This most recent Iowa Kids Count data book, "Iowa Kids Count 2011: Trends in the Well-Being of Iowa Children," provides data on 20 different indicators of child and family well-being at the United States, Iowa, substate and county level. The annually produced data book presents health, education, welfare and economic data including…

The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale with Kansas Supplement was administered to 60 newborns who were classified as extremely healthy or as having slight perinatal problems. Correlations between behavioral responding on the assessment scale and levels of plasma cortisol (obtained from blood tests) were examined. (PCB)

The relation between cry acoustics and vagal tone in normal, healthy newborns undergoing an acutely stressful event was examined. Vagal tone was significantly reduced during the stressful event and was paralleled by significant increases in the pitch of the infants' cries. (PCB)

Displaying no evidence of recognizing the axillary odors of their fathers, breastfed infants discriminated between their mother's axillary odor and odors produced by nonparturient or unfamiliar lactating females. Bottle-fed infants appeared unable to recognize the odor of their mother when presented along with odors from a nonparturient female or…

Investigated the influence of arousal level on visual preferences by observing the looking preferences of 12 full-term neonates twice; once before feeding while unswaddled and once after feeding while swaddled. (Author/RH)

Results suggest that temporal summation of brief stimuli is deficient in neonates. When compared with adult data from an analogous study, results also suggest that the transient system is immature in infants and that this immaturity is expressed in different ways by startle amplitude, probability, and latency. (PCB)

In contrast with controls and newborn presented with static models, only newborn presented with dynamic models reproduced the models' actions at significant levels. Infants in the static condition fixated the experimenter longer than those in the dynamic one. Results are discussed in terms of neurophysiological findings concerning the control of…

Sixty primiparous parents recorded the questions asked when they telephoned others to announce their baby's birth. Eighty percent of the initial questions were about the baby's gender. Questions about mother's health and baby's characteristics typically were second and third, respectively. (Author/RH)

This most recent Iowa Kids Count data book, "Iowa Kids Count 2010: Trends in the Well-Being of Iowa Children," provides data on 20 different indicators of child and family well-being at the United States, Iowa, substate and county level. The annually produced data book presents health, education, welfare and economic data including…

Although previous research with adult humans and nonhumans has suggested a relationship between sleep behavior and brain serotonin levels, no studies have been made of the relationship of normal children's or infants' sleep patterns to serotonin levels, tryptophan metabolism, or diet. This study investigates the relationship between dietary…

Evaluates infants less than 1 week of age in a habituation-recovery paradigm for evidence of ability to detect an invariant identity or nonidentity relationship between components of a visual stimulus. (Author/NH)

Newborn infants showing anthropometric signs of atypical patterns of fetal growth were compared with infants of appropriate growth on the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale and on recently developed supplementary items. The sample consisted of lower-socioeconomic-status families in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and included teenage and older mothers.…

Two experiments assessed the extent of newborns' ability to discriminate color. Results imply that newborns have some, albeit limited, capacity to discriminate chromatic from achromatic stimuli, and hence, are at least dichromats. (Author/DR)

Two experiments were conducted to (1) replicate the findings of habituation of behavioral responding to a tactile stimulus assuring state control and (2) demonstrate dishabituation either by reinstatement of responding to the original, habituated stimulus or to novel stimuli either within or between modalities. Subjects were newborn Caucasian…

Five experiments using identical reflex modification procedures on neonates and adults suggest developmental differences in processing auditory stimuli. Neonates failed to exhibit reflex inhibition by either prior acoustic or tactile stimuli. Adults exhibited robust reflex inhibition to these same stimuli. Developmental processes implied by these…