Convergent validity, temporal stability, and age-related patterning of measures of infant temperament were examined in a longitudinal study of 46 infants at three, six, and nine months of age. Infant Behavior Questionnaire and home observations showed convergent validity. Composite measures of positive and negative reactivity and overall…

A go/no-go conditioned head-turn paradigm was used to examine the abilities of 6- and 12-month-olds to discriminate changes in temporal grouping and their perception of absolute and relative timing information when listening to patterns of white-noise bursts. (Author/RH)

Examined relations among adrenocortical stress reactivity, infant emotional or proneness-to-distress temperament, and quality of attachment in 66 infants tested at 9 and 13 months. Adrenocortical activity was not associated with attachment classifications. Significant only at 9 months, elevations in cortisol were small. (RH)

Observations suggest that 12-month-old children show little evidence of possession rules, while 18- and 24-month-olds are still coming to differentiate purely personal possession rules from shared possession rules that take into account the other child's status or rights as a possessor. Children 12 months old exhibited the highest frequency of…

The purpose of this research was to examine 18- to 30-month-old children's use of scripts for representing common events. A script is defined as a model that specifies the roles and props appropriate to an event and identifies a sequence of acts for achieving the goal defined by the event. Two aspects of script knowledge were investigated: (1) the…

Discrepancy between angl head turn and loudspeaker location was measured on infants in auditory-alone and auditory-visual trials. Age and loudspeaker location had no effect on performance in auditory-visual trials. However, in auditory-alone trials, there were significant age differences. (PCB)

Infants five and seven months of age participated in two studies in which two filmed facial expressions were presented with a single vocal expression characteristic of one of the facial expressions. Seven- , but not five-month-olds, increased their fixation to a facial expression when it was sound-specified. Preferences for a particular expression…

Delay/response inhibition in the presence of an attractive stimulus and compliance with maternal directives in a clean-up task were observed among subjects 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Results suggested (1) achievement of self-control is a major developmental accomplishment, and (2) individual differences in self-control emerge and are…

A longitudinal study addressed the question of stability of individual expressive behaviors and replicated the basic findings of a cross-sectional study. Subjects were 25 infants for whom videotape records were available of four diptheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) inocculations scheduled at roughly 2, 4, 6, and 18 months. (Author/RH)

Results indicated that the more frequently the children studied expressed emotion, the older the age of language achievements; and the more time spent in neutral affect, the younger the age of language achievements. (PCB)

Quantitatively describes the gait development of a group of African children to determine how pattern changes would relate to growth and maturation. A total of 65 children from the Gusii tribe of southwestern Kenya, ranging in age from 13 to 69 months, were selected for study. (Author/RH)

Abilities of 2-, 5-, and 7-year-old children to interpret, judge acceptability of, and produce class extensions were assessed. It was concluded that increasing ability to deal appropriately with class extensions is primarily due to general advances in language acquisition rather than to any development unique to the class-extension word-formation…

Investigates the developmental sequence of learning to transform objects into agents and recipients of action in early symbolic play. Each of 48 children (from 14 to 25 months old) demonstrated initiative pretending after an adult modeled agent and recipient substitutions in pretending to talk on the telephone. (Author/CB)

Investigates the evolution of specific lexical and syntactical clues and the recurrence of various semantic fields in mothers' spontaneous speech to their infants. Content of mothers' speech was related to age in newborn to 10-month-old children. (Author/RH)

Research findings suggest the existence of three types of primitive regulation in the behavior of 1 1/2- to 2 1/2-year old children in memory tasks. When children are presented with a game of hide-and-seek to be played with a small stuffed animal, regulatory behavior appears to be related to children's use of stimulus information, precursors of…