We investigated the possibility that mothers modify their infant-directed actions in ways that might assist infants' processing of human action. In a between-subjects design, 51 mothers demonstrated the properties of five novel objects either to their infant (age 6-8 months or 11-13 months) or to an adult partner. As predicted, demonstrations to infants were higher in interactiveness, enthusiasm, proximity to partner, range of motion, repetitiveness and simplicity, indicating that mothers indeed modify their infant-directed actions in ways that likely maintain infants' attention and highlight the structure and meaning of action. The findings demonstrate that 'motherese' is broader in scope than previously recognized, including modifications to action as well as language.
In two studies, we investigated infants' preference for infant-directed (ID) action or 'motionese' (Brand, Baldwin & Ashburn, 2002) relative to adult-directed (AD) action. In Study 1, full-featured videos were shown to 32 6- to 8-month-olds, who demonstrated a strong preference for ID action. In Study 2, infants at 6-8 months (n= 28) and 11-13 months (n= 24) were shown either standard ID and AD clips, or clips in which demonstrators' faces were blurred to obscure emotional and eye-gaze information. Across both ages, infants showed evidence of preferring ID to AD action, even when faces were blurred. Infants did not have a preference for still-frame images of the demonstrators, indicating that the ID preference arose from action characteristics, not demonstrators' general appearance. These results suggest that motionese enhances infants' attention to action, possibly supporting infants' learning.
We examined sex differences in the prevalence, incidence, reasons for, and consequences of infidelity. Participants (Study 1, 543 undergraduates in the Northwestern US; Study 2, 313 undergraduates and 233 community members in the Mid-Atlantic US), reported on infidelity by questionnaire. Using a broad definition of cheating, women reported being as unfaithful or more unfaithful than men. Men were more suspicious about cheating and more likely to discover the cheating than women. Women were more likely to break up with their partners, to begin new relationships after cheating, and to report reasons for cheating that may indicate a desire to switch long-term mates, such as being unhappy in the current relationship. Results are discussed in the context of evolutionary theory.
Mothers modify their actions when demonstrating objects to infants versus adults.Such modifications have been called infant-directed action (IDA) or mofionese (Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002). We investigated the IDA features of interactiveness and simplification by quantifying eye gaze, object exchanges, and action units enacted between exchanges in 42 mothers' demonstrations of novel objects to infants (6-8 months or 11-13 months) or adults. We found more eye gaze, more object exchanges, and fewer action types per turn in demonstrations to infants relative to adults. Unlike prior research using global measurements, we detected differences in behavior directed at infants of different ages: Shorter, more frequent gazes and more exchanges characterized demonstrations to older versus younger infants. These findings indicate the fruitfulness of fine-grained analysis of IDA, and further clarify how adults may support infants' processing of human motion.Despite the complexities in their everyday social environment, infants make rapid progress in analyzing incoming streams of information. In the action domain, for instance, infants can parse dynamic behavior streams into intention-relevant units by 9 months of age (
This study investigated whether acoustic input, in the form of infant-directed speech, influenced infants' segmenting of action sequences. Thirty-two 7.5-to 1 1.5-monthold infants were familiarized with video sequences made up of short action clips. Narration coincided with portions of the action stream to package certain pairs of clips together. At test, packaged and nonpackaged pairs of actions were presented side by side in silence. Narration heard during familiarization influenced how infants viewed the action units, such that at test, infants older than 9.5 months (but not younger) looked longer at the nonpackaged than the packaged action sequences. The role of infant-directed speech as well as other types of acoustic input in assisting infants' processing of action is discussed.Both adults and infants seem capable of processing the dynamic flow of human activity into discrete events (Baldwin, Baird, Saylor, &Clark, 2001;Newtson, 1973). This skill is critical in interpreting and predicting the actions of others and is thus fundamental to all social interactions. Adults' and infants' abilities in this realm are remarkable, considering the numerous possibilities for segmenting any given action stream.For instance, imagine witnessing the following movements: An actor walks across the kitchen floor, grasps and releases a small towel on the counter beside the sink, turns the water on, touches a bar of soap, rubs her hands together under the water, turns the water off, then grasps and releases the towel again. How might one determine whether the first grasping of the towel is included in the hand-washing event? Knowledgeable observers might interpret the scene as moving a towel out of the way, and then washing hands. That is, they might view the towel grasp at the Correspondence should be addressed to Rebecca J. Brand,
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