speech in 12-month-old infants. German-learning infants' audio-visual matching ability of German and French fluent speech was assessed by using a variant of the intermodal matching procedure, with auditory and visual speech information presented sequentially. In Experiment 1, the sentences were spoken in an adult-directed (AD) manner. Results showed that 12-month-old infants did not exhibit a matching performance for the native, nor for the non-native language. However, Experiment 2 revealed that when ID speech stimuli were used, infants did perceive the relation between auditory and visual speech attributes, but only in response to their native language. Thus, the findings suggest that ID speech might have an influence on the intersensory perception of fluent speech and shed further light on multisensory perceptual narrowing.

Cross-modal matching of audio-visual German and French fluent speech in infancy.

The present study examined when and how the ability to cross-modally match audio-visual fluent speech develops in 4.5-, 6- and 12-month-old German-learning infants. In Experiment 1, 4.5- and 6-month-old infants' audio-visual matching ability of native (German) and non-native (French) fluent speech was assessed by presenting auditory and visual speech information sequentially, that is, in the absence of temporal synchrony cues. The results showed that 4.5-month-old infants were capable of matching native as well as non-native audio and visual speech stimuli, whereas 6-month-olds perceived the audio-visual correspondence of native language stimuli only. This suggests that intersensory matching narrows for fluent speech between 4.5 and 6 months of age. In Experiment 2, auditory and visual speech information was presented simultaneously, therefore, providing temporal synchrony cues. Here, 6-month-olds were found to match native as well as non-native speech indicating facilitation of temporal synchrony cues on the intersensory perception of non-native fluent speech. Intriguingly, despite the fact that audio and visual stimuli cohered temporally, 12-month-olds matched the non-native language only. Results were discussed with regard to multisensory perceptual narrowing during the first year of life.