Applies a systems approach to the development of expressive and communicative action of infants in the first year of life. Hypothesizes that the systems approach (which integrates expressive and communicative actions with other elements of the infant's physiology, cognition, behavior, and social environment) will explain previously unexplained…

Tested infants in their second year with a box task to determine whether they would show a hand preference in solutions involving complete differentiation of roles for the two hands. (HOD)

Compares the manipulative exploration of objects of 30 nine-month-old preterm infants with that of 20 nine-month-old full-term infants. Although no difference between the preterms and the full terms was noted, a high-risk preterm subgroup manipulated objects less. A relationship was found between manipulative exploration at nine months and later…

This discussion centers on language development in young children particularly as it relates to Piaget's work. The author believes guidelines are lacking for describing structurally the outcome of the language acquisition process at different stages and that there should be more collaboration between linguists and psychologists in this area. (MS)

These hearings transcripts present testimony concerning the status of medical and scientific findings on prenatal and postnatal brain development and the implications of federal policies for childhood development. Testimony was offered by Senators Dan Coats (Indiana) and Christopher Dodd (Connecticut); psychology professor Edward Zigler of Yale…

Noting current brain development research, this book offers simple, straightforward ways to boost children's brain power with active exploration, repetition, sensory exploration, laughter, and more. The chapters describe how and why the brain develops and explain how parents can give their children the best foundation for future learning.…

Deals with some of the important relations between mother and environmental factors in their effects on an infant somatic and behavioral development. (Author/JM)

Discusses children's acquisition of non-nominal, abstract words and argues that the use of these words parallels the child's cognitive development in trial-and-error problem solving and in development of insight. (EKN)

Addresses questions about infant perceptual ability and the possibility of its decline as a function of development in the absence of specific experience. Compares English-speaking adults, Hindi-speaking adults, and 7-month-old infants on their ability to discriminate two pairs of natural Hindi (non-English) speech contrasts. (Author/RH)

Changes in the mental development as assessed with the Griffiths Mental Development Scales, of 37 Down's syndrome infants (mean age 8.9 months at outset of study) over a 6-month period were correlated with scores obtained on the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory. (Author/PHR)

This investigation assessed the psychological effects of an experimentally conducted day care program on Chinese and Caucasian children from 3.5 to 29 months. Data from the last two assessments, at 20 and 29 months, revealed little difference between the day care and home control children in cognitive functioning, language, attachment, separation…

Conducted a trivariate genetic analysis of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME), Mental Development Index (MDI), and Task Orientation (TO). Found that for 101 nonadoptive and 92 adoptive sibling pairs at 12 and 24 months of age, TO explained the remaining genetic variance on the HOME not explained by the MDI. (MDM)