Electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry has been widely studied across the lifespan, with multiple studies conducted in infancy. However, few have investigated frontal EEG asymmetry in the context of emotional-eliciting tasks, controlling for baseline to focus on an experimental episode response. The present study was designed to address this gap in…

Background: The objective was to determine whether infant neurobehavior measured at five post-gestational weeks could predict social and communicative behavior (SCB) through five and eight years. Methods: Infant neurobehavior was assessed using the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Network Neurobehavioral Scale, and SCB was measured using the Social…

Questions concerning longitudinal stability and multi-method consistency are critical to temperament research. Latent State-Trait (LST) analyses address these directly, and were utilized in this study. Thus, our primary objective was to apply LST analyses in a temperament context, using longitudinal and multi-method data to determine the amount of…

The paper reports on a study which tested whether infants high in negative affectivity are differentially susceptible to observed coparenting behavior in relation to their subsequent social-emotional development. Data came from a longitudinal study of 182 US dual-earner, primiparous couples and their infant children. At nine-months postpartum,…

Faces convey important information about the social environment, and even very young infants are preferentially attentive to face-like over non-face stimuli. Eye-tracking studies have allowed researchers to examine which features of faces infants find most salient across development, and the present study examined scanning of familiar (i.e.,…

This study aims to (a) identify and profile groups of infants according to their behavioral and physiological characteristics, considering their neurobehavioral organization, social withdrawal behavior, and endocrine reactivity to stress, and to (b) analyze group differences in the quality of mother-infant interaction. Ninety-seven 8-week-old…

Infants of adolescent mothers are at increased risk for negative developmental outcomes. Given the high rate of pregnancy among Mexican-origin adolescent females in the US, the present study examined health characteristics at birth and developmental functioning at 10 months of age in a sample of 205 infants of Mexican-origin adolescent mothers.…

Comparison of 14 infants of highly educated mothers with 21 infants of less educated mothers indicated that infants' differential vocal responsiveness (DVR) to mother versus stranger was significantly higher among 3-month-olds with highly educated mothers, thereby suggesting that DVR is influenced by environmental factors. (RH)

Twenty-four mothers were trained to record emotional incidents involving their toddlers. Reports of disciplinary encounters were analyzed in terms of (1) the types of discipline used and children's responses to that discipline and (2) the relationship between compliance/noncompliance and type of misdeed. Love withdrawal was shown to be a highly…

Forty-nine German 12-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped in Ainsworth's Strange Situation; a measure of quality of attachment relationships. Forty-six of these infants were videotaped again at 18-months with their fathers. Results are compared to American samples and discussed in terms of parental attempts to cope with the demands…

Compares activities related to maternal organization of infant attention toward mother and the environment in Japanese and American mother-child dyads. Results reveal that the two cultures have both similar activity and interaction patterns and culture-specific patterns. (Author/BB)

This study focused on French and U.S. mother-infant dyads interacting in their homes. Infants' visual attention, tactual exploration, vocalization and mothers' mediated and unmediated stimulation and speech to infants were observed. Mothers and infants in the two cultures showed some similarities and some different emphases in their activities,…

Compares activities and interactions of Japanese and American mothers and their five-month-old infants in their natural home settings from a macroanalytic viewpoint in terms of mothers' verbal and visual stimulation of infants and infants' visual and tactual exploration and vocalization. (Author/BB)

Reviews studies of infant behavior and development. Delineates a behavioral hypothesis relating prenatal and neonatal risk factors in infancy to crib death. The mutual dependence of experience and neurostructural development suggests that infancy is a period of critical learning experiences. (Author/RH)