Early impaired response to social partners' distress may negatively impact subsequent social development. Identifying factors contributing to successful responding may inform assessment and intervention. This study explores how: (1) social impairment, and (2) partner familiarity relate to response to partners' distress. Infants with and without…

Empirical studies have documented a variety of social abnormalities in infancy that indicate risk for later social and behavioral difficulties. There is very little research illustrating the presence of such behavioral vulnerabilities with frequent repeated measures, and the feasibility of designing interventions for improving social engagement in…

Behne, Carpenter, Call, and Tomasello (2005) showed that 9- to 18-month-olds, but not 6-month-olds, differentiated between people who were unwilling and unable to share toys. As the outcome of the two tasks is the same (i.e., the toy is not shared), the infants must respond to the different goals of the actor. However, visual habituation paradigms…

Studied were the responses of infants to new toys presented with either positive, negative, or neutral affective displays by mothers. Responses to stimulus toys were compared with responses to free play toys. Maternal displays influenced responses only to stimulus toys. (PCB)

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association at San Francisco, September 1968, in a symposium, "Attachment Behavior in Humans and Animals." (DR)

Theories and descriptions of various infant fear behaviors are presented in this paper. Five examples of fear are given: (1) learned fear, in which the infant associates some unpleasant action with an agent, (2) unlearned fear, in which the infant experiences an intense sensory phenomena such as a loud noise, (3) stranger anxiety, (4) fear caused…

Explored 14- and 18-month olds' ability to identify the target of the experimenter's emotional display of happiness or disgust in response to something seen or felt inside a box. Findings suggested that, regardless of age, infants used the experimenter's attentional cues to interpret her emotional signals and behaved as if they understood that she…

Mothers whose infants varied in early biological characteristics (born at term, n = 120; born at very low birth weight [VLBW], n = 144) were randomized to a target group (n = 133) or developmental feedback comparison group (n = 131) to determine whether learning responsive behaviors would facilitate infant development. The target condition…

Explored infants' responses to live and replay interactions with mothers and their own images. Found that to their mothers, infants decreased attention, length of first gazes, and smiling from initial live feedback to replay, and that responses to subsequent live feedback generally remained suppressed. Also found that infants did not show a…

This study explored questions concerning the specificity of facial expression of emotions in infants. A sample of 27 infants (nine each at ages 10, 11, and 12 months) were tested in six experimental and six control conditions. Two of the experimental conditions were designed to elicit fear, two happiness, and two surprise. Videotapes of the…

This study analyzes infant distress (fussing and crying) and the resulting responses of caregivers in an infant day care nursery. Six babies (mean age 4.8 months when the study began) and their caregivers were observed in seven sequences of observations over a total span of 10 months. Each sequence of observations took place on six days during a…

The Perception of Baby Temperament Scales (PBT) were used to elicit parental perceptions of infant temperament, with the results rated for internal consistency and congruence between parents. Data was obtained from 26 families, with both father and mother describing their first-born infants at five months of age. The PBT Scales deal with a range…