Early impaired response to social partners' distress may negatively impact subsequent social development. Identifying factors contributing to successful responding may inform assessment and intervention. This study explores how: (1) social impairment, and (2) partner familiarity relate to response to partners' distress. Infants with and without…

Empirical studies have documented a variety of social abnormalities in infancy that indicate risk for later social and behavioral difficulties. There is very little research illustrating the presence of such behavioral vulnerabilities with frequent repeated measures, and the feasibility of designing interventions for improving social engagement in…

This research study investigated the hypothesis that noncontingent social stimulation can elicit infant vocal sounds. The investigation involved an examination of both the course of social elicitation and the nature of the social releasing stimulus. Three experimental conditions were designed to measure: (1) the changes in vocalization rate during…

Study supported in part by Research Grant MH-13703-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Examines the extent to which an infant's social initiative resists or is modified by three variations in the behavior of adult responsiveness: repeated responses, varied responses, and eye aversion. (HOD)

Because of the sparcity of research on infants' response to social events, especially different categories of people, infants between 8 and 18 months of age were introduced to five different social events: strange adult male and female, strange 4-year-old female, mother, and self. The infants' responses indicated that approach affects stimulus…

Fixation time, smiling, vocalization, and fret/cry were recorded to obtain a complete picture of infants' responses to facial stimuli over the first year of life. Four stimuli were presented to 120 infants. Results of fixation data indicate that (1) there is a marked decrease in fixation toward facial stimuli within the first year, (2) at all ages…

In this study an attempt was made to measure variables which were expected to be related to individual differences in infants' social responsiveness toward strangers. The subjects were 48 infants (24 boys and 24 girls) between 8 and 13 months of age. Most were children of Cornell University faculty or graduate students, but a broad range of…

Separation and greeting responses were examined in a longitudinal study of 26 infants, aged 15 to 54 weeks, observed at home. All instances of a person's leaving and entering the room during home visits were observed. The developmental trend--both onset and relative frequency--of each separation behavior was plotted at three-week intervals. The…