INFANT BEHAVIOR AND DEVELOPMENT 17,371-380 (1994) Antecedents of Information-Processing Skills in Infants: Habituation, Novelty Responsiveness, and Cross-Modal Transfer

Three skills which characterize cognitive functioning in human infants in the middle of the first year of life-habituation, novelty responsiveness, and cross-modal transfer-predict mental abil-ity in later childhood. Antecedents of each skill at 5 months postnatal were examined in a short-term prospective longitudinal study of infant ability and maternal intelligence and interaction style. Infant perceptuocognitive performance at 2 months, maternal intelligence, and maternal responsiveness at 5 months relate to the expression of the three infant cognitive skills, but in dif-ferent ways. Variation in infant information-processing abilities can be explained by specific child and maternal factors that are evident soon after birth. habituation novelly responsiveness cross-modal transfer parenting interactions prediction In the first year of life, human infants process-select, encode, and remember-nvi-ronmental information (Bornstein & Lamb, 1992). We know this from several “cognitive skills ” they display. Habituation is the decre-ment in attention infants pay to a continuously available or repeated stimulus. Novelv respon-siveness is the recovery in attention infants show to a new stimulus. Habituation and novel-ty responsiveness are everyday reactions of infants to environmental stimulation (Bom-stein, 1985a; Bomstein & Ludemann, 1989). They have been found to be characteristic of infants from different parts of the worl