Elena Sakkalou

Functional vision and cognition in infants with congenital disorders of the peripheral visual system

To investigate how vision relates to early development by studying vision and cognition in a national cohort of 1‐year‐old infants with congenital disorders of the peripheral visual system and visual impairment.

Infants show stability of goal-directed imitation.

Previous studies have reported that infants selectively reproduce observed actions and have argued that this selectivity reflects understanding of intentions and goals, or goal-directed imitation. We reasoned that if selective imitation of goal-directed actions reflects understanding of intentions, infants should demonstrate stability across perceptually and causally dissimilar imitation tasks. To this end, we employed a longitudinal within-participants design to compare the performance of 37 infants on two imitation tasks, with one administered at 13 months and one administered at 14 months. Infants who selectively imitated goal-directed actions in an object-cued task at 13 months also selectively imitated goal-directed actions in a vocal-cued task at 14 months. We conclude that goal-directed imitation reflects a general ability to interpret behavior in terms of mental states.

Parenting stress, anxiety, and depression in mothers with visually impaired infants: a cross-sectional and longitudinal cohort analysis

This study examined cross‐sectional and longitudinal patterns of parenting stress, adult anxiety, and depression in mothers of children with profound or severe visual impairment (PVI or SVI) at 1 year and 2 years of age.