This study examined the behavioral (arm, facial) and autonomic (heart rate, respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA], and adrenocortical axis) reactivity of 56 4-month-old infants in response to contingency learning and extinction-induced frustration. During learning, infants displayed increases in operant arm response and positive emotional…

This study examined infants' abilities to separate speech from different talkers and to recognize a familiar word (the infant's own name) in the context of noise. In 4 experiments, infants heard repetitions of either their names or unfamiliar names in the presence of background babble. Five-month-old infants listened longer to their names when the…

This study examined the relation of infant emotional responses of anger and sadness to cortisol response in 2 goal blockage situations. One goal blockage with 4-month-old infants (N=56) involved a contingency learning procedure where infants' learned response was no longer effective in reinstating an event. The other goal blockage with 6-month-old…

How do infants come to understand references to absent objects? 14-month-old infants first learned a name for a novel toy, which was then placed out of view. The infants who listened to a story mentioning the nonvisible object, looked, pointed, and searched for it more often than did infants who heard a story using a different name. Their behavior…

Evolution has provided babies with wonderful ways to get the loving attention and care that they need from adults. When a baby is distressed, his cry is the most primitive and powerful tool for bringing help. By the time a baby is 2 or 3 months old, his dazzling smile and crooked grin evokes tenderness, smiles, and nurturance from adults who are…

Babies thrive on security. In early months, secure feelings stem from being warm, cuddled closely, and comfortable in their tummies (and in having clean bottoms!). In this article, the author discusses how to soothe infants and toddlers. The strategies to help ease babies' distress are described. Some of the recommended strategies include: (1) to…

This study explores how infants encode an object's spatial extent. We habituated 6.5-month-old infants to a dowel inside a container and then tested whether they dishabituate to a change in absolute size when the relation between dowel and container is held constant (by altering the size of both container and dowel) and when the relation changes…

To better understand the form and recognizability of neonatal smiling, 32 newborns (14 girls; M = 25.6 hr) were videorecorded in the behavioral states of alertness, drowsiness, active sleep, and quiet sleep. Baby Facial Action Coding System coding of both lip corner raising (simple or non-Duchenne) and lip corner raising with cheek raising…

A parent-report instrument, the First Year Inventory (FYI), was developed to assess behaviors in 12-month-old infants that suggest risk for an eventual diagnosis of autism. The target behaviors were identified from retrospective and prospective studies. FYIs were mailed to 5,941 families and 25% (N = 1,496) were returned, with higher return rates…

This article presents the causes of anger and frustrations of children at different ages. Honig discusses understanding children's anger from ages 0-2 and gives suggestions on how to cope with anger. Miller discusses how children ages 3-4 provoke to anger, and recommends ways to prevent it. Church discusses the cause of anger in 5- and 6-year old…

Although a large literature discusses infants' preference for infant-directed speech (IDS), few studies have examined how this preference might change over time or across listening situations. The work reported here compares infants' preference for IDS while listening in a quiet versus a noisy environment, and across 3 points in development: 4.5…

In 4 experiments, we examined 16- and 20-month-old infants' understanding of proper names and count nouns. In each experiment, infants were taught a novel word modeled linguistically as either a proper name (e.g., "DAXY") or a count noun (e.g., "a DAXY") for a stuffed animal shown on a puppet stage. This animal was moved to a new location on the…

To elucidate the differential saliency of infant emotions to mothers across interactive contexts, the authors examined the moderating role of observed infant affect during interactions with mother in the relation between maternal and laboratory-based ratings of infant temperament. Fifty-nine developmentally healthy 9-month-old infants were…

This book is the result of efforts by an expert study group, set up by the Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry, to examine the relationships between infant crying, sleeping, and feeding problems, and to shed light on the developmental and regulatory mechanisms involved. It brings together research from a variety of professional…

Thirty-one normal neonates were monitored for 24 hours on a newly developed movement monitor which provided measures of noncrying activity and counts of various movement amplitudes. (Author/SDH)