Relates chronicity, timing, and severity of alcohol exposure to age-specific developmental and behavioral consequences. Delineates specific interventions with infants, preschoolers, school-age children, and adolescents. Advocates making services for youngsters available early, and basing them on individual strengths and weaknesses as determined…

This study utilized the head-turn preference procedure in four experiments to determine whether 1-year-old infants could extract and remember information from auditory strings produced by miniature artificial grammar. Findings indicated that subjects generalized to the new structure by discriminating new grammatical strings from ungrammatical ones…

Investigated the ability of 35 mothers to identify consistently what they perceived to be communicative acts by infants at three ages (6 months, 9 months, and 1 year). Comparisons of the mothers coded records indicated that they were able to identify infants' communicative acts consistently at each age. (Author/VWL)

Examines advice on infant nutrition given to mothers by health professionals since the 1940s and looks at ways that mathematics has been used to position women and health professionals and influence their behavior. Argues that a particular kind of mathematics and an authoritarian, transmission mode of learning are used by health…

Advises parents to relax and learn to recognize the signs that a child is physically and emotionally ready for the next developmental step. Developmental milestones discussed include riding in a backpack, moving to a forward-facing car seat, using eating utensils, taking time-out, and moving from crib to a bed. (HTH)

This study explored the sensitivity of 20 10- to 11-month-old infants to the phonological characteristics of their native language. Tone-probe event-related potentials were obtained for subjects listening to a story, either with normal English function morphemes or modified with atypical function morphemes. Results suggest that the 11-month-olds,…

Looks at what William Stokoe taught educators about teaching deaf children. Among his ideas were that signing is more than just a away to communicate, deaf children should begin to acquire sign language during their infant years, teaching begins with a commitment to one's beliefs, good teachers are innovative thinkers, and it is important to look…

Reevaluation of Bookstart, a British project to promote library use and book sharing with babies, found that 53% of pilot families had never used the library; younger caregivers were less likely to use libraries. However, data may have been miscalculated if parents used their own instead of children's library cards. Many parents spoke positively…

Comments on Needham's research of infant perception by focusing on the types of evidence needed to make inferences concerning infant cognition. Considers the history of scientific explanations of animal cognition as nearer to infant cognition, and the high level of creativity required in proposing and testing alternative explanations of infant…

Discusses Needham's findings by asserting that they extend understanding of infant perception by showing that the memory representations infants draw upon have bound together information about shape, color, and pattern. Considers the distinction between two senses of "recognition" and asks in which sense object recognition contributes to object…

Examines children's ability to use their knowledge to guide their behavior in a dimensional change, color-shaped card sort. Subjects were asked to sort cards according to different guidelines. Four experiments were carried out which show a disassociation between knowledge and its use. Findings indicate that knowing rules is sometimes insufficient…

Five experiments tested the development of conceptual categories by familiarizing infants to objects in a category and presenting them with an object in a different category. Infants' responses indicated that infants at 7 to 11 months categorized animals, vehicles, and furniture; at 11 months, plants and kitchen utensils; and at 9 to 11 months,…

Examined parents' and 4-month-old infants' behavior during face-to-face interactions. Results indicated that mothers and fathers were equally sensitive to their infants, and that infants' affect and regulatory behaviors were stable across mother-infant and father-infant situations in the still-face model. (BC)

Four studies assessed adults' latencies to signal they would respond to infant crying as a function of perceived infant distress and contextual information relevant to caregiving. Results suggested that adults' responses are influenced by both acoustic gradations in the cry and the caregiving context. Ratings of degree of distress may be highly,…

Examined concordance between foster mothers' attachment state of mind and infants' attachment quality. Found that two-way correspondence between maternal state of mind and infant attachment quality was similar to that of biological mother-infant dyads. Age at placement was not related to attachment quality. Concordance between maternal state of…