Browsing by Subject "Infants"
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Item Breast is best but bottle is next: Mothers’ perception of the portrayals of breastfeeding in the media(2012-01-10) Leigh, Jemine; Olson, Beth; Yamasaki, Jill; Shulsky, DebraThe ideology that breastfeeding is a recommended form of nutrition for babies has become widely popular in the United States. However, some social norms like the baring of the breasts make it difficult for the mother to feel comfortable in her nursing practices. The media are often argued to be an influencing factor in public perceptions, and this study considers the media as well as interpersonal sources as influential factors in a woman’s choice to breastfeed. The importance of this study lies in the need to hear from the mothers and their experiences. Concepts and ideas from social cognitive theory, and two-step flow theory were applied in the discussions and findings. This study included eleven face-to-face interviews of women with children and women who are pregnant. This qualitative approach was designed so individual women’s voices could be heard.Item Effects of parental divorce on children in relation to development and attachment style(2010-05) Cox, Sarah Elizabeth, 1982-; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Moore, Leslie A.Extensive research on the impact of divorce on children has been conducted. Much of this research emphasizes negative findings. Debate over the factors that exacerbate or alleviate these negative findings exists, and prompted investigation in this literature review. Two factors that may determine how children will react to parental divorce are the child's developmental acuity and attachment style at the time of the divorce event. This review explains developmental tasks from a psychosocial and cognitive perspective for developing children from birth to age 18. An understanding of these models can be used to examine how children may be vulnerable to the stresses in a divorcing family, as well as identifying how to help children of all ages become resilient. Research included in this review suggests that a secure attachment and consistent parenting are the best buffers from negative effects. This literature review is intended to be a guide to aid parents, counselors, and other professionals who seek the best outcome for children of divorce.Item Examining the role of social cues in early word learning(2007-05) Briganti, Alicia Marie, 1982-; Cohen, Leslie B.Infant word learning has become a popular field of study over the past decade. Research during this time has shown that infants can learn, in a short period of time, to attach words to objects. Two experiments on the role of social cues in early word learning are reported using tightly controlled conditions. Fourteen- and 18-month-old infants were trained by viewing a video of an adult pointing and nodding towards one of two different novel objects appearing on a screen simultaneously, while novel labels were emitted through a speaker. Infants’ looking times to each object were recorded both during training and test trials. Our analyses indicated that both 14-and 18-month-olds looked significantly longer at the object that the adult pointed to in the training trials. However, only 18-month-olds showed any evidence of looking longer at the target object during the test in the consistent condition than in the inconsistent (control) condition. These studies are important because they show, in a controlled laboratory study of infant word learning, that different types of social cues are available at different ages. Fourteen-month-olds are aware of adult pointing and head turning and can follow those cues to an object during training. However, it isn’t until 18 months of age that infants seem able to use those cues in the service of actual word learning.Item Infants' use of luminance information in object individuation(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Woods, Rebecca JindaleeRecent research suggests that by 4 months of age infants are able to individuate objects using form features, such as shape and size, but surface features, such as pattern and color, are not used until later in the first year (Wilcox, 1999). The current study sought to investigate two possible explanations for this developmental hierarchy. The visual maturation hypothesis suggests that the order in which infants use features to individuate objects corresponds to the order in which they are most readily processed by the developing visual system. A second hypothesis, the information processing biases hypothesis, suggests that infants are biased to attend to form features because form features provide information that is relevant to reasoning about object interactions. One way to test these hypotheses is to investigate infants' ability to individuate objects based on luminance. Luminance is detected at birth, so, according to the visual maturation hypothesis, luminance, like shape and size, will be used to individuate objects early in the first year. However, luminance is a surface property, so according to the information processing biases hypothesis, luminance, like pattern and color, will be used to individuate objects late in the first year. In the current study, 7-month-old (Experiment 1) and 11-month-old (Experiment 2) infants' use of luminance information in an object individuation task was investigated. The narrow-screen event-monitoring paradigm developed by Wilcox and Baillargeon (1998a) was used. Infants saw an event in which a ball moved behind a screen and a second ball emerged from behind the opposite edge of the screen. In one condition, the balls were identical, suggesting the presence of one object (same-luminance condition), and in another condition, the balls differed in luminance, suggesting the presence of two objects (different-luminance condition). The screen was either too narrow (narrow-screen event) or sufficiently wide (wide-screen event) to occlude two objects simultaneously. Seven-month-olds looked equally at each event, whereas 11.5-month-old's looked longer at the narrow-screen event in the different-luminance condition. These results suggest that 11.5-month-olds, but not 7.5-month-olds used luminance information to conclude that two distinct objects were involved in the event, thus supporting the information processing biases hypothesis.Item Manipulating spatial frequency to understand global and local information processing in 7-month-old infants(2009-08) Gora, Keith Matthew; Cohen, Leslie B.It has been shown that infants build representations of their visual world by forming relations among its parts. However little is known about how they select the parts to relate. One possibility is that while constructing their visual world part by part they are also decomposing it, using finer and finer parts. One way to test this theory is to simply control the parts infants see. This easiest way to do this is to filter real life objects of their high and low spatial frequencies. High spatial frequencies provide information about the smaller parts where as low spatial frequencies provide information about the larger ones. By removing high or low spatial frequency we can control the coarseness of their representation and ultimately determine the level at which they function best. The present study examined infants’ ability to use high and low spatial frequencies to discriminate between objects. Infants were habituated and tested using a combination of high and low spatial frequency images. Only infants experiencing a consistent spatial frequency across habituation and test were able to discriminate between objects. Infants were also better at discriminating between objects containing high spatial frequencies. In a second study designed to be more true to life, infants were habituated to broadband images and tested using high or low spatial frequencies. This time infants did not discriminate between objects but they did look longer at low spatial frequency information than at the high. From these findings we can conclude that infants use both high and low spatial frequency information when discriminating objects, and that in certain cases one frequency may become more important than the other. The spatial frequency they use may be dependent on the context of the task. Numerous studies have shown that adults prioritize high and low spatial frequency information depending on how fast they want to process the object, the amount of detail they require, and whether they used high or low spatial frequency information during previous experiences. Infants may be similar. At times they may emphasize low spatial frequency information and the big picture. At other times they may emphasize high spatial frequency information and the detail. More studies examining how infants select information for processing are necessary and spatial frequency will likely to be an important tool in the investigation.Item Motion Processing and From-from-Apparent-Motion in Infancy(2014-08-05) Hirshkowitz, AmyMotion-carried information is a salient visual cue used in object perception to parse form in the optical array. The present research examined infants? ability to extract form shapes in apparent motion stimuli, controlling for color and luminance information within the displays. In these form-from-apparent-motion (FFAM) displays, red ?background? random dots are set against an overall white background, with a portion of the random dots set as green ?foreground? dots. Although the dots do not move, the portion of the green-colored dots change over successive frames, giving an observer the impression that an object is moving. Infants in two age groups (11-13- and 14-18-month olds) were shown FFAM stimuli in familiarization/visual paired comparison (F/VPC) and discrimination paradigms. Infants in both paradigms extracted shape from apparent motion given luminance cues alone, and color and luminance cues co-varying; but failed to extract shape given color cues alone (Studies 1-2). Given only color cues, infants required denser random-dot displays to extract shape from apparent motion (Study 3). It is possible that both neural pathway separation between dorsal and ventral streams, as well as the ongoing development of edge-insensitive/edge-sensitive processing both play a role in the present results.Item Parental reactions to infants' and toddlers' negative emotions : parenting antecedents and child outcomes(2011-05) Frankel, Leslie Ann, 1984-; Hazen, Nancy Lynn; Jacobvitz, Deborah; Langlois, Judith; Anderson, Edward; Boyd-Soisson, ErinThe present study provides information about the relationships between parental reactions to their children‘s expression of negative emotions at 8 months, parent-infant attachment at 12 and 15 months and parental reactions to children‘s negative emotional expressions at 24 months, and as well as the extent to which all of these variables predict children‘s emotional expressivity as toddlers at 24 months, after controlling for infant emotional reactivity. Analyses showed that parental responses to infant negative emotions, insecure attachment and parental responses to toddlers‘ negative emotions as well as infant emotional reactivity all made independent contributions to predicting toddler negative (vs. positive) affect. Only insecure infant-parent attachment, not parental socialization or infant emotional reactivity, predicted toddler flat (vs. expressive) affect. The inclusion of fathers in this study is important not only to clarify how mothers and fathers differ in socializing their children‘s negative emotions, but also to have a more complete study of how emotional expressivity develops. Analyses conducted separately by parent gender revealed differences in the relationship between parental socialization, attachment and emotional expressivity across mothers and fathers, indicating that researchers should continue to include fathers in studies of socialization of emotional expressivity.Item Social correlates of infant mortality, Lubbock County, Texas, 1965, 1966(Texas Tech University, 1967-08) Deardorff, Mary GwendolynneInfant mortality is the most sensitive index we possess of social welfare and of sanitary administration, especially under urban conditions," wrote the noted British medical officer. Sir Arthur Newsholme, in 1910 (1910, p. 2B), In his classic study in infant mortality published in 1925, Robert M. Woodbury (1925, p. 9^) found that low income of the father was the factor primarily responsible for infant death because of the "potent influence" it had over the factors more directly responsible for survival.Item Social Evaluations of 7- and 8-Month-Old Infants(2012-07-16) Kasperbauer, TylerA landmark experiment by Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn, and Paul Bloom demonstrated that infants as young as 6 months old possess previously unrecognized abilities to form social evaluations. In the experiment, infants were shown a shape that was made to appear as if it was climbing a hill. In one event, another shape helped the climber up the hill, while in a separate event, a different shape prevented the climber from reaching the top. When offered a choice between the helping and hindering shapes, both 6- and 10-month-olds chose the helping shape over the hindering shape, showing that they had evaluated the actions and preferred the helper as a result. In an additional test, the climber was made to appear as if it was "choosing" the helping shape or the hindering shape. Infant looking times were measured in order to assess which "choice" was more surprising. Interestingly, the 6-month-olds looked equally for both events, while the 10-month-olds looked longer when the hinderer was approached. This demonstrated that the 10-month-olds were attributing preferences to the climber, and expected that the climber would prefer the helper just as they had. This ability was apparently beyond that of the 6-month-olds, but no assessment or explanation has been offered for why this would be. The current study attempted to remedy this problem by replicating this experiment with 7- and 8-month-olds. The 7-month-olds in this experiment performed as expected, preferring the helper over the hinderer. The 8-month-olds, however, showed no clear preference. This was unexpected and not easily explainable. Neither age showed a difference in looking time whether the climber approached the helper or the hinderer. These looking time data suggest that 7- and 8-month-olds are closer to 6-month-olds in their ability to attribute evaluations to other agents, indicating that these abilities do not develop until later infancy, around 9 or 10 months. However, lack of significant results on the looking time test need not indicate a lack of social knowledge, and may instead stem more directly from developing theory of mind abilities. Options for future studies pitting social knowledge against theory of mind are explored.Item The infants reasctions to loss of a caregiver's exclusive attention(2005-08) Roetzel, Amy C.; Hart, Sybil L.; Feng, Du; Colwell, Malinda J.This study examined 36 childcare infants’ reactions to loss of exclusive attention. Infants attended both high and low quality state licensed childcare centers. Infants were videotaped while their caregiver played with a peer from the same class and while their caregiver played with a musical book. In both episodes, caregivers ignored the target infant. During episodes of caregiver and stimulus infant, the target infants attending high quality centers versus low quality centers demonstrated more instances of gaze and distress. These results provide partial support for past findings on infant behaviors during instance of unresponsiveness in mothers.Item The infants reasctions to loss of a caregiver's exclusive attention(Texas Tech University, 2005-08) Roetzel, Amy C.; Hart, Sybil L.; Feng, Du; Colwell, Malinda J.This study examined 36 childcare infants’ reactions to loss of exclusive attention. Infants attended both high and low quality state licensed childcare centers. Infants were videotaped while their caregiver played with a peer from the same class and while their caregiver played with a musical book. In both episodes, caregivers ignored the target infant. During episodes of caregiver and stimulus infant, the target infants attending high quality centers versus low quality centers demonstrated more instances of gaze and distress. These results provide partial support for past findings on infant behaviors during instance of unresponsiveness in mothers.