Relates Bowlby's original conceptualization of attachment to recently developed theories subsumed under the label of sociobiology. (MP)

The development of the ability to extend the hand across the body midline to contact a visually presented object was examined in 48 normal, full-term, 9- to 20-week-old infants. One of the infant's arms was restrained while the behavior of the contralateral, unrestrained arm was observed. (JMB)

Verbal interaction of 12 mothers and 12 fathers with their 19-month-old children in parent/infant dyads and parents/infant triads was assessed. In the triad condition, fathers spoke less and took fewer conversational turns than did mothers. (JMB)

Assesses the long-term retention of conditioned operant footkicks by three-month-old infants. Views a conditioning analysis as a logical means by which to bridge the gap between animal and adult human models of memory. (Author/RH)

Findings confirmed that whereas six- to eight-month-old infants revealed reliable acquisition under immediate reinforcement, a three-second delay precluded response acquisition, as did six-second and ten-second delay of reinforcement. A modified delayed-reinforcement scheduling procedure enabled a previous methodological criticism to be…

Forty unselected Caucasian children (3 months - 3 years old) with weights below the third centile were compared with 34 Ss from a similar background whose weights were between the 25th and 75th centiles. Journal availability: British Medical Journal, 1172 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02134. (CL)

In order to study infants' sensitivity to binocular information for depth, 11 infants, 20 to 26 weeks of age, were presented with real and stereoscopically projected virtual objects at three distances, and the infants' reaching behavior was videotaped. (Author/SB)

A total of 204 male and female subjects rated an infant's emotional responses to four arousing stimuli. Half of the subjects were told they were observing a "boy" and the other half a "girl". Significant differences in responding were found by sex attributed to the child, sex of rater, and the rater's experience with young children. (Author/JMB)

The reactions of 112 10-month-old male infants to the property of curvature were examined using a habituation paradigm with lever pressing as an instrumental response. (SB)

Examined the effects of premature birth on ninety 11-year-olds' memory and processing speed, using the new Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT). Found that preterm subjects performed more poorly than their full-term counterparts on all CAT memory tasks, and that preterms were also slower on selected aspects of processing speed but not on motor speed.…

Infants (N=24) with history of otitis media and tube placement were tested for categorical responding within a visual familiarization-discrimination model. Findings suggest that even mild hearing loss may adversely affect categorical responding under specific input conditions, which may persist after normal hearing is restored, possibly because…

Four-, six, and eight-month-old infants' perception of the multimodal features of the human face was investigated. Results show that speech-related exaggerated prosody cues facilitate detection of the audible features of multimodally represented faces, but not until six months of age. (Author/DR)

Children (n=28) who were given books as babies and followed up at age 3 were compared to 29 who received no books. The treatment group had substantially greater participation in eight early literacy activities. Controls were more passive, less interested, and less able to sustain concentration. (SK)

This study investigated the sleep of 28 young blind and 22 sighted children (ages 4 to 36 months) whose parents completed the Sleep Habits Questionnaire. It found that the blind children had significantly more sleep problems related to bedtime and behaviors during the night than did the sighted children. (Author/DB)

Argues that parental input is an important factor often neglected in research that may mediate language outcomes. Investigated how parents interact with their 12-month-old children, who suffer from otitis media status. Results indicate that parents of chronically affected children direct attention more often and engage in fewer joint attentional…