This final report describes activities and accomplishments of a 3-year project which analyzed the speech and related behaviors of 28 young children (mean age 52.5 months) who stuttered, their mothers, and similar non-stuttering children and mothers. A loosely structured conversation between each mother and child was recorded and analyzed. In…

Investigates the effects of social class (middle vs. lower) on verbal and nonverbal maternal controls, maternal sensitivity, and child compliance. Suggests current conceptualizations of lower class mother-child interaction need to be reconsidered since no social class differences were revealed in the experiments. (HOD)

The behavior of mothers interacting with their preschoolers in a memory-relevant situation was examined. Ten 3-year-olds and their mothers were videotaped playing a game requiring memory for the location of hidden pictures. Frequency of nine categories of parental behavior was scored: naming, verbal orienting, physical orienting, physical…

In this study of maternal interpretations of infant behaviors, seven mothers of infants with Down syndrome identified 18 of 22 subcategories of potentially meaningful infant behavior previously identified by mothers of typically developing infants. These seven mothers also identified an additional category: developmental status-abilities.…

Examines whether three-month-old infants can detect variations within the single expression category of smiling and whether individual differences in infants' sensitivities are related to identifiable mother or infant behaviors. (HOD)

In the four studies reported, facial expressions of emotion are considered to be not merely responses indicative of internal states; they are also stimulus patterns that regulate the behavior of others. Results indicated that one-year-old infants seek out and use maternal facial expressions to monitor behavior. (Author/DST)

Addressing methodological limitations, Study One compared parent-child interactions of normal and language-delayed children; Study Two investigated whether mothers adjust the length of their utterances to the child's ability to comprehend or to produce language; Study Three probed interactional variables associated with variations in the…

Examines how parents use nonverbal behaviors in family situations. Results revealed that nonverbal behaviors which parents model for their children vary with the number of family members interacting, the gender of the offspring, and the gender of the parent. Results were discussed in terms of family dynamics. (Author)

Using a longitudinal design, investigates the interactive behaviors of mothers of normal infants and mothers of infants who are known to differ on a host of cognitive, behavioral, and biological parameters. Examines the developmental course of emotional expressivity in these infants. (HOD)

Research supported in part by U.S.P.H.S. General Research Support grant 1-501-FR-5432-04, Graduate Psychiatry Training grant 3-TI-MH 5557-17-81; and by Children's Bureau Handicapped Child Research grant 11-4637.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of eye contact in reducing ADHD children's problems with compliance. Seventy-six parents of ADHD boys between ages 5 and 10 were randomized into two treatment groups and a control group. Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that, as hypothesized, eye contact was effective in reducing ADHD children's problems with…

To examine clinical implications for using maternal language as a dimension of assessment and intervention, a linguistic and behavioral analysis was completed on a mother suspected of neglect during interaction with her 5-month-old failure-to-thrive infant. Results of the videotaped sample were compared to previous research on maternal language…

The purpose of the observational system presented here is to record the behavioral interactions between infant and mother, focusing on the sequential and contextual features of the social communication patterns accessible through direct home observation of mothers and their 3- to 4-month-old infants. The present system of continuous data recording…

This study details three methods developed during the course of an investigation for describing adult-child interaction: (1) the "VINEX" category system for coding the actual language of the adult and the child; (2) a coding system for describing nonverbal behavior; and, (3) "Interaction Language," for the use of an observer in…

This paper begins by outlining four aims of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, namely: (1) to create developmental environments which facilitate interaction between adults and children; (2) to develop adults' sensitivity for children and to increase their level of knowledge of the young child's needs; (3) to give adults the ability to…