This paper attempts to tie empathy to the individual's development of a cognitive sense of the other, and thus to lay the groundwork for a stage analysis of the development of altruistic motivation. The first stage proposed in this scheme is empathic distress, the involuntary experiencing of another person's painful emotional state. Empathic…

This paper introduces and gives a report of the first of a series of studies concerned with the developmental aspects of information processing. The experiments are concerned chiefly with how repeated visual encounters influence infants' attentional preference for what is familiar or unfamiliar and how infants' preference can be affected by…

Stating that the most pressing and puzzling scientific questions are questions about properties, not about change, the authors examine Piaget's and other theories of human development. Disputes the constructivist view that the initial cognitive state is one of emptiness, showing that from birth, humans react to certain stimuli in specific ways,…

Examines the possible developmental relationship between unimanual handedness and duplicated syllable babbling. Thirty infants were tested at weekly intervals between five months of age and eight weeks after the onset of duplicated syllable babbling. Results suggest developmental change in hemispheric specialization or at least asymmetrical…

Recognition by infants, 13 and 22 weeks old, was tested by pairing novel stimuli with the familiarization stimulus at different points in an experimental session. Younger subjects showed no recognition of either two- or three- dimensional stimuli. Older subjects demonstrated more recognition in the three-dimensional condition. (MS)

Human infants' discrimination of changes in internal and external elements of compound visual patterns was investigated in four experiments employing a familiarization-novelty paradigm in which visual reinforcing patterns were presented contingent upon rate of high-amplitude nonnutritive sucking. (Author/JH)

Study attempted to determine the viability of optimal level theory as it pertains to infant perceptual and cognitive development. (Authors)

Results indicate that (1) babies have better concept of person than object as permanent, but there are important individual differences, (2) rate of person permanence development is related to infant-mother attachment, and (3) rate of person permanence development affects object permanence development. (MH)

Paper presented at the Merrill-Palmer Conference on Research and Teaching of Infant Development, February 13-15, 1970. (JE)

Examines the effect of nutritional supplementation provided to mothers during pregnancy and lactation on the mental and motor development of their infants. While neither sex nor mental differences could be attributed to supplementation, motor development in infants was affected. (Author/MP)

Drawing on Piaget's own work and some contemporary studies of social interaction, the author concludes that one may reinterpret Piaget's descriptive psychology in terms of the infant's growing communicative competency. (Author/MP)

Traditional developmental protocols based on neurological or sensorimotor models frequently underestimate the cognitive status of physically handicapped infants. A critical review of current clinical practices in the area of infant assessment is followed by a discussion of an alternative approach, a perceptual-cognitive approach, and the…