The first year of life is an essential phase for all psychological areas in child development. The key competences, vital for all development processes of the child, focus on the communication and the socio-emotional competencies, mostly because the infant is strongly dependent of the adult care environment. The quality of the primary caregiving…

This study establishes a sequence of developing mental state understandings in infants. We used three violation-of-expectation paradigms to assess fifty-seven 16-month-olds' ability to (a) infer an actress's intention from her prior repeated approaches to an object, (b) recognize her emotion by watching her facial-emotional display, and (c) deduce…

Maternal singing is considered vital to infant well-being. This study focuses on vocal emotion expressions in infant-directed singing among mothers in war conditions. It examines the questions: (a) how traumatic war events and mental health problems are associated with the content and valence of vocal emotion expressions and (b) how these emotion…

Emotion regulation is essential to cognitive, social, and emotional development and difficulties with emotion regulation portend future socioemotional, academic, and behavioral difficulties. There is growing awareness that many developmental outcomes previously thought to begin their development in the postnatal period have their origins in the…

Postnatal maternal depression is associated with poorer child emotional and behavioral functioning, but it is unclear whether this occurs following brief episodes or only with persistent depression. Little research has examined the relation between postnatal anxiety and child outcomes. The present study examined the role of postnatal major…

The paper reports on a study which tested whether infants high in negative affectivity are differentially susceptible to observed coparenting behavior in relation to their subsequent social-emotional development. Data came from a longitudinal study of 182 US dual-earner, primiparous couples and their infant children. At nine-months postpartum,…

In this article we argue that current theories on socioemotional development during infancy need to be reconceptualized in order to account for cross-cultural variation in caregiver-infant interaction. In line with the cultural-historical internalization theory of emotional development (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006) and the ecocultural model of…

The current study examined the influence of maternal characteristics on the development of infant smiling and laughter, a marker of early positive emotionality (PE) and how maternal characteristics and the development of infant PE contributed to subsequent maternal parenting. One hundred fifty-nine mothers with 4-month-old infants participated.…

Objective: No previous longitudinal study has examined the impact of comorbid maternal personality disorder (PD) and depression on child development. We set out to examine whether maternal PD and depression assessed at 2 months post partum would be independently associated with adverse developmental outcomes at 18 months of age. Method: Women were…

A notable omission in studies of developmental links to early nutritional deficiencies is infant attachment. In those few studies investigating associations between infant nutrition and attachment, nutrition was defined solely by physical growth, and infants had moderate-severe growth retardation. In this study, we utilized multiple markers of…

This reflective essay describes the author's experiences as an observer in a behaviorist infant classroom. The author developed four categories of practice to describe what happened in the behaviorist infant room: (1) curricular focus on training typically developing infants to meet typical developmental milestones, (2) the use of highly…

Discusses the social development of infants in terms of a set of tasks which include identity, culturation, and reproduction. Focuses on the task of identity, the role of self-awareness in relationships, and the relationship between identity and emotional life. (RJC)

This book, updated since initial publication in 1989, offers explanations, practical tips, and encouragement for teachers and families of preschool children facing the excitement--and stress--of separation. Topics discussed include ambivalence about separation and attachment, the comfort of routines, understanding the child perspective, supporting…

Examined emotion regulation strategy use in 75 infants between 6 and 18 months during interactions with strangers. Compared to 12- and 18-month olds, the 6-month olds were more likely to use gaze aversion and fussing as their primary regulation strategy and were less likely to use self-soothing and self-distraction. (HTH)

Three major components have been repeatedly implicated for the origin(s) of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS): system, minor sickness and surroundings. All these factors also frame infant temperament, and therefore it seems logical to suppose that the babies who either succumb to or are at risk of SIDS may present with certain behavioral…