A longitudinal study of 28 mildly preterm children and 20 full-term comparison children found 75% of preterm children had a learning disability, attention deficit disorder (ADD), language impairment, mild neurologic impairment, or general school problems by grade 5. Evidence of differences in attention deployment at ages 13 and 15 months for ADD…

A study assessed the relationship between identified prenatal substance use and the risk of subsequent maltreatment allegations among 277 families involved with child protective services. Parents in the substance-exposed infant (SEI) group were more likely to have subsequent SEI-related allegations but not more likely to incur other types of…

Discusses objective knowledge and reality; objective experience and objectivity; objectivity without representation; and problems with constructivism. Argues that at issue with Muller, Sokol, and Overton's model is dispensability of the representation concept in an account of knowledge development during infancy. Concludes that a constructivist…

Cytomegalovirus is the most common cause of congenital virally induced hearing loss. Maternal infection is most often asymptomatic as is the infection in the newborn. Hearing loss occurs in both clinically apparent infection and in the asymptomatic infection. Current methods of detection, treatment, and prevention and research efforts are…

The internal reliability and concurrent validity of the Play Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ) was compared to that of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory with 170 deaf or hard of hearing infants and toddlers. The PAQ was found to be a useful nonverbal tool that assesses symbolic play behaviors and demonstrates a parallel development with…

Maintains that one future direction for cognitive development research involves a closer integration with knowledge about the developing brain. Presents a framework for analyzing and interpreting postnatal functional brain development. Discusses three contributing hypotheses, within which a variety of phenomena associated with the neural basis of…

Notes that scientists understand in greater detail the various anatomical and neurological changes that allow children to develop motor and sensory abilities. Explores how the research findings are calling into question the notion of prescribed developmental milestones. (HTH)

Explores the attachment relationship of fathers to their infant children. Highlights the ways fathers parent differently from mothers, and the positive effects on child outcomes of fathers' participation in caregiving. (HTH)

Explains why early interactions are so vital in teaching young children about themselves, their world, and success. Explores the function of internal and external motivation to development, and the importance of positive feedback to development of children's trust and self-confidence. (HTH)

Presented neonates with lexical and grammatical words prepared from natural maternal speech. Found that neonates could categorically discriminate the sets based on a constellation of perceptual cues that distinguished them. Suggested that this ability to discriminate words on basis of multiple acoustic/phonological cues provides a perceptual base…

This study examined the development of maternal roles in seven mothers of medically fragile, premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of an urban, teaching hospital using data sources such as interviews, observations, and document review. Mothers gradually assumed caregiving roles of worrier, novice, learner and expert and…

Compared the impact of a small box emitting sounds in response to nearby motion introduced into an infant/toddler and a preschool classroom to illustrate qualitative differences in how children of different ages recognize the same objects as mediating devices for activity. Found that the box became a social object for infants/toddlers and part of…

Compared arousal during peekaboo game of low birthweight infants with higher or lower perinatal risk to that of healthy full-term infants. Found that low birthweight babies showed less positive arousal, more negative arousal, and three mixtures of behavioral cues than full-term babies, who showed strong positive and negative responses. Perinatal…

Investigated differences in beliefs and practices about infant feeding among middle class Anglo and Puerto Rican mothers. Interviews and observations indicated that Anglo mothers reported earlier attainment of self-feeding and more emphasis on child rearing goals related to self-maximization. Puerto Rican mothers reported later attainment of…

Presents emergentist coalition theory of language development characterizing lexical acquisition as the emergent product of cognitive constraints, social-pragmatic factors, and global attentional mechanisms. Details 12 experiments with 12- to 25-month-olds using the development of reference as test case of the theory. Presents evidence that…