Prior studies of mother-infant interaction have generally used a variable-centered approach to associate face-to-face communication with psychosocial outcomes. Herein, we use a person-centered approach to identify clusters of infants who exhibit similar behavioral profiles during face-to-face communication with their mothers. Four infant…

This study examined the stability of three patterns of infant regulatory behavior identified in the face-to-face still-face (FFSF) paradigm at 3 and 9 months--social-positive oriented, distressed-inconsolable, and self-comfort oriented--and whether variations in infants' heart-rate were correlated with them. Although some studies have examined the…

This review challenges the traditional interpretation of infants' and young children's responses to three types of potentially "fear-inducing" stimuli--snakes and spiders, heights, and strangers. The traditional account is that these stimuli are the objects of infants' earliest developing fears. We present evidence against the…

To benefit from the exploration of their bodies and their physical and social environments, infants need to detect sensorimotor contingencies linking their actions to sensory feedback. This ability, which seems to be present in babies from birth and even in utero, has been widely used by researchers in their study of early development. However, a…

The current study examined the relations between individual differences in attention to emotion faces and temperamental negative affect across the first 2 years of life. Infant studies have noted a normative pattern of preferential attention to salient cues, particularly angry faces. A parallel literature suggests that elevated attention bias to…

Nighttime sleep awakenings and infant and family characteristics were measured longitudinally in more than 1,200 infants when the infants were 6, 15, 24, and 36 months old. By 6 months of age, the majority of children slept through the night, awakening their mothers only about once or twice per week. However, not all children followed this…

Studied individual differences in reactivity in 40 newborns. Measures of reactivity were related during the first two months of extrauterine life. (RJC)

Individual differences in pattern of habituation in fixation time and cardiac change to visual and auditory stimuli are described. Subjects were 94 5- and 10-month-old infants. (Author/MP)

Examined whether early individual differences in look duration were related to general mechanisms of the infant nervous system combining attention and emotion. Found significant positive correlations between attention measures and duration of facial expressions of pain/distress after vaccinations at 3, 5, and 11 months. Concluded that individual…

Explored genetic and environmental underpinnings of temperamental differences in 3- to 16-month-old twins and their parents. Found that additive genetic and shared environmental effects best represented smiling, laughter, and duration of orienting. Shared environmental effects fully accounted for co-twin similarity for soothability. Additive…

Combinatorial abilities in language and elicited symbolic play were compared in a longitudinal study of 30 children at 20 and 28 months. In addition, multivariate analyses were used to assess the stability of individual differences. Generally, different symbolic play variables contributed unique explained variance to different language variables.…

Used weekly-obtained longitudinal observational data of infant crying, fretting/fussing, and smiling and the time spent in physical contact with mother to examine behavioral variability over a 15-month period. Found evidence of an important intraindividual variability between newborn and 5 months, and 5 and 10 months, but not between 10 and 15…

Infants at two, four, and six months of age learned a string-pulling task and were tested again two months later. Individual differences in emotional expressions of anger during extinction, and interest and enjoyment during learning, were stable over the two-month interval. (BC)

A longitudinal study examined memory span at 5, 7, and 12 months in full-term and low-birth-weight preterm infants. Findings were similar for both groups: longer spans were more difficult, especially at younger ages, memory capacity increased over first year of life, there was marked recency effect for spans of 3 and 4 at all ages, and modest…