Very preterm birth (<32 weeks of gestation) heightens the risk for developmental and behavioral problems, but individual outcomes vary greatly. We evaluated whether mother-toddler dyadic interaction quality, assessed longitudinally at 14, 20, and 30 months (corrected), could account for unique variance in very preterm and full-term children's…

In this paper, we examine the impact of U.S. child-care subsidies on the cognitive and behavioral development of children in low-income female-headed families. We identify the effect of subsidy receipt by exploiting geographic variation in the distance that families must travel from home to reach the nearest social service agency that administers…

It has been commonly held that "children suffer if their mother goes out to work". This research uses several studies--large scale longitudinal data--to look at the development of children whose mothers were employed when those children were very young.

This volume brings together leading authorities from multiple disciplines to examine the relationship between brain development and behavior in typically developing children. Presented are innovative cross-sectional and longitudinal studies that shed light on brain-behavior connections in infancy and toddlerhood through adolescence. Chapters…

A case study of one child, Alicia, is used to explore how children's identities as readers are constructed across time as they move thorough school. Attention to time helps us attend to how students draw on ongoing, familial, and historical resources in ways that are both recursive and future-oriented as they construct themselves as readers across…

Visual behavior of infants was assessed with multiple discrimination tasks week to week from four to seven months of age. Task to task reliability was low, but attentional averages from week to week were reliable. Generally, infants with shorter fixations showed more novelty preferences, and infants' shift rate improved with age. (SKC)

This interim report is part of a longitudinal study of developmental behavior designed to determine whether infants from culturally disadvantaged homes have different developmental patterns than infants from advantaged homes. Twenty six culturally disadvantaged infants were individually evaluated on the Bayley Scale of Infant Mental and Motor…

Secondary analyses indicated that maternal employment in children's first year had detrimental effects on cognitive and behavioral development. Grandmother care was beneficial for the cognitive development of children in poverty. For behavioral development, mother care was beneficial for boys and babysitter care for girls. (BC)

Two longitudinal studies examined patterns of reading disability in children. Results indicated that remission of reading disability was relatively common with up to 37% of reading-disabled children showing remission within a 2-year period. Results suggest that the presence of measurement errors may lead to misleading impression of the rate of…

Reports the results of a survey of current textbooks in developmental psychology for common citation of pre-1940 publications. The historical significance of the contributions of individual persons and landmark studies are discussed. (SDH)

Written by a methodological behaviorist, this treatise critiques neo-Hullian, Freudian, Eriksonian, and Piagetian theories and presents an ethological perspective on behavior and personality development. The critique is extended to cover social learning, cognitive-developmental, neo-Freudian, and Skinnerian theories, as well as the ideas of…

This study presents research findings of a four year study intended to identify infant and family characteristics which, singly or in combination, predict developmental problems during preschool and school years. Predictors included a variety of measures of parental and neonatal biological conditions as well as measures of the quality of the…

Using a longitudinal design, investigates the interactive behaviors of mothers of normal infants and mothers of infants who are known to differ on a host of cognitive, behavioral, and biological parameters. Examines the developmental course of emotional expressivity in these infants. (HOD)

Describes the Screening and Evaluation Project (SEP), a longitudinal study examining the range of problems in 167 children entering protective custody in Sacramento, California, for reasons of abuse or neglect. Found that 68% of the children were at risk according to one or more of the four standardized assessment instruments that measured…

Forty-eight low socioeconomic status Israeli women were trained to optimize their infants' development through mediational strategies including increase in frequency of focusing, affecting, expanding, encouraging, and regulating behaviors. At three-year follow-up, maternal mediation behaviors were found to be related to specific children's…