Describes how infant formula became an "icon of modernity" separating mothers from babies and causing health and social problems. Gives a 300-year social history of the rise in popularity of infant formula, covering aspects including the body as machine, rise of science and industrialization, formula and public health, the clean milk…

Discusses the educational history of kindergarten in England and the United States during 1850-1918. Focuses on kindergarten teacher education and advocates of the program as pivotal promoters for including kindergarten as an accepted curriculum in both countries, in spite of any hinderances from either country's regulatory and government bodies.…

Three experiments explored infants' attention to conflicting cues at different ages. Found when stress and statistical cues indicated different word boundaries, 9-month-olds used syllable stress as a cue to segmentation while ignoring statistical cues. Seven-month-olds attended more to statistical cues than to stress cues. Results suggested…

Explores association between pupil mobility and attainment in national end of Key Stage 1 tests for 6000+ pupils in an English urban education authority. Indicates pupil mobility during the early years is associated with significantly lower levels of pupil attainment in reading, writing, and mathematics tests at age seven. (BT)

Studied continuity and change in general cognitive ability from infancy to adolescence in adoptees (107 children), biological siblings (87 pairs), and twins (224 monozygotic and 189 dyzygotic pairs). Findings generally support previous findings about genetic and environmental factors, with the exception that in the transition to adolescence,…

Examined quality of infant/toddler and preschool child care centers. Found that although overall program quality was mediocre at best, accredited programs scored better than nonaccredited programs. Preschool classrooms needed improvements in cultural awareness, child privacy, and furnishings for relaxation. For infant/toddler programs,…

Describes alternative approaches to hearing aid fitting with infants and young children in light of recent technological developments. Both audiometric-based and electroacoustic-based procedures are described. Discusses the relative strengths and limitations of each approach to hearing aid fitting in terms of their clinical application with…

Observed infants' responses in a food-requested procedure to explore their understanding of other people's desires. Found that only the 18-month-olds were able to engage in some form of desire reasoning. Children not only inferred that another person held a desire, but also recognized how desires were related to emotions and understood something…

Compared the attention patterns of 40 toddlers and their mothers with or without dysphoric symptoms in a situation that allowed both common and independent foci of attention. Found that dysphoric mothers appeared to attend to an event in common with their children less frequently than did nondysphoric mothers. (MOK)

Examined electrical brain activity during negative and positive emotion expression in infants of depressed and nondepressed mothers. Found that, compared with infants of nondepressed mothers, infants of depressed mothers exhibited increased EEG activation in the frontal but not parietal region when expressing negative emotions. There were no…

Reflects upon the nature of caring and teaching in the infant care setting. Presents two scenarios of caregivers interacting with infants and toddlers who are having difficulty with a motor activity to illustrate caring. Urges caregivers to consider caring as an attitude of total, focused presence with the child and at the heart of teaching. (KB)

Discusses two studies of infant care in India. The first focused on fathers' infant caregiving practices, whereas the second focused on infant care practices in Punjabi families in which the grandmother lived with young parents. Discusses positive trends in infant care in India that were revealed by the studies. (BG)

The continuity in development of syllable duration patterns was examined in seven young children as they progressed from preword to multiword periods of vocalization development. Results revealed no systematic increase or decrease in the duration of bisyllables produced by the children as a group, whereas lengthening of final syllables was…

The average age at which profoundly hearing-impaired children are identified in the United States and in Israel is compared. Israel's hearing screening programs for assessing infants are described, their effectiveness is noted, and suggestions are made for possible applications in the United States. (Author/JDD)

A review of literature on the effects of age of entry to infant schools showed that a majority of studies found differences in performance between the oldest and youngest children. One large-scale study determined that preschool education is an overriding factor in performance. (Author/SK)