To assess the needs of early intervention teams, 627 direct care providers were surveyed. Four domains of infant mental health were explored: attachment, behavior, stress/coping, and regulation/adaptation. Differences in comfort with those domains were found among the providers based on professional training as well as years of experience.…

Develops a predictive model to assess early intervention programs' efficacy and applies it to longitudinal data from a small sample of moderately handicapped infants. Preliminary findings suggest that early intervention results in a reduced need for special-education services in subsequent years. Benefit-cost issues related to program efficacy are…

Examined whether infants believe that size of a moving object striking a stationary object will affect how far the stationary object is displaced. Found that the infants did believe the size of the test cylinder affected the length of the test object's displacement and that they used the initial familiarization event to calibrate their predictions…

Three studies, involving 72 3-month-old infants, demonstrated that infants remembered some of the original feature combinations of a mobile they had been trained to activate for up to 3 days but forgot all of them after 4 days. Even after 4 days, however, infants remembered the individual features that had entered into the original combinations.…

Extends the concept of role incompatibility to examine potential incompatibilities between breastfeeding and maternal employment. Hypothesizes women may face both structural and attitudinal conflicts between these behaviors. Found significantly more women employed part-time are likely to breastfeed and for longer durations than women employed…

Interviewed 13- to 34-months olds about their trauma injury within days and after 6, 12, and 18 or 24 months. Found that the youngest demonstrated little verbal recall. Some who could not narrate about past events at time of injury could verbally recall target words 18 months later. Most of the oldest children demonstrated good verbal recall 2…

Notes that, to enhance a baby's brain development, more stimulation is not necessarily better. Suggests that parents strike a balance by following baby's cues about what makes him or her happy, curious, or bored; read to the baby often; and allow them time and space for individual exploration. Also suggests setting guidelines and limits for…

Focuses on the struggle of American psychologists with the question of objectivity and the observer's role, notes Titchener's description of the dangers of subjectivity in observation, and describes the phenomenological approach to observation. Discusses the awareness of baby diarists of the potential problems with the method related to its…

Examined European- and Hispanic-American mothers' multimodal communication to their 5- to 30-month-olds while they taught the children target words by using distinct objects during play. Found that mothers used target words more often than nontarget words in synchrony with object motion and sometimes touch, and tailored communication to infants'…

Examined infant verbal and nonverbal cognitive development for 1,937 pairs of same-sex 2-year-old twins. Found that verbal and nonverbal development correlated .42. Genetic factors were responsible for less than half of this phenotypic correlation. The genetic correlation between verbal and nonverbal abilities was only .30, suggesting that genetic…

Recommends play activities in which children look, listen, taste, smell, and touch. Includes appropriate ages for activities and gives directions for several games, including peek and seek, water play, bean bags, and hot potato. (DLH)

Presents the observations of a panel of research experts who have conducted research on music and the brain. States that the participants are Andrea Halpern, Larry Parsons, Ralph Spintge, and Sandra Trehub. After an introduction of each person, the participants characterized their principal findings. (CMK)

Examined patterns of correlations among selected parental, contextual, and child characteristics accounting for variance in observed quality of parent-infant interaction and infant development with 15-month-olds and their families. Found that parental ego-resiliency and education, partner support, and infant social fearfulness explained…

Examines code switching in bilingual infants from a developmental perspective, using micro-focus of conversation analysis. Early switching data from two bilingual children is analyzed in terms of pragmatic choices and constraints. Some adult-like socially-determined switching was observed at an early age, but most early switches were explained by…

Predictive value of maternal age and education in relation to rates of mental retardation in a 3-year-birth cohort (n=267,277) was studied. Low maternal education placed individuals at increased risk for both educable mentally handicapped and trainable mentally handicapped placement. Older maternal age was associated with increased risk of mental…