Reviews five books: (1) "Modularity and Constraints in Language and Cognition" (Gunnar and Maratsos); (2) "Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science" (Karmiloff-Smith"; (3) "The Self-System: Developmental Changes between and within Self-Concepts" (Oosterwegel and Oppenheimer); (4)…

This overview reviews a program of interlinked cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations of the nature of cognitive development in infants and young children with Down's Syndrome. The research falls into three groupings: object concept studies, operant learning experiments, and IQ studies. Early results suggest a common learning style which…

A study of 13 14-month-old and 12 18-month-old children found that the younger infants relied more on gestures and fussing to express their physical wants, whereas the older infants relied more on vocal responses, especially when clarification of their wants was needed. (MDM)

Examined the relationship between maternal and infant measures of interaction, maternal psychosocial problems, infant cognitive development, and infant attachment security at 18 months of age and child behavior problems at age 5. Disorganized-disorientated attachment status and maternal psychosocial problems were the strongest predictors of…

Examined whether parenting and child characteristics of term and preterm 2- and 3.5-year-olds had common paths of influence on children's independent cognitive and social functioning at age 4.5 years. Found that high levels of mothers' maintaining children's interests across these ages supported later independence, but directiveness needed to…

Main and interactive effects of child care quality, stability, and multiplicity on infants' attachment security, language comprehension, language production, and cognitive development at 15 months were examined using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care. Thirty-nine percent of the…

The aim of this article is to introduce readers to an alternative way of applying U-shaped functions to understand development, especially cognitive development. In classical developmental applications, age is the abscissa; that is, in the fundamental equation B = f(A), some behavioral variable (B) plots as a U-shaped or inverted U-shaped function…

The articles in this collection consider one very interesting puzzle of development: U-shaped developmental functions. At some point during development, an organism might exhibit what seems like a regression from its expected developmental trajectory and, according to continuity models of development, this is aberrant. In this special issue,…

One of the biggest changes in the lives of children in the United States is the increasing number of infants and toddlers who are cared for outside the home during work hours. This book provides a compilation of information and discussions from a meeting of the National Center for Early Development and Learning, held annually to convene experts…

This study sought to determine whether differences existed between infants from low socioeconomic status (SES) families and those from high SES families in the occipital rhythmic activity of the brain, as recorded in their electroencephalograms (EEGs), as well as in other developmental measures. Ten low SES white infants and 10 high SES white…

Examined were antecedents and behavioral correlates of parental perceptions of efficacy, using data from a national survey of 3,000 parents and a study of 65 mother-infant dyads. Survey data were used to determine what factors are predictive of parental perceptions of efficacy. Dyadic data were used primarily to examine the relation between…

Cognitive development proceeds through a series of four levels. The first is the single-class level, attained by infants at approximately 1 year of age. At the single-class level, concepts are based on element similarity or convention (for example, images and words for common objects). The second level is the relational level, attained by toddlers…

To investigate cross-sectionally and longitudinally the development of children's early verbal behavior, 10 normal first-born Japanese infants from middle-class families were observed monthly and examined from when they were 6 to 24 months of age. Audio- and video-taped language data were obtained in a laboratory playroom setting during 15-minute…

A process-oriented research strategy was employed to examine relations among various aspects of the early home environment and children's language development. The home environments of 65 infants were assessed when the infants were 12 and/or 24 months old with the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME). HOME includes six…

This study tested the hypothesis that a 6-month, half-day program of enrichment in language and Piagetian sensorimotor skills tailored to the cognitive-developmental level of infants would accelerate the development of participating infants. The experimental population consisted of 16 12-month-old infants attending enrichment sessions at Syracuse…