Some students taking infant development classes have limited, direct experience of interacting with infants. This paper reports on a pilot of an innovative, research-informed workshop that provides hands-on experience through the use of infant simulators. The workshop adapted the Leiden Infant Sensitivity Simulator Assessment, which uses the…

Initial validation data are presented for the Risky Situation (RS), a 20-minute observational procedure designed to assess the father-child activation relationship with children aged 12-18 months. The coding grid, which is simple and easy to use, allows parent-child dyads to be classified into three categories and provides an activation score. By…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 6-month-olds (N = 30) as they looked at pictures of their mother's face and a stranger's face. Negative component (Nc) and P400 component responses from the ERP portion of the study were correlated with behavioral responses of the infants during a separation from their mothers. We measured the…

Recent research on how infants and toddlers grow and learn has provided new evidence for creating child care practices that support healthy development. The author describes 6 program practices drawn from this research. The article discusses practices that support secure attachments, identity formation, family practices, attention to developmental…

In this study, new evidence is presented of marked sex differences in the distribution of insecure attachment patterns in middle childhood. Attachment was assessed with the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST) in a sample of 122 Italian 7-year-olds. The four-way distribution of attachment patterns was significantly unbalanced, with…

The development of visual interaction between mother and infant has received much attention in developmental psychology, not only in humans, but also in non-human primates. Recently, comparative developmental approaches have investigated whether the mechanisms that underlie these behaviors are common in primates. In the present study, we focused…

Developmental psychology and psychopathology has in the past been more concerned with the quality of self-representation than with the development of the subjective agency which underpins our experience of feeling, thought and action, a key function of mentalisation. This review begins by contrasting a Cartesian view of pre-wired introspective…

The links between unresolved maternal attachment status, disrupted maternal interaction in play situations, and disorganized attachment relationships were examined in a study of 82 adolescent mother-infant dyads. Maternal interactive behavior was measured using the Atypical Maternal Behavior Instrument for Assessment and Classification coding…

A method of studying attachment behavior in infants was devised using time series and time sequence analyses. Time series analysis refers to relationships between events coded over adjacent fixed-time units. Time sequence analysis refers to the distribution of exact times at which particular events happen. Using these techniques, multivariate…

Suggests future directions for study of sensitivity and its impact on early psychosocial development: (1) renewed attention to growth of attachment in context of other developing features of the parent-child relationship; (2) factors that moderate impact of sensitivity on developing security; (3) origins of individual differences in sensitivity;…

Addressed to trainers of infant day care providers, this presentation indicates knowledge and skills through which trainers can foster competence in caregivers. First, caregivers should be familiar with Eriksonian and Piagetian developmental theory. Second, caregivers should be aware of the guidelines for practice provided by empirical research.…

This paper discusses the nature of the infant social world. Infants develop attachments to both parents. Father-child and mother-child relationships are qualitatively different. They involve different types of experiences and have different implications for the child's personality development. The fathers' sex-differentiating behavior focuses the…

Work in developmental psychiatry and psychology has increasingly focused on how internal representations of early experiences with primary figures of childhood affect relationship formation in later childhood and adulthood. Investigations of the reflective self function, which involves mental states in which individuals become the subject of their…

Noting that the role of culture in the development of child attachment provides a provocative arena for debate among a wide array of scholars, this book details two studies of cultural differences in the meanings given to attachment behavior by middle- and working-class Anglo and Puerto Rican mothers. The book reviews the cultural adaptationism…