The applicability of the Denver Prescreening Developmental Questionnaire in a predominantly Black, low-income population in Mobile, Alabama was assessed. Journal Availability: Pediatrics, American Academy of Pediatrics, P.O. Box 1034, Evanston, IL 60204. (Author/SEW)

The relationship between family life or stress events and rates of maternal reports of child behavior and child-rearing problems was studied in a birth cohort of 1,265 New Zealand preschool-aged children. Journal Availability: See EC 152 486. (Author/SEW)

The process of identification of hearing loss in preschool children, including infant screening techniques, audiological testing methods, and other tests used to determine the kind and degree of hearing loss, are discussed. Appropriate habilitation and educational placement is also discussed, including hearing aid selection and parent…

Standardization of the Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) on 288 babies raning in age from two to 54 weeks in Yucatan, Mexico, yielded such findings as that subtest scores increased with age, and that the DDST failed to identify a "questionable" 16 or 17 babies with borderline scores on the Bayley Motor Scale. (Author/MC)

Maternal directives to 10- and 18-month-old children were analyzed for verbal and nonverbal aspects. The findings emphasize the multimodal nature of mothers' messages and the way language occurs in an action context and not as isolated output. There was no indication that verbal output replaces nonverbal at this age, but the verbal and nonverbal…

Compares patterns of friendship in infants, toddlers, and preschool children who attended either a child-care center or a program for emotionally disturbed children. Younger children had fewer and more stable friendships; emotionally disturbed children limited friendships to single partners. Complexity of social interaction increased most within…

The feasibility of using a community based high risk register to identify infants with hearing loss was evaluated. For all newborns at the hospital, information obtained from the hospital chart and from the mother Informed parents and physicians about children considered to be at risk for hearing loss. Testing was scheduled for 6 months from the…

The theoretical and practical implications of viewing difficult temperament as a characteristic of the individual rather than as a social perception are discussed, with an emphasis on an interactionist view of developmental process. (Author/MP)

Discusses children's acquisition of non-nominal, abstract words and argues that the use of these words parallels the child's cognitive development in trial-and-error problem solving and in development of insight. (EKN)

Field independence at preschool age (3 1/2 years) was tested and regressed on measures of 24 children's social and exploratory behaviors and on measures of maternal interaction behaviors during infancy and preschool. Children's exploratory behaviors' and mothers' behaviors were not predictive of cognitive style, but social behaviors were.…

Mothers were found to respond differentially to their infants' object-related gestures. Pointing was found to have an especially strong correlation with mothers' object-labelling responses, which in turn were predictive of the child's object-naming vocabulary. (Author/JB)

Statistically significant correlations of .37 and .57 were obtained between infant recognition memory scores obtained at four to seven months and later vocabulary tests of intelligence, for 54 children tested at four and for 39 children seen at seven years, respectively. Obtained values did not vary by sex. (Author/RD)

The predictive power of various cognitive skills at three months of age in terms of later cognitive functioning was examined. Visual habituation and recovery predicted later intellectual functioning at 24 months better than global intelligence or object permanence scores. Changes in cognitive functioning may be a transformation of skills.…

Describes obstacles facing early diagnosis and treatment of the developmental and mental problems of infants. Among these obstacles are inadequate professional preparation, multiple information needs and sources, disregard of early evidence of problems, lack of agency cooperation, time constraints on professionals, and family hesitancy regarding…

Addresses questions about infant perceptual ability and the possibility of its decline as a function of development in the absence of specific experience. Compares English-speaking adults, Hindi-speaking adults, and 7-month-old infants on their ability to discriminate two pairs of natural Hindi (non-English) speech contrasts. (Author/RH)