Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential…

Over their 1st year of life, infants' "universal" perception of the sounds of language narrows to encompass only those contrasts made in their native language (J. F. Werker & R. C. Tees, 1984). This research tested 40 infants in an eyetracking paradigm and showed that this pattern also holds for infants exposed to seen language--American Sign…

The meaning of mothers' perceptions of their infants' temperamental "difficultness" was explored in three ways. Subjective ratings were elicited from mothers who listened to the cries of four- to six-month-old infants who were not their own. Acoustic properties of the cries of the infants were measured and effects of a variety of…

Examines the relation between aspects of the fundamental frequency (basic pitch) of 16 infant newborn cries and 28 multiparous mothers' perceptions of those cries. Results support the hypothesis that increases in fundamental frequency are related to increases in maternal perceptions of the intensity of the infant's cry. (Author/RWB)

Newborns were presented with a tape-recorded rattle sound through a single loudspeaker, through two loudspeakers with one onset leading the other by seven msecs., and through two loudspeakers simultaneously. Newborns turned toward the single source sound, but not toward either of the dual source sounds. (Author/RH)

Investigates the relation between neonatal cry features elicited by painful circumcision procedures and the perceived urgency of those cries. (HOD)

Three experiments investigated 4-, 6-, and 8-month-olds' perception of the audible, visible, and combined attributes of bimodally specified syllables. Results suggested that at 4 months, infants attended primarily to the featural information, at 6 months primarily to the asynchrony, and at 8 months to both features independently. (Author/KB)

Factor analysis of 25 rating scales from Bayley's infant behavior record were performed for a sample of about 300-400 infant twins tested one or more times between 3 and 24 months of age. The analyses provided five major and two minor factors that were considerably consistent at all ages. (Author/DB)