This experiment investigated social referencing as a form of discriminative learning in which maternal facial expressions signaled the consequences of the infant's behavior in an ambiguous context. Eleven 4- and 5-month-old infants and their mothers participated in a discrimination-training procedure using an ABAB design. Different consequences…

Developmental studies of face processing have revealed age-related changes in how infants allocate neurophysiological resources to the face of a caregiver and an unfamiliar adult. We hypothesize that developmental changes in how infants interact with their caregiver are related to the changes in brain response. We studied 6-month-olds because this…

This study was designed to test two alternate hypotheses regarding the meaning of increased lateral head movements in infants during experiments in which the mothers' voices were displaced from their faces. One interpretation is that the lateral looking responses of the infants are attributable to maturational effects on the infants' physiological…

The ability of 1-month-old infants to recognize their mothers visually was explored with the live faces of mother and stranger presented in three different poses: en face (full face), half-profile, and profile. Subjects were 16 infants with normal Apgar scores at birth who were volunteered by their parents after an initial contact in a maternity…

Investigated three-month-olds' abilities to discriminate and recognize smiling and frowning expressions of mothers and strangers. Discrimination and recognition occurred regardless of the adult who was involved; however, more infants discriminated the mothers' expressions than the strangers', and boys looked at their mothers' faces longer than did…

Infants were classified as high or low in differential vocal responsiveness (DVR), and tested for degree of response to stimulation by a stranger and to stimulation by their mothers. The infants' DVR classification was related to scores on the Stanford-Binet and the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. (Author/SS)

A report is presented which relates to a general hypothesis suggested by previous data on visual response to faces that in the first weeks of life infants develop expectations regarding the human face. Three predictions were made: (1) Silent human faces would elicit less direct regard than faces accompanied by voices; (2) A familiar face would…

The ability of infants to recognize their mothers as distinct from others was investigated by presenting 6 boys and 6 girls at two age levels (5 weeks and 13 weeks) with the following six sequential stimulus conditions: (1) mother's face (MO); (2) stranger's face (SO); (3) mother's face with stranger's voice (MS); (4) stranger's face with mother's…

This study investigated at the age at which infants become able to discriminate between their mothers and females strangers, as measured by differential patterns of pauses during the infants' crying while being spoken to by their mothers and female strangers. The subjects, 14 infants ranging in age from 7 to 20 days, were fed, burped, and changed,…

This study investigated the response behavior of nine infants, aged 13-15 weeks, to a recurrent pattern of visual and verbal stimuli presented by their own mothers and by female strangers. The infants were presented with the following 2-minute sequence (repeated 3 times): (1) one-half minute of an unknown female leaning over the crib with a…