A study was conducted to investigate the degree to which both object familiarity and motivational factors influence infants' search behavior in an object permanence test. Infants' search behavior for an unfamiliar test object was compared with search behavior for (a) an experientially familiar object that each infant had played with daily for a…

This study explored three aspects of the 2-month-old's perception of multisyllabic utterances. Questions addressed were: (1) Do infants perceive phonetic contrasts occurring either in the initial (Bada-Gada) or medial (Daba-Daga) positions of multisyllabic utterances; (2) Are infants more likely to perceive these contrasts in stressed as opposed…

The nature and significance of the conditioning of fetal and neonatal response systems for later learning was not clearly understood. Therefore, subjects chosen for this research project were people who had been trained in experiential recall. During recall the subjects spontaneously reported what appeared to be auditory components of a complex…

This paper describes two experiments conducted to replicate the reported findings (Entus, 1975) that infants demonstrate a right ear advantage in the perception of dichotically presented syllables. Using the non-nutritive sucking paradigm, 48 infants 1-3 months of age were presented with verbal stimuli contingent upon criterion level sucking.…

This study investigated whether infants who were given increased amounts of response-contingent stimulation would evidence positive and nonspecific transfer of learning to situations requiring new responses to control environmental events. Subjects were thirty 3-month-old biologically normal home-reared infants. Infants in the group assigned to a…

This longitudinal study of 10 infants in a day care nursery traces the development of recognition and attachment to a primary caregiver from approximately 3 1/2 months of age (shortly after enrollment in the program) through the end of the first year. Monthly assessments of about 10 minutes each, on two successive days, were made of the infant's…

In this study designed to compare the relative pacifying properties of horizontal and vertical rocking, 13 infants (mean age--58 days) were each tested on two subsequent days. The rocking device was a cradle that could be manipulated to produce side-to-side rocking similar to a commercial cradle or up-and-down rocking. In its up-and-down mode, the…

The human infant is now considered capable of active informational interaction with the environment. This study tested certain hypotheses concerning the nature of that interaction. These hypotheses, developed partly from Piaget's work, are (1) that repeated visual encounters with a stimulus pattern leads first to attentional preference for that…

This paper on infant behavior offers a program to positively change decelerating mental development curves in infants. It attempts to (1) suggest a theoretical model, (2) present a developmental matrix derived from observation using the model, and (3) note specific instrumentation for infant observation and an experimental-stimulating responsive…

A study was conducted to examine the situational generality of extended learning in early infancy. Ss were 17 infants within one week of eight weeks of age. All but two were Caucasian, and all were from middle-income families. The apparatus consisted of a pressure sensing pillow which, when placed under the infant's head or feet, was sensitive to…

Forty infants, 10 at 4, 6, 8, and 10 months, were confronted by an experimenter who acted out angry, happy, sad, and neutral facial experssions, accompanied with appropriate vocalizations. The infants' responses were recorded on video tape and rated for attention, negative and positive affect, and activity. Results indicate that the 4-month old…

This study uses a habituation paradigm to systematically investigate the discrepancy hypothesis with male and female new borns. In addition, multiple visual response measures are used in monitoring the habituation process and the infant's response to various degrees of novelty. Ss were 36 apparently normal newborns (half of each sex) ranging in…

The follow-up study described in this paper tried to accomplish three major objectives: (a) to investigate the preschool and newborn antecedents of intellectual functioning, (b) to determine if there were stabilities from two and a half to seven and a half in the tempo and style of free play--and here we were looking for both isomorphic and…

The literature on the psychological construct of state is reviewed, and it is proposed that state be defined in terms of an infant-environment interaction. Interactive behavior of 32 mother-infant dyads was observed in the home for a total of 2 hours for each pair, in order to explore various types of interactive processes and analyses. A…

The purpose of this paper is to outline some application of the Markov Process to the study of state and state changes. The essence of this mathematical concept consists of the analysis of sequences of infant responses in interaction with its environment. Categories can be defined which reflect the joint occurrence of an infant's behavior (or…