Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi

Kyoto University | Kyodai · Graduate School of Education / Faculty of Education

The number of mothers suffering from mental illness is increasing steadily, particularly under conditions of the coronavirus disease pandemic. The identification of factors that contribute to resilience in mothers is urgently needed to decrease the risks of poor physical and psychological functioning. We focused on the risk of parenting stress and...

Previous studies have demonstrated that paternal caregiving behaviors are reliant on neural pathways similar to those supporting maternal care. Interestingly, a greater variability exists in parental phenotypes in men than in women among individuals and mammalian species. However, less is known about when or how such variability emerges in human me...

Introduction Maternal depression is one of the important problems of postpartum women. For its early detection and appropriate treatment, it is necessary to identify women at high risk for depression quickly and easily. Materials and methods A simple screening scale for depression from physical aspects, the multidimensional physical scale (MDPS),...

Humans have a flexible and accurate ability to coordinate their movement in time with external rhythms. However, it remains unclear when and how, during their development, human children acquire the ability to adjust tempo and control the timing of their movement toward others. A previous study suggested that such self-regulation of coordination de...

The population of postpartum women suffering from mental illness is increasing steadily, particularly under conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying factors that contribute to resilience in postpartum women is urgently needed to decrease risks of poor physical and psychological functioning. Studies have linked variations in the intestinal m...

There is growing evidence that preterm children are at an increased risk of poor executive functioning, which underlies behavioural and attention problems. Previous studies have suggested that early cognitive flexibility is a possible predictor of later executive function; however, how it develops in infancy and relates to the later neurobehavioura...

Previous studies have demonstrated that paternal caregiving behaviours are reliant on neural pathways similar to those supporting maternal care. Interestingly, a greater variability exists in parental phenotypes in males than in females among individuals and mammalian species. However, less is known about when or how such variability emerges in hum...

Previous studies have demonstrated that paternal caregiving behaviours are reliant on neural pathways similar to those supporting maternal care. Interestingly, a greater variability exists in parental phenotypes in males than in females among individuals and mammalian species. However, less is known about when or how such variability emerges in hum...

Humans have a unique ability to coordinate their rhythmic behaviors with those of others. Previous studies have demonstrated the early development of spontaneous responses to external rhythmic stimuli; however, there is little evidence regarding when and how infants begin to adjust their movement tempo and synchronize it with that of others, due to...

Preterm birth has been reported to be associated with an increased risk of social communication and language problems. Recently, we found that preterm infants showed atypical patterns of social attention compared with term infants. However, it is still unknown how social attention develops and whether the individual differences are associated with...

Infants’ social touch with caregivers has been considered a means of regulating infant physiological and emotional state. In non-human mammals, such regulatory function also facilitates infant exploration and social behavior. However, the types of social touch in human mother–infant interaction that contribute to specific behavioral responses towar...

The human parenting brain network mediates caregiving behaviors. When exposed to the stimuli of their infants, compared with non-parents, both fathers and mothers exhibit distinct patterns of neural activation. As human males, relative to females, do not undergo robust physiological changes during pregnancy, when and how the paternal brain networks...

Interoception (perception of one’s own physiological state) has been suggested to underpin social cognition, although the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. The current study aimed to elucidate the relationship between interoception and two factors underlying social cognition: self-other boundary and sensitivity to social cues....

Reprint of the article originally appearing in: Interaction Studies 19: 1-2 370-387 (2018)

Breastfeeding behaviours can significantly change mothers' physiological and psychological states. The hormone oxytocin may mediate breastfeeding and mothers' emotion recognition. This study examined the effects of endogenous oxytocin fluctuation via breastfeeding on emotion recognition in 51 primiparous mothers. Saliva oxytocin was assessed before...

Background: Developmental changes in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during infancy have been reported in term infants, but those in preterm infants have yet to be elucidated. If developmental changes in the HPA axis of preterm infants are modulated by any factors, it may affect their future health. Few studies have examined the last...

Vocal imitation plays a fundamental role in human language acquisition from infancy. Little is known, however, about how infants imitate other's sounds. We focused on three factors: (a) whether infants receive information from upright faces, (b) the infant's observation of the speaker's mouth and (c) the speaker directing their gaze towards the inf...

To manage one's own reputation considering an observer's mental state is an effective way to be chosen by others as a cooperative partner. We investigated whether 6- to 8-year-old children would adjust their reward distribution in accordance with an observer's mental state. Children distributed resources to prosocial/antisocial recipients in front...

Background: Preterm infants have a higher risk of language delay throughout childhood. The ability to integrate audiovisual speech information is associated with language acquisition in term infants; however, the relation is still unclear in preterm infant. Aim and methods: This study longitudinally investigated visual preference for audiovisual co...

The perception and recognition of facial expressions are crucial for parenting. This study investigated whether and how maternal nurturing experience and trait anxiety influence the perception and recognition of infant and adult facial expressions. This was assessed by comparing the performance of primiparous mothers (n = 25) and non-mothers (n = 2...

We present a new road map for research on “How the Brain Got Language” that adopts an EvoDevoSocio perspective and highlights comparative neuroprimatology – the comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in extant monkeys and great apes – as providing a key grounding for hypotheses on the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys (LCA-...

This paper focuses on how human complex imitation and its developmental processes are related to the abilities for action representation, acquisition of symbols, and language. After overviewing the characteristics of imitation in chimpanzees and humans, I propose a model of imitation emphasizing how these two species differ in the ways they process...

Humans make use of the mirror neuron system to understand and predict others’ actions. However, the ontogeny of the mirror neuron system remains unknown. Are mirror neurons an innate trait or do they acquire their sensorimotor matching properties ontogenetically? Here, after providing an ontogenetic review of the mirror neuron system, the social co...

We investigated the ontogenetic and evolutionary foundations of the ability to comprehend the actions of others by making inferences about intentional mental states of another. In a series of experiments we compared the eye movements of 8‐ and 12‐month‐old human infants, adults, and chimpanzees as they watched videos presenting goal‐directed and no...

Recent studies on interoception emphasize the importance of multisensory integration between interoception and exteroception. One of the methods frequently applied for assessing interoceptive sensitivity is the heartbeat discrimination task, where individuals judge whether the timing of external stimuli (e.g., tones) are synchronized to their own h...

Spontaneous cries of infants exhibit rich melodic features (i.e., time variation of fundamental frequency [F0]) even during the neonatal period, and the development of these characteristics might provide an essential base for later expressive prosody in language. However, little is known about the melodic features of spontaneous cries in preterm in...

Previous studies have revealed that preschoolers selectively allocate their resources based on their social relationship with recipients such as friendship. In this investigation, we investigated how expectations about recipients' prosociality and the ability of future thinking relate to the selective allocation of resources. In Study 1, participan...

Interaction between caregivers and infants is multimodal in nature. To react interactively and smoothly to such multimodal signals, infants must integrate all these signals. However, few empirical infant studies have investigated how multimodal social interaction with physical contact facilitates multimodal integration, especially regarding audio -...

Bowlby recognized that studying other primates could help identify the needs of human infants; his evolutionary perspective has had a wide impact on understanding of human development. Much more is now known about evolutionary processes and variation, within and between species. This chapter reviews aspects of evolutionary theory and primatology re...

Bowlby’s theory of attachment has been hugely influential, yet his proposal and its subsequent support derives heavily from research involving rhesus macaques, the most extensively studied nonhuman primate in attachment research. Does his theory apply to other primates? A substantial amount of data concerning primate (including human) child care no...

Unlike mirror self-recognition, recognizing one’s own image in delayed video footage may indicate the presence of a concept of self that extends across time and space. While humans typically show this ability around 4 years of age, it is unknown whether this capacity is found in non-human animals. In this study, chimpanzees performed a modified ver...

Previous models or hypotheses of autism spectral disorder (ASD) failed to take into full consideration the chronological and causal developmental trajectory, leading to the emergence of diverse phenotypes through a complex interaction between individual etiologies and environmental factors. Those phenotypes include persistent deficits in social com...

Objective: The objective of this study was to estimate gonadotropin concentrations in small for gestational age (SGA) male infants with the reactivation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis during the first few months of life that is important for genital development. Study design: We prospectively examined 15 SGA and 15 appropriate for ge...

Protective interventions by a third party on the behalf of others are generally admired, and as such are associated with our notions of morality, justice and heroism 1, 2, 3, 4 . Indeed, stories involving such third-party interventions have pervaded popular culture throughout recorded human history, in myths, books and movies. The current developme...

Highly social animals possess a well-developed ability to distinguish the faces of familiar from novel conspecifics to induce distinct behaviors for maintaining society. However, the behaviors of animals when they encounter ambiguous faces of familiar yet novel conspecifics, e.g., strangers with faces resembling known individuals, have not been wel...

Raw data of eye tacking (Excel file) Raw data of all participants (eight chimpanzees) and analyzed data for figures 1 and 2.

Novel-face movie clip (example)

Supplementary materials, eye-tracking data and cumulative histogram of fixation duration

Familiar-face movie clip (example)

Intermediate-face movie clip (example)

This study examines the effect of adult speech style on face-scanning behavior in Japanese infants at six and 12 months of age. The adult speech style included three conditions: 1) Adult-directed speech (ADS) condition, 2) Infant-directed speech (IDS) condition, and 3) infant-directed singing (singing) condition. To record the infants’ gaze behavio...

Highly social animals possess a well-developed ability to distinguish the faces of familiar from novel conspecifics to induce distinct behaviors for maintaining society. However, the behaviors of animals when they encounter ambiguous faces of familiar yet novel conspecifics, e.g., strangers with faces resembling known individuals, have not been wel...

Highly social animals possess a well-developed ability to distinguish the faces of familiar from novel conspecifics to induce distinct behaviors for maintaining society. However, the behaviors of animals when they encounter ambiguous faces of familiar yet novel conspecifics, e.g., strangers with faces resembling known individuals, have not been wel...

This study investigated whether lower vagal function in preterm infants is associated with increased fundamental frequency (F0 ; frequency of vocal fold vibration) of their spontaneous cries. We assessed respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during quiet sleep as a measure of vagal function, and its relationship with the F0 of spontaneous cries in hea...

Preterm children are reported to be at higher risk of social communication problems such as autism spectrum disorder compared with full-term infants. Although previous studies have suggested that preference for social stimuli in infancy is a possible indicator of later social communication development, little is known about this relation in preterm...

This chapter initially describes how to perceive the relationship between individual development and evolution, then examines the essential nature of heterochronic evolution in humans and chimpanzees, the closest relative of humans, by comparing their fetal behavioral and brain development. We discuss the results of our recent studies on human and...

In this study, we used eye-tracking to investigate selective visual attention paid to congruent and incongruent audiovisual speech of Japanese infants (6 to 12 months old) and adults. Infants’ receptive and expressive language abilities at 12 months were measured through a questionnaire completed by their caregivers. We found that 6-month-olds look...

Human and nonhuman primates comprehend the actions of other individuals by detecting social cues, including others' goal-directed motor actions and faces. However, little is known about how this information is integrated with action understanding. Here, we present the ontogenetic and evolutionary foundations of this capacity by comparing face-scann...

Infant emotional expressions, such as distress cries, evoke maternal physiological reactions. Most of which involve accelerated sympathetic nervous activity. Comparatively little is known about effects of positive infant expressions, such as happy smiles, on maternal physiological responses. This study investigated how physiological and psychologic...

When interacting with infants, human adults modify their behaviours in an exaggerated manner. Previous studies have demonstrated that infant-directed modification affects the infant's behaviour. However, little is known about how infant-directed modification is elicited during infant-parent interaction. We investigated whether and how the infant's...

Social learning in infancy is known to be facilitated by multimodal (e.g., visual, tactile, and verbal) cues provided by caregivers. In parallel with infants' development, recent research has revealed that maternal neural activity is altered through interaction with infants, for instance, to be sensitive to infant-directed speech (IDS). The present...

Human infant crying has been researched as a non-invasive tool for assessing neurophysiological states at an early developmental stage. Little is known about the acoustic features of spontaneous cries in preterm infants, although their pain-induced cries are at a higher fundamental frequency (F0) before term-equivalent age. In this study, we invest...

Abstract Humans utilize the mirror neuron system to understand and predict others' actions. However, the ontogeny of the mirror neuron system remains unknown. Whether mirror neuron function is an innate trait or whether mirror neurons acquire their sensorimotor matching properties ontogenetically remains to be clarified. In this paper, I review the...

Human adults exaggerate their actions and facial expressions when interacting with infants. These infant-directed modifications highlight certain aspects of action sequences and attract infants' attention. This study investigated whether social-emotional aspects of infant-directed modifications, such as smiling, eye contact, and onomatopoeic vocali...

Medical advancements in neonatology have significantly increased the number of high-risk preterm survivors. However, recent long-term follow-up studies have suggested that preterm infants are at risk for behavioral, educational, and emotional problems. Although clear relationships have been demonstrated between preterm infants and developmental pro...

Representative correlation maps corresponding to all measurement channels in preterm infants at term-equivalent ages. Results are displayed using a z threshold of 0 to determine the brain regions that showed significant connectivity to a single channel. (TIF)