The ties that bind: Cradling in Tajikistan

Natural-ish behavior: The interplay of culture and context in shaping motor behavior in infancy

What is natural behavior and how does it differ from laboratory-based behavior? The "natural" in natural behavior implies the everyday, complex, ever-changing, yet predictable environment in which children grow up. "Behavior" is motor action and is foundational to psychology, as it includes all things to function in everyday environments. Is behavior demonstrated in the laboratory un-natural? Suppose behavior emerges spontaneously, in a context that is most common to the animal but an observer is there to document it using particular research tools. Is that behavior natural or natural-ish? Methods can powerfully affect conclusions about infant experiences and learning. In the lab, tasks are typically narrowly constrained where infants and children have little opportunity to display the variety of behaviors in their repertoire. Data from naturalistic observations may paint a very different picture of learning and development from those based on structured tasks, exposing striking variability in the environment and behavior and new relations between the organism and its environment. Using motor development as a model system, in this chapter we compare frameworks, methods, and findings originating in the lab and in the field, applied and adapted in different settings. Specifically, we recount our journey of pursuing the study of cultural influences on motor development in Tajikistan, and the challenges, surprises, and lessons learned.

Word learning is hands-on: Insights from studying natural behavior

Infants' interactions with social partners are richly multimodal. Dyads respond to and coordinate their visual attention, gestures, vocalizations, speech, manual actions, and manipulations of objects. Although infants are typically described as active learners, previous experimental research has often focused on how infants learn from stimuli that is well-crafted by researchers. Recent research studying naturalistic, free-flowing interactions has explored the meaningful patterns in dyadic behavior that relate to language learning. Infants' manual engagement and exploration of objects supports their visual attention, creates salient and diverse views of objects, and elicits labeling utterances from parents. In this chapter, we discuss how the cascade of behaviors created by infant multimodal attention plays a fundamental role in shaping their learning environment, supporting real-time word learning and predicting later vocabulary size. We draw from recent at-home and cross-cultural research to test the validity of our mechanistic pathway and discuss why hands matter so much for learning. Our goal is to convey the critical need for developmental scientists to study natural behavior and move beyond our "tried-and-true" paradigms, like screen-based tasks. By studying natural behavior, the role of infants' hands in early language learning was revealed-though it was a behavior that was often uncoded, undiscussed, or not even allowed in decades of previous research. When we study infants in their natural environment, they can show us how they learn about and explore their world. Word learning is hands-on.

Natural behavior in everyday settings

Infant behaviors-walking, vocalizing, playing, interacting with others, and so on-offer an unparalleled window into learning and development. The study of infants requires strategic choices about what to observe, where, when, and how. We argue that loosening study constraints-by allowing infants and caregivers to do whatever they choose, wherever they choose, and with whatever materials they choose-promises to reveal a deep understanding of the everyday data on which learning builds. We show that observations of infants' natural behavior yield unique insights into the nature of visual exploration, object play, posture and locomotion, proximity to caregiver, and communication. Furthermore, we show that by situating the study of behavior in ecologically-valid settings, researchers can gain purchase on the contextual regularities that frame learning. We close by underscoring the value of studies at every point on the research continuum-from cleverly controlled lab-based tasks to fully natural observations in everyday environments. Acceleration in the science of behavior rests on leveraging expertise across disciplines, theoretical positions, and methodological approaches.

Open Science Considerations for Descriptive Research in Developmental Science

Descriptive developmental research seeks to document, describe, and analyze the conditions under which infants and children live and learn. Here, we articulate how open-science practices can be incorporated into descriptive research to increase its transparency, reliability, and replicability. To date, most open-science practices have been oriented toward experimental rather than descriptive studies, and it can be confusing to figure out how to translate open-science practices (e.g., preregistration) for research that is more descriptive in nature. We discuss a number of unique considerations for descriptive developmental research, taking inspiration from existing open-science practices and providing examples from recent and ongoing studies. By embracing a scientific culture where descriptive research and open science coexist productively, developmental science will be better positioned to generate comprehensive theories of development and understand variability in development across communities and cultures.

Gahvora cradling in Tajikistan: Cultural practices and associations with motor development

In Tajikistan, infants are bound supine in a "gahvora" cradle that severely restricts movement. Does cradling affect motor development and body growth? In three studies (2013-2018), we investigated associations between time in the gahvora (within days and across age) and motor skills and flattened head dimensions in 8-24-month-old Tajik infants (N = 269, 133 girls, 136 boys)) and 4.3-5.1-year-old children (N = 91, 53 girls, 38 boys). Infants had later motor onset ages relative to World Health Organization standards and pronounced brachycephaly; cradling predicted walk onset age and the proficiency of sitting, crawling, and walking. By 4-5 years, children's motor skills were comparable with US norms. Cultural differences in early experiences offer a unique lens onto developmental processes and equifinality in development.

Intentional Understanding Through Action Coordination in Early Triadic Interactions

The ability to understand the behaviour of other people in intentional terms has been traditionally explained by resorting to inferential mechanisms that would allow individuals to access the internal mental states of others. In recent years, the second-person perspective has established itself as a theoretical alternative to traditional models. It argues that intentional understanding is an embodied, natural, and immediate process that occurs in situations such as face-to-face early dyadic interactions between adults and infants. In this article, we argue that the way in which the second-person perspective regards body and object is problematic. Based on psychological evidence that demonstrates the constitutive role of the body and objects for cognitive development, we propose the foundations of an ecological-enactive, semiotic and pragmatic model of intentional understanding. We argue that intentional understanding should be conceived as the skilful coordination of behaviours that subjects come to enact in interactive settings, following the dynamics of bodily and material practices that have acquired normative force over time.

Infant Placement and Language Exposure in Daily Life

Children's daily contexts shape their experiences. In this study we assessed whether variations in infant placement (e.g., held, bouncy seat) are associated with infants' exposure to adult speech. Using repeated survey sampling of mothers and continuous audio recordings, we tested whether use of independence-supporting placements was associated with adult speech exposure in a Southeastern U.S. sample of 60 4- to 6- month- old infants (38% male, predominately White, not Hispanic/Latinx, from higher SES households). Within-subject analyses indicated that independence-supporting placements were associated with exposure to fewer adult words in the moment. Between-subjects analyses indicated that infants more frequently reported to be in independence-supporting placements that also provided posture support (i.e., exersaucer) were exposed to fewer adult words and less consistent adult speech across the day. These findings indicate that infants' opportunities for exposure to adult speech "in the wild" may vary based on immediate physical context.

The mountain stream of infant development

Development is complex. It encompasses interacting domains, at multiple levels, across nested time scales. Embracing the complexity of development-while addressing the challenges inherent to studying infants-requires researchers to make tough decisions about what to study, why, how, where, and when. My own view is inspired by a developmental systems approach, and echoed in Esther Thelen's (2005) mountain stream metaphor. Like a river that carves its course, the active infant navigates the social and physical environment and generates rich inputs that propel learning and development. Drawing from my experiences, I offer some recommendations to guide research on infants. I encourage researchers to embrace discovery science; to observe infants in ecologically valid settings; to recognize the active and adaptive nature of infant behavior; to break down silos and consider the nonobvious; and to adopt full transparency in all aspects of research. I draw on cascading influences in infant play, language, and motor domains to illustrate the value of a bottom-up, cross-domain, collaborative approach.

Equifinality in infancy: The many paths to walking

Many different pathways can lead to the same result or developmental outcome. What are the developmental routes that result in the onset of walking? In this longitudinal study, we documented patterns of infant locomotion during everyday activities at home for 30 prewalking infants. Using a milestone-based design, we focused on observations spanning the two months before the onset of walking (M age at walk onset = 11.98 months, SD = 1.27). We examined how much time infants spent in motion and when they moved, whether they were more likely to do so while prone (crawling) or upright with support (cruising or supported walking). Results showed immense variability in infants' practice regimes en route to walking-some infants spent relatively similar amounts of time crawling, cruising, and supported walking at each session, others preferred one method of travel over the alternatives, and some switched between different types of locomotion from session to session. In general, however, infants spent a larger share of their movement time in upright positions compared to prone. Finally, our densely sampled dataset revealed a clear feature of locomotor development: infants follow many distinct and variable paths to walk onset, regardless of the age at which it is attained.

Developing language in a developing body, revisited: The cascading effects of motor development on the acquisition of language

In the first years of life, infants rapidly acquire a series of new motor skills. They learn to sit independently, to walk with skill, and to engage in a wide variety of interactions with objects. Over these same years, infants also begin to develop language. These are not isolated events. In a complex developing system, even small changes in one domain can have far-reaching effects on development in other domains. This is the fundamental idea behind the rich framework known as the developmental cascades perspective. Here we employ this framework to show how early motor advances can exert downstream effects on the development of language. Focusing first on the emergence of independent sitting, then on the development of walking, and finally on changes in the ways in which infants act on and combine actions on objects, we describe how the nature and quality of infant actions change dramatically over the first few years and how this brings with it new possibilities for engaging the environment, more sophisticated ways of interacting with people, and significant alterations in communications directed by caregivers to the infant and coordinated with infant action in time and in meaning. The developmental cascades framework provides an approach for understanding how advances in motor skills influence communicative and language development, and more generally, for conceptualizing the constant, dynamic, and complex interplay between developing infants and their environments as it unfolds over time. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language Acquisition Psychology > Motor Skill and Performance Psychology > Development and Aging.

Comparison of U.S. and Tajik infants' time in containment devices

How infants are held or contained throughout the day shape infants' experiences, particularly around movement and exploration. In Tajikistan, caregivers use "gahvora" cradles, which severely restrict the body and limbs. The present study explored the variability and use of containment devices in U.S. and Tajik infants. Using time diaries, we compared 12-month-olds in the U.S. and Tajikistan on the types of containments used and time spent in them throughout the day. During the day, Tajik infants accumulated more time in gahvoras than infants in the U.S. spent in cribs, primarily used for sleep, suggesting gahvoras served other functions. Given the availability of other devices, U.S. infants' time was distributed in short yet frequent bouts across devices. Accumulated time in these containments matched accumulated time Tajik infants spent in gahvoras. Tajik infants accumulated more unrestricted time on the ground, which was distributed in prolonged bouts, than U.S. infants. Findings highlight differences in infants' everyday experiences during the developmental period when motor skills emerge. By embracing commonalities and exploring differences between cultures, this study offers insights into differences in infants' everyday experiences and opportunities for movement.

Health-related quality of life among cervical cancer survivors at a tertiary hospital in Ghana

Introduction

Cervical cancer is the second most common female cancer in Ghana. The disease and its treatment significantly affect survivors’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We determined the overall quality of life (QoL) and identified its predictors among cervical cancer survivors after treatment.

Materials and methods

A hospital-based cross-sectional analytical study was conducted on 153 disease-free cervical cancer survivors who completed curative treatment between January 2004 and December 2018 at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, Ghana. We used the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer core-30 item (EORTC QLQ-C30) and cervical cancer module (EORTC QLQ-CX24) to assess the survivors’ overall QoL. QoL domain scores were dichotomised as affected or unaffected by disease and its treatment. Significant differences between the affected and unaffected groups within each QoL domain were determined using the student T-test. We used Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn’s tests to examine the difference in QoL domains between treatment types, with significance based on Bonferroni corrections. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to identify predictors of overall QoL. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results

One hundred and fifty-three (153) women having a mean age of 58.3 (SD 11.4) years were studied. The overall QoL score was 79.6 (SD 16.0), and 74.5% of survivors reported good QoL score within the median follow up time of 41.8 months (interquartile range [IQR], 25.5–71.1 months) after cervical cancer diagnosis. Although the majority (66.0–84.3%) of the QoL functioning scale were unaffected, about a fifth (22.2%) to a third (34.5%) of the subjects had perceptual impairment in cognitive and role functioning. Financial difficulties, peripheral neuropathy and pain were most common symptoms reported as affected. A third of the survivors were worried that sex would be painful, and 36.6% indicated that their sexual activity as affected. The overall QoL scores for survivors who had surgery, chemoradiation and radiation-alone were 86.1 (SD 9.7), 76.9 (SD 17.7), and 80.7 (SD 14.7), respectively (p = 0.025). The predictors of survivor’s overall QoL were loss of appetite [Adjusted Odd Ratio (AOR) = 9.34, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 2.13–35.8, p = 0.001], pain (AOR = 3.53, 95% CI = 1.25–9.31, p = 0.017) and body image (AOR = 5.89, 95% CI = 1.80–19.27, p = 0.003).

Conclusion

About 75% of the survivors had a good overall quality of life. Primary surgical treatment affords the best prospects for quality of life with the least symptom complaints and financial burden. Loss of appetite, pain or diminution in body image perception predicted the overall quality of life of cervical cancer survivors after treatment.

Joint Attention in Human and Chimpanzee Infants in Varied Socio-Ecological Contexts

Joint attention (JA) is an early manifestation of social cognition, commonly described as interactions in which an infant looks or gestures to an adult female to share attention about an object, within a positive emotional atmosphere. We label this description the JA phenotype. We argue that characterizing JA in this way reflects unexamined assumptions which are, in part, due to past developmental researchers' primary focus on western, middle-class infants and families. We describe a range of cultural variations in caregiving practices, socialization goals, and parenting ethnotheories as an essential initial step in viewing joint attention within inclusive and contextualized perspectives. We begin the process of conducting a decolonized study of JA by considering the core construct of joint attention (i.e., triadic connectedness) and adopting culturally inclusive definitions (labeled joint engagement [JE]). Our JE definitions allow for attention and engagement to be expressed in visual and tactile modalities (e.g., for infants experiencing distal or proximal caregiving), with various social partners (e.g., peers, older siblings, mothers), with a range of shared topics (e.g., representing diverse socialization goals, and socio-ecologies with and without toys), and with a range of emotional tone (e.g., for infants living in cultures valuing calmness and low arousal, and those valuing exuberance). Our definition of JE includes initiations from either partner (to include priorities for adult-led or child-led interactions). Our next foundational step is making an ecological commitment to naturalistic observations (Dahl, 2017, Child Dev Perspect, 11(2), 79-84): We measure JE while infants interact within their own physical and social ecologies. This commitment allows us to describe JE as it occurs in everyday contexts, without constraints imposed by researchers. Next, we sample multiple groups of infants drawn from diverse socio-ecological settings. Moreover, we include diverse samples of chimpanzee infants to compare with diverse samples of human infants, to investigate the extent to which JE is unique to humans, and to document diversity both within and between species. We sampled human infants living in three diverse settings. U.K. infants (n = 8) were from western, middle-class families living near universities in the south of England. Nso infants (n = 12) were from communities of subsistence farmers in Cameroon, Africa. Aka infants (n = 10) were from foraging communities in the tropical rain forests of Central African Republic, Africa. We coded behavioral details of JE from videotaped observations (taken between 2004 and 2010). JE occurred in the majority of coded intervals (Mdn = 68%), supporting a conclusion that JE is normative for human infants. The JA phenotype, in contrast, was infrequent, and significantly more common in the U.K. (Mdn = 10%) than the other groups (Mdn < 3%). We found significant within-species diversity in JE phenotypes (i.e., configurations of predominant forms of JE characteristics). We conclude that triadic connectedness is very common in human infants, but there is significant contextualization of behavioral forms of JE. We also studied chimpanzee infants living in diverse socio-ecologies. The PRI/Zoo chimpanzee infants (n = 7) were from captive, stable groups of mixed ages and sexes, and included 4 infants from the Chester Zoo, U.K. and 3 from the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan. The Gombe chimpanzee infants (n = 12) were living in a dynamically changing, wild community in the Gombe National Park, Tanzania, Africa. Additionally, we include two Home chimpanzee infants who were reared from birth by a female scientist, in the combined U.S., middle-class contexts of home and university cognition laboratory. JE was coded from videotaped observations (taken between 1993 and 2006). JE occurred during the majority of coded intervals (Mdn = 64%), consistent with the position that JE is normative for chimpanzee infants. The JA phenotype, in contrast, was rare, but more commonly observed in the two Home chimpanzee infants (in 8% and 2% of intervals) than in other chimpanzee groups (Mdns = 0%). We found within-species diversity in the configurations comprising the JE phenotypes. We conclude that triadic connectedness is very common in chimpanzee infants, but behavioral forms of joint engagement are contextualized. We compared JE across species, and found no species-uniqueness in behavioral forms, JE characteristics, or JE phenotypes. Both human and chimpanzee infants develop contextualized social cognition. Within-species diversity is embraced when triadic connectedness is described with culturally inclusive definitions. In contrast, restricting definitions to the JA phenotype privileges a behavioral form most valued in western, middle-class socio-ecologies, irrespective of whether the interactions involve human or chimpanzee infants. Our study presents a model for how to decolonize an important topic in developmental psychology. Decolonization is accomplished by defining the phenomenon inclusively, embracing diversity in sampling, challenging claims of human-uniqueness, and having an ecological commitment to observe infant social cognition as it occurs within everyday socio-ecological contexts. It is essential that evolutionary and developmental theories of social cognition are re-built on more inclusive and decolonized empirical foundations.

Automated detections reveal the social information in the changing infant view

How do postural developments affect infants' access to social information? We recorded egocentric and third-person video while infants and their caregivers (N = 36, 8- to 16-month-olds, N = 19 females) participated in naturalistic play sessions. We then validated the use of a neural network pose detection model to detect faces and hands in the infant view. We used this automated method to analyze our data and a prior egocentric video dataset (N = 17, 12-month-olds). Infants' average posture and orientation with respect to their caregiver changed dramatically across this age range; both posture and orientation modulated access to social information. Together, these results confirm that infant's ability to move and act on the world plays a significant role in shaping the social information in their view.

Vocal development in a large-scale crosslinguistic corpus

This study evaluates whether early vocalizations develop in similar ways in children across diverse cultural contexts. We analyze data from daylong audio recordings of 49 children (1-36 months) from five different language/cultural backgrounds. Citizen scientists annotated these recordings to determine if child vocalizations contained canonical transitions or not (e.g., "ba" vs. "ee"). Results revealed that the proportion of clips reported to contain canonical transitions increased with age. Furthermore, this proportion exceeded 0.15 by around 7 months, replicating and extending previous findings on canonical vocalization development but using data from the natural environments of a culturally and linguistically diverse sample. This work explores how crowdsourcing can be used to annotate corpora, helping establish developmental milestones relevant to multiple languages and cultures. Lower inter-annotator reliability on the crowdsourcing platform, relative to more traditional in-lab expert annotators, means that a larger number of unique annotators and/or annotations are required, and that crowdsourcing may not be a suitable method for more fine-grained annotation decisions. Audio clips used for this project are compiled into a large-scale infant vocalization corpus that is available for other researchers to use in future work.

Real-Time Assembly of Coordination Patterns in Human Infants

Flexibility and generativity are fundamental aspects of functional behavior that begin in infancy and improve with experience. How do infants learn to tailor their real-time solutions to variations in local conditions? On a nativist view, the developmental process begins with innate prescribed solutions, and experience elaborates on those solutions to suit variations in the body and the environment. On an emergentist view, infants begin by generating a variety of strategies indiscriminately, and experience teaches them to select solutions tailored to the current relations between their body and the environment. To disentangle these accounts, we observed coordination patterns in 11-month-old pre-walking infants with a range of cruising (moving sideways in an upright posture while holding onto a support) and crawling experience as they cruised over variable distances between two handrails they held for support. We identified infants' coordination patterns using a novel combination of computer-vision, machine-learning, and time-series analyses. As predicted by the emergentist view, the least experienced infants generated multiple coordination patterns inconsistently regardless of body size and handrail distance, whereas the most experienced infants tailored their coordination patterns to body-environment relations and switched solutions only when necessary. Moreover, the beneficial effects of experience were specific to cruising and not crawling, although both skills involve anti-phase coordination among the four limbs. Thus, findings support an emergentist view and suggest that everyday experience with the target skill may promote "learning to learn," where infants learn to assemble the appropriate solution for new problems on the fly.

Motor Development: Embodied, Embedded, Enculturated, and Enabling

Motor development and psychological development are fundamentally related, but researchers typically consider them separately. In this review, we present four key features of infant motor development and show that motor skill acquisition both requires and reflects basic psychological functions. ( a) Motor development is embodied: Opportunities for action depend on the current status of the body. ( b) Motor development is embedded: Variations in the environment create and constrain possibilities for action. ( c) Motor development is enculturated: Social and cultural influences shape motor behaviors. ( d) Motor development is enabling: New motor skills create new opportunities for exploration and learning that instigate cascades of development across diverse psychological domains. For each of these key features, we show that changes in infants' bodies, environments, and experiences entail behavioral flexibility and are thus essential to psychology. Moreover, we suggest that motor development is an ideal model system for the study of psychological development.