Examined relations between reactivity (peak response) and regulation (response dampening) in 6-month-olds' cortisol and behavioral responses to inoculation. Found that reactivity and regulation were unrelated for both cortisol and behavior, suggesting both measures are needed to characterize more accurately infant response to stress. Found…

Demonstrated that time sampling is inaccurate for estimating durations or frequencies of behaviors. Also concluded that (1) individual or group differences can change depending on whether time sampling or continuous sampling is used; and (2) error rates are high when bout lengths of behaviors are short or when interval length is long. (BC)

Aimed (1) to determine whether a time sampling, frequency-count procedure for assessing mother-infant interaction could capture a set of theoretically important dimensions, and (2) to chronicle both ability and change within the mother-infant relationship. A total of 74 dyads were observed when infants were 1, 3, and 9 months of age. (Author/RH)

Emotion regulation cannot be temporally distinguished from emotion in the brain, but activation patterns in prefrontal cortex appear to mediate cognitive control during emotion episodes. Frontal event-related potentials (ERPs) can tap cognitive control hypothetically mediated by the anterior cingulate cortex, and developmentalists have used these…

Study of children aged 21 to 31 months tentatively concludes: (1)behavioral tendency to be inhibited or uninhibited with unfamiliar people or during unfamiliar events is moderately stable across time and context; and (2)moderately negative relationship exists between behavioral inhibition and heart rate variability, and positive relationship…

Discusses some general-causal assumptions of current neo-Piagetian research and compares them with those of French European developmentalists with regard to individual differences, developmental stages, and methodology. Discusses the developmental unfolding of mental attentional mechanisms. Highlights developmental theory problems for the…

Asked Dutch university and Russian high school students to sort statements in terms of moral sophistication to investigate hierarchical stage structure of moral stages. Found that sorting statements representative of stages below one's own was straightforward; sorting statements above one's stage was difficult, suggesting that reflective…