This report presents 2000 data on U.S. births, highlighting maternal demographics (e.g., age, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, and educational attainment); maternal characteristics (medical risk factors, weight gain, and tobacco and alcohol use); medical care utilization during pregnancy women (e.g., prenatal care, labor and/or delivery…

Based on the premise that children learn language best in daily playful interactions with people, this guide for parents and professionals was designed to assist them in working with a child who is beginning to talk or who is not using language very much in their social and learning lives, especially with children with disabilities. The bulk of…

This review of seven Healthy People objectives for the nation's 100 largest cities and their surrounding areas documents considerable but inconsistent progress toward improving health in urban and suburban areas. It describes achievements in reaching Healthy People 2000/2010 goals, which were created by the Office of the Surgeon General of the…

Distributed by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services, this pamphlet provides parents with information and advice about their infants in the eleventh month of life. Following a brief description of developmental characteristics at this age, the pamphlet offers advice on a variety of topics, including:…

Distributed by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services, this Spanish-language pamphlet provides parents with information and advice about their infants in the ninth month of life. Following a brief description of developmental characteristics at this age, the pamphlet offers advice on a variety of topics,…

Distributed by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services, this Spanish-language pamphlet provides parents with information and advice about their infants in the tenth month of life. Following a brief description of developmental characteristics at this age, the pamphlet offers advice on a variety of topics,…

This annual report presents several articles related to the work of the Clinical Center for Child Development at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. The articles are: (1) "Joint Attention as a System Property of the Infant-Caregiver Interaction System"(Tsuneda Miho and Shing-Jen Chen); (2) "Age-Related Change in Japanese Maternal…

The interactive creation of an attachment bond of affective communication between the psychobiologically attuned primary caregiver and the infant is central to human emotional development. These emotional transactions directly influence the experience-dependent maturation of the infant's early developing right hemisphere, which is in a growth…

Emphasizing brain research, this guide is designed to help trainers teach caregivers to provide responsive care to infants/toddlers and to understand why responsive care is important. The training is targeted for anyone in a caregiving role, especially child care providers and home care providers. The guide is organized in three sections. Section…

This study examined behavioral development during the first year of life of 41 infants diagnosed with cerebral palsy, hypotonia, or hypertonia. The KID Scale, an empirically normed, caregiver-report inventory which covers behavior in five domains (cognitive, motor, language, self help, and social) was administered at about 5, 9, and 12 months…

The accuracy of a risk index based on reproductive and demographic factors for predicting subsequent development was tested with 51 full-term and 53 preterm infants. In addition, the possibility that scores on the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment scale might contribute significantly to the prediction of subsequent development…

The behavioral development of rural Guatemalan infants was assessed shortly after birth on a Neonatal Assessment Scale (NAS) and at 6-, 15-, and 24-months-of-age on a Composite Infant Scale (CIS). Summary variables based on NAS performance poorly predicted later assessed performance even as recently as six months after birth. The CIS modestly…

Older Down's syndrome infants responded to the regular reappearance of a squeaky doll with significantly more affective behavior than did younger Down's syndrome infants. Longitudinal research with the younger infants indicated that the onset of affective behavior significantly correlated with mental development and aspects of temperament.…

In two experiments, infants 9-17 months of age were probed for recognition of a previously unfamiliar trained name. Responses were videotaped and scored for gaze, gesture, and vocalization. Results demonstrate improvement in receptive language capacity over the age range studied. (RMH)

In follow-up studies conducted 36 hours, 3 months, and 12 months after delivery, maternal behavior, infant behavior, the duration of breast feeding, and attitudes toward child rearing procedures were shown to develop differently among mothers and infants receiving physical contact soon after birth as compared to control subjects who were briefly…