The goal of this investigation was to study the regulatory retention effects of an adult's emotional displays on infant behavior. In Study 1, 11- and 14-month-old infants were tested in a social-referencing-like paradigm in which a 1-hr delay was imposed between the exposure trials and the test trial. In Study 2, 11-month-olds were tested in the…

Adults and children readily construct action representations organized with respect to an ultimate goal. These representations allow one to predict the consequences of action, interpret and describe actions, and categorize action sequences. In this paper, we explore the ontogeny of hierarchically organized action representations, and its relation…

Forty infants (mean age 5 months) of depressed mothers and non-depressed mothers were seated in an infant seat and were exposed to four different degrees of animation, including a still-face Raggedy Ann doll (about two-feet tall suspended in front of the infant), the same doll in an animated state talking and head-nodding, an imitative mother and…

When their infants were 6 months of age, mothers were assessed for self-efficacy (low, moderate, and high illusory control) and knowledge of infant development to determine their impact on mothers' behavioral sensitivity and affect during a feeding task at 9 months (N=70). Mothers' sensory sensitivity to digital images of infants' negative and…

Human adults are more accurate at discriminating faces from their own race than faces from another race. This "other-race effect" (ORE) has been characterized as a reflection of face processing specialization arising from differential experience with own-race faces. We examined whether 3.5-month-old infants exhibit ORE using morphed faces on which…

For 20 years, Advocates for Children of New Jersey has published the Newark Kids Count Data Book, a one-stop source for child well-being data on our state's largest city. Newark Kids Count includes the latest statistics, along with five-year trend data, in the following areas: demographics, family economic security, food insecurity, child health,…

The A-not-B task is a marker task for infant development where an infant searches for an object being hidden twice, in two consecutive places. In two studies N = 70 infants plus 40 controls were tested in this task using two separate, infant-sized tables. In the first study, the separate tables were joined in front of the infant to form one area.…

This paper considers first the concepts of temperament and emotion and then describes some of the genetic and neurochemical correlates of varied temperamental biases and their contribution to emotions. This discussion is followed by a detailed description of the infant temperamental biases called high- and low-reactive to unfamiliarity and their…

Robots and humans receive partial, fragmentary hints about the world's state through their respective sensors. These hints--tiny patches of light intensity, frequency components of sound, etc.--are far removed from the world of objects which we feel and perceive so effortlessly around us. The study of infant development and the construction of…

The aim of this study was to investigate developmental changes in heart rate response to repeated low-intensity (85 dB) sound stimulation in fetuses between 32 and 37 weeks of gestation. We measured amplitude changes in heart rate as our index of fetal response. At 35 to 37 weeks of gestation, the majority of fetuses showed a deceleratory response…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of maternal modeling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance towards fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant, novel stimuli in a sample of 71 toddlers. Children were shown a rubber snake or spider (fear-relevant objects) and a rubber mushroom or flower (fear-irrelevant objects), which were…

Many studies have shown that listeners can segment words from running speech based on conditional probabilities of syllable transitions, suggesting that this statistical learning could be a foundational component of language learning. However, few studies have shown a direct link between statistical segmentation and word learning. We examined this…

The current study investigated the influence of rewards on very young children's helping behavior. After 20-month-old infants received a material reward during a treatment phase, they subsequently were less likely to engage in further helping during a test phase as compared with infants who had previously received social praise or no reward at…

This study examines rural differences in one important indicator of quality for licensed child care settings--the number of children per adult. It also investigates the relationships between cost of child care, child care subsidy receipt, and child care quality for both rural and non-rural areas. We used representative child care survey data…

Do 14- to 17-month-olds notice the paths and manners of motion events? English- and Spanish-learning infants were habituated to an animated motion event including a manner (e.g., spinning) and a path (e.g., over). They were then tested on four types of events that changed either the manner, the path, both, or neither component. Both English- and…