We extend decades of research on infants' visual processing by examining their eye gaze during viewing of natural scenes. We examined the eye movements of a racially diverse group of 4- to 12-month-old infants (N = 54; 27 boys; 24 infants were White and not Hispanic, 30 infants were African American, Asian American, mixed race and/or Hispanic) as…

Anger is a central characteristic of negative affect and is relatively stable from infancy onward. Absolute levels of anger typically peak in early childhood and diminish as children become socialized and better able to regulate emotions. From infancy to school age, however, there are also individual differences in rank-order levels of anger. For…

Evolutionary-minded developmentalists studying predictive-adaptive-response processes linking childhood adversity with accelerated female reproductive development and health scientists investigating the developmental origins of health and disease (DOoHaD) may be tapping the same process, whereby longer-term health costs are traded off for…

A total of 23 infants were longitudinally studied to ascertain how kind and amount of prereaching activity changes with age during the first four months of life. Substantial changes were observed in the pattern of prereaching around two months of age. (RH)

A series of experiments indicated that by 1 year of age, infants' perceptual categories correspond to linguistically significant categories. Developmental change between 6 and 12 months shows that perceptual abilities of the 1-year-old are not arbitrary, do not reflect all the discriminatory capabilities of the infant, and are similar to phonemic…

Provides an overview of research on infant and child emotion regulation, beginning with consideration of emotion as a set of responses to particular stimuli. Emotion regulation is the process through which activation in one response domain serves to alter, titrate, or modulate activation in another response domain. (RH)

Examined developmental change in category representation in the first year of life. Experiment 1 tested infants of three, five, and seven months in a visual recognition memory procedure. Results indicated change in the nature but not the structure of infant form categories. Experiment 2 ruled out a priori preferences as the basis for findings of…

To investigate sensory dominance in early development, a series of studies examined six-month-old infants' processing of multisensory stimulus compounds. Findings indicated that infants discriminated changes in the temporal characteristics of the auditory component but not in the visual component. This and other findings suggested that auditory…

Involving 10-month-old infants, a series of studies examined responses to temporally modulated compound auditory-visual stimuli. Findings indicated that, although the auditory modality can dominate the visual modality at 10 months of age, the visual modality can process temporal information when the temporal relationship of the information in the…

Prospective longitudinal study examined continuity in infants' experience to attachment representations at 18 years. Found that adults with dismissing representations had received less sensitive maternal care than adults with secure or preoccupied representations. Adverse life events through age 12, especially parental divorce, reduced likelihood…

A bootstrapping procedure was used to determine whether preverbal infants at 3- and 6-months sequenced (1) vocalizations, (2) gazes at their mothers' faces, and (3) facial expressions into pairs of coordinated patterns nonrandomly. Findings indicated that smiles and frowns were highly coordinated with vocalizations. Smiles were also coordinated…

Examined electrical brain activity during negative and positive emotion expression in infants of depressed and nondepressed mothers. Found that, compared with infants of nondepressed mothers, infants of depressed mothers exhibited increased EEG activation in the frontal but not parietal region when expressing negative emotions. There were no…

Observed 10-, 26-, and 42-month-olds playing under several distraction conditions to describe development of attention and distractibility. Found that casual attention decreased and focused attention increased with age. Ten-month-olds were more distractible than older children, even during focused attention. Infants were most distracted by the…

Focuses on: (1) principles that underlie regulation of distress and negative emotions among infants and young children; and (2) developmental trends that occur during the first years of life. Discusses the role of caregivers. Offers ideas that lend themselves to hypothesis testing and empirical validation. (RH)

Observed the behavior of 37 infants in response to their mothers' normal and still face. Infants reduced their smiling and increased their gazing away from mother during the still face condition compared to normal face condition. Compared to three month olds, six month olds were more likely to use hand activities while gazing away from mother. (MM)