Caregivers' sensitive responses to infant cry have long-term consequences for adaptive child development. Although mounting evidence suggests that parents who experience high emotionality to infant cry respond less sensitively to infant cry, there is a dearth of knowledge on potential mechanisms underlying individual differences in emotionality to…

Infant mental health is strongly connected to an infant's relationship with a responsive, warm, and available caregiver. However, maternal mental illness reduces a mother's ability to detect and respond to changes in her infant's expressions and communication, which may have important consequences for infant attachment and emotion regulation. The…

We examined the extent to which new mothers' recollections of their mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood predict sensitive/supportive responses to their own toddlers in distressing situations both directly and indirectly via effects on mothers' social information processing about infant cry signals. Mothers' adult attachment…

The importance of warm and democratic parenting styles for optimal social, emotional and cognitive outcomes in children over the age of five is well established. However, there is a dearth of literature exploring variations in parenting styles during infancy, despite many popular parenting books aimed at this period. The primary aim of this study…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from infants shown sets of familiar faces presented frequently and infrequently, and a set of novel faces presented infrequently, and correlated with infant emotional behavior and cortisol levels. Found that infants scoring higher on the normative ERP factor were more distressed during parent…

Provides an update of information on infant nurturance and early learning of special interest to providers of services to parents and infants. (BR)

Findings indicated that (1) when siblings were 24-months-old, their social-emotional behavior displayed some concordance, and maternal behavior was stable with all siblings; (2) significant concordance in siblings' social-emotional behavior was conditioned by stability of maternal behavior; and (3) quality of infant-mother attachment at 12 months…

Findings indicated that attachment-related affect may reflect an affect continuum that underlies certain mother- and stranger-directed behaviors in the Strange Situation. However, not all aspects of reunion behavior can be predicted by prior separation reactions. (Author/RH)

Examined the relationship between nonmaternal care and infant-mother attachment. Results indicated that full-time, nonmaternal care was not associated with increased insecure attachment and did not negatively affect the associations between infant-mother attachment and the mother's involvement with her infant during the infant's first year of…

Examining relationships in the data from assessments conducted when Japanese infants were 7.5, 12, 23, and 27 months of age, this study provides evidence of an interaction between early attachment and temperamental dispositions. Specifically examined were 7.5-month-olds' stranger and separation distress and general fearfulness; 12-month-olds'…

Two studies assessed the positive affective correlates of secure attachment in infancy and the relation between secure attachment in infancy and competence in the peer group at 3 1/2 years of age. (JMB)

The second of a four-part series on the development of infants and toddlers, this article reviews current research on social and emotional development during the first two years and provides a selected list of activities designed to promote infants' optimal development. Attachment behavior and affective behavior are two major topics explored. (EV)

Examines reasons that the care of infants in day nurseries often becomes impersonal rather than intimate, and suggests ways of counteracting this. (DE)

The Gentle Approach is a method for lifting infants younger than 6 months that promotes security and reassurance during adult-imposed changes in position. Developed at the Emmi Pilker National Methodological Institute for Residential Nurseries in Budapest, Hungary, the approach provides continual support and less opportunity for unprotected…

Examined with 15 mothers and their handicapped infants was the influence of infant behavioral expressions of affect on maternal caretaking behaviors. (IM)