With many features competing for attention in their visual environment, infants must learn to deploy attention toward informative cues while ignoring distractions. Three eye tracking experiments were conducted to investigate whether 6- and 8-month-olds (total N = 102) would shift attention away from a distractor stimulus to learn a cue-reward…

Infants require locomotor experience to behave adaptively at a drop-off. However, different experimental paradigms (visual cliff and actual gaps and slopes) have generated conflicting findings regarding what infants learn and the specificity of their learning. An actual, adjustable drop-off apparatus was used to investigate whether learning to…

Infant cortisol and behavioral responses to receiving one versus two inoculations on one pediatric office visit were observed at two and six months of age. The findings indicate a developmental trend for a decline over age in adrenocortical reactivity to inoculation for infants showing a cortisol release following perturbation. Results were…

Assessed delayed-response performance in 120 infants 7, 9, and 11 months old. Correct response was identified as either retrieval of a hidden object or a gaze toward its location. Performance improved with age, was above chance for each age group in each condition, and was more often correct for gaze response, suggesting a significant effect of…

Examined changes in cortisol and behavioral responses in 83 infants. Found that salivary cortisol responses before and after inoculation were high at 2 months, decreased between 2 and 4 months, remained stable, then declined again between 6 and 15 months. Found some evidence that emergence of circadian rhythm in cortisol might be related to early…

The early phase of imitation was studied in children between 6 and 18 months by means of the presentation of 22 actions. (SB)

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)

Factor scores from Bayley's Infant Behavior Record (obtained from 300 to 400 infants at six, 12, 18, and 24 months) were selected to represent three aspects of infant behavior: task orientation, test affect-extraversion, and activity. Findings indicate reordering of individual differences is age-related and that the reordering sequence is somewhat…

One- and two-month-old infants were shown schematic drawings of a human face with features arranged (1) naturally, (2) symmetrically but scrambled, and (3) asymmetrically and scrambled. Two-month-olds discriminated among all arangements and preferred the natural arrangement; one-month-olds showed no discrimination or preference. (Author/DB)

Three studies examined the tongue protrusion (TP) behaviors of young infants in response to visual stimuli. Infants produced TPs in response to objects within reach before but not after the onset of reaching behavior. The results suggest that infants' TPs in response to a tongue-protruding adult reflect very early attempts at oral exploration of…

Used a habituation-dishabituation procedure to test ability of 4-, 5-, and 7-month-olds to differentiate between a subjective ellipse and a nonsubjective pattern that were constructed by displacing the inducing elements of the illusory figure. Found that even 4-month-olds discriminated between the subjective ellipse and nonillusory display. This…

Results showed that 2- and 3-dimensional forms affected 4- and 8-week-old infant visual behavior differently. (Author/JMB)

To document movement patterns and to examine developmental interrelationships, the ontogeny of rooting, lip, lateral tongue, mouth opening, biting, and Babkin reflexes and the development of emerging chewing behaviors were observed in two normal infants over a period from 1 week to 35 weeks of age. (Author/RH)

Development of object identity was studied within the framework of a hiding game that varied the objects themselves instead of their spatial positions. (Authors)