Assessed sleep disorders in 265 visually impaired and 67 non-disabled 10- to 72-month olds. Found that infants with visual impairments had more difficulties in falling asleep and in sleeping through the night than nonhandicapped children. Also found a relationship between sleep disorders and the regularity of children's daily routine and…

To determine whether 1 or 2 dimensions of infant emotionality best characterized infant functioning, parental reports (10 months) and elicited emotion (12-13 months) were examined. Found that early positivity (12-13 months) predicted later positivity (18-20 months) better than later negativity, with the reverse being true of early negativity.…

Three experiments investigated 14-month olds' capacity for superordinate-level inductions, using animal and vehicle domains. Found that infants did generalize properties in these domains, and that their inductions were more influenced by conceptual category than by perceptual similarity. (HTH)

Argues that causal understanding is a developmental primitive: children develop core concepts of causality at a very early age, causality plays a necessary role in subsequent development across many domains, and basic causal processes can be activated automatically or implicitly. (HTH)

Three studies investigated whether eye gaze cueing in 4-month-old infants is the result of a domain-specific module or reflects the activity of domain-general processes. In two of three experiments, infants perceived apparent motion of the pupils, and this directly elicited saccades, but only when this motion was preceded by a period of direct…

Two studies investigated young infants' use of the word-learning principle Mutual Exclusivity. Findings indicated that 17-month-olds used mutual exclusivity to map novel labels to novel objects in a preferential looking paradigm, whereas 16-month-olds performed at chance levels. Fourteen-month-olds systematically increased looking to the familiar…

Children's attachment behavior was assessed at 18 months. Children's behavior with peers was observed and teachers' ratings of children's peer relations were gathered from 18 to 24 months. Found that, in response to their own positive behaviors, insecure-resistant children received fewer positive reactions from peers, and insecure-resistant and…

Parents, and adults inexperienced in child care rated intensities of infants' cries. The groups did not differ in their ratings. The cries of 6-month olds were rated more intense than 1-month olds. Amplitude and noisiness of cry predicted adult judgments of 1-year olds' cries. A measure of amplitude ratio predicted ratings of 6-month olds' cries.…

Studied the relationship of recognition memory, as evidenced by novelty preference in infancy, and characteristics of the home environment, measured by parental socioeconomic status, to children's later intellectual competence. Results for 69 Norwegian children, all born prematurely, show that visual recognition memory makes a significant…

Describes the development of an experimental measure for assessing growth in expressive communication in children from birth to 3 years of age Results from a sample of 50 infants and toddlers assessed monthly for 9 months in indicated that the measure displayed adequate psychometric properties of reliability and validity and was sensitive to…

Sought to verify research findings that suggest there may be a U-shaped developmental trajectory for final syllable lengthening (FSL). Attempted to determine whether vocal maturity and deafness influence FSL . Eight normally hearing infants and eight deaf infants were examined at three levels of prelinguistic vocal development. (Author/VWL)

This study documented the occurrence of stereotypical behaviors in young children with various handicapping conditions by rating such behaviors in 351 young children with handicaps by caregivers in early intervention programs. Most of the children exhibited at least one stereotypical behavior, and some stereotypical behaviors were differentially…

Assessed behavior-state matching and synchrony in interactions in 48 depressed and nondepressed mother-infant dyads when infants were 3 months old. Depressed mothers and their infants matched negative behavior states more often and positive behavior states less often than did nondepressed dyads. (RH)

Examines the effects of the faces and cries of three full-term and two premature infants aged 35-40 weeks on 48 mothers. Results indicate that the faces and cries of the premature infants received more negative ratings than did those of the full-term infants. (RJC)

Links infrahuman and human research in an examination of sensory and experiential factors that regulate early mothering behavior. (PCB)