A large-scale ("N" = 552) controlled multivariate prospective 14-year longitudinal study of a developmental cascade embedded in a developmental system showed that information-processing efficiency in infancy (4 months), general mental development in toddlerhood (18 months), behavior difficulties in early childhood (36 months),…

Investigates the predictability of cognitive differences at 12 months from infant and maternal behaviors at 4 months. Overall, the results show that some individual differences in cognition may be predictable across the first year of life. (Author/RH)

Five experiments used a categorization habituation-of-looking paradigm to investigate infants' categorization of animals and vehicles based on static versus dynamic attributes of stimuli (color images versus dynamic point-light displays). Findings showed that 6-month-olds categorize animals and vehicles based on static and dynamic information, and…

We studied the long-term cumulative effects of two common indices of childcare--the total number of hours of non-maternal care and the mean hour-weighted child-to-caregiver ratio per caregiving situation--on mental development and socioemotional adjustment from birth to 4.5 years old in a non-risk middle-class sample of girls and boys after taking…

Reviews bases for contemporary discontinuity theories of mental development, presents findings that support alternative proposition of continuity and scrutinizes assessment methods from which these continuity results derive. Also offers several models that help explain the continuity findings, and argues that individual differences in mental…