Psychological researchers have become increasingly concerned with generalized accounts of human behavior based on narrow participant representation. This concern is particularly germane to infant research as findings from infant studies are often invoked to theorize broadly about the origins of human behavior. In this article, we examined participant diversity and representation in research published on infant development in four journals over the past decade. Sociodemographic data were coded for all articles reporting infant data published in Child Development, Developmental Science, Developmental Psychology, and Infancy between 2011 and 2022. Analyses of 1682 empirical articles, sampling approximately 1 million participants, revealed consistent under‐reporting of sociodemographic information. For studies that reported sociodemographic characteristics, there was an unwavering skew toward White infants from North America/Western Europe. To address a lack of diversity in infant studies and its scientific impact, a set of principles and practices are proposed to advance toward a more globally representative science.
In 1971, Peter Eimas and his colleagues published a remarkable discovery in the journal Science: Infants as young as 1 month could distinguish sounds of human languages (Eimas et al., 1971). This influential finding ushered in a new scientific era in which developmental researchers began to examine linguistic sensitivities in young infants months before they produced their first word. Thereafter, a substantial body of research has reaffirmed that very young infants are equipped with keen perceptual sensitivities, discriminating a wide range of sounds with minimal linguistic experience (Werker, 2018). As a result, the textbook interpretation of this research-that "[i]nfants can discriminate essentially all the sound contrasts languages use" (Hoff, 2005, p. 107)-prevails in the field today.From this initial state of openness, infants' sensitivities change over the first year of life. Famously demonstrated by Werker and Tees (1984), 6-to 8-month-olds learning English discriminated unfamiliar Hindi sounds that are not used to contrast words in English. Between 8 and 10 months, this ability declined, and by 10 to 12 months, English-learning infants no longer distinguished Hindi sounds; however, Hindi-learning infants retained this sensitivity. This finding, now cited more than 3000 times, forms the backbone of a theory of perceptual narrowing of speech. The theory posits that in the first year of life, infants undergo an adaptive and functional shift in perception from universal sensitivities to language-aligned sensitivities, preparing them to learn their native language.
Psychological researchers have been criticized for making broad presumptions about human behavior based on limited sampling. In part, presumptive generalizability is reflected in under-reporting of sociodemographic variation in research reports. In this analysis, we examine time-trends in reporting of a key sociodemographic construct relevant to many aspects of child development – socioeconomic status – across 6 mainstream developmental journals (Infancy, Child Development, Developmental Science, Developmental Psychology, Infant and Child Development, and Infant Behavior & Development). Findings point to significant and consistent under-reporting of socio-economic status across journals and across time. Reporting rates varied significantly by region and by topic of development. Over time, there was remarkable stability in the use of income and caregiver education as SES indicators. Development and use of context-appropriate markers of SES and access to meaningful conversion tools from data collected across diverse settings are important considerations for researchers. The scientific costs of the lack of integration of socio-economic factors in developmental research are addressed and pathways to greater integration of SES are proposed.
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