Four studies investigated whether and when infants connect information about an actor's affect and perception to their action. Arguably, this may be a crucial way in which infants come to recognize the intentional behaviors of others. In Study 1 an actor grasped one of two objects in a situation where cues from the actor's gaze and expression could serve to determine which object would be grasped, specifically the actor first looked at and emoted positively about one object but not the other. Twelve-month-olds, but not 8-month-olds, recognized that the actor was likely to grasp the object which she had visually regarded with positive affect. Studies 2, 3, and 4 replicated the main finding from Study 1 with 12- and 14-month-olds and included several contrasting conditions and controls. These studies provide evidence that the ability to use information about an adult's direction of gaze and emotional expression to predict action is both present, and developing at the end of the first year of life. q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

This research assessed the development of infants ’ sensitivity to two nested amodal temporal relations in audible and visible events. Their detection of global temporal synchrony between visible and audible impacts and internal temporal structure nested within each impact specifying object composition (single versus compound objects) was assessed. Infants of 4, 7, and 11 weeks of age were habituated to a single and a compound object striking a surface and then received test trials depicting a change in synchrony or object composition. Results indicated an interaction between age and condition where sensitivity to synchrony was present by 4 weeks and remained stable across age, whereas sensitivity to composition emerged later, by 7 weeks, and increased dramatically with age. These findings converge with other recent findings to illustrate a pattern of increasing specificity in the development of perception, where infants first detect global and later detect embedded relations. The early sensitivity to global relations may provide an organizational framework for development by focusing infant attention on unitary events, guiding and constraining further exploration, and buffering infants from learning incongruent relations. © 2001 Academic Press

We compared 3-4-month-olds ' recognition of previously unfamiliar faces learned in a moving or a static condition. Infants in the moving condition showed successful recognition with only 30 sec familiarization, even when different images of a face were used in the familiarization and test phase (Experiment 1). By contrast, infants in the static condition showed successful recognition only when the familiarization duration was lengthened to 90 sec and when the same image was used both in the familiarization and test phase (Experiments 2 and 3). Furthermore, the presentation of multiple static images of a face did not yield the same level of performance as the moving condition (Experiment 4). Our results suggest that facial motion promotes young infants' recognition of unfamiliar faces. Infants ’ recognition of faces 3 The Recognition of Moving and Static Faces by Young Infants Previous developmental studies show consistently that motion information plays an important role in infant visual perception (e.g. Kellman, 1984; Kellman &