The book is intended to link knowledge and application in early intervention services for very young disabled and at-risk children. An introductory chapter analyzes major issues and sources of controversy in the field: family support and the nature of early intervention, parental empowerment and involvement, the science of early intervention,…

Using two cases as the basis of exploration, this article discusses (1) the impact of pregnancy during adolescence on the development of the young girl and her offspring and (2) the influences of her extended family. It also explores the concept of adolescent/infant development as a means of providing comprehensive services to pregnant…

The social, economic, and health status advances experienced by Minnesota's White population have eluded significant numbers of the State's Black and Indian populations. This report contains statistical data and analyses of the health status of minorities in Minnesota. The information is meant to contribute to an intensified effort to improve the…

Reported are three series of experiments analyzing the development of the visual function of infants. The first experimental series was aimed at the investigation of infants' reaction to moving objects. The second experimental series dealt with the analysis of the development of binocular vision in infants. The goal of the third series was to…

Two studies investigated whether young children acquiring verbs at an exceptional rate can use the syntactic structure of familiar and unfamiliar verbs to make conjectures about some aspect of the meanings of those verbs. The preferential looking paradigm (Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek, 1981) was used to set up a naturalistic pairing of scene and…

The prevalence of subtle handicapping conditions, such as learning disabilities, behavior problems, and recurrent illness, in a population of 88 high-risk infants was investigated when the children reached 9 years of age. Infants had had birthweights of less than 1500 grams or had required prolonged mechanical ventilation in the neonatal period.…

A study of the babbling and phonological development of 54 infants used half-hour videotape recordings of the children at play in their own homes. The vocal output was phonetically transcribed twice for interrater agreement, and analyzed for the consonants used five times or more in the child's vocal repertoire. These consonants were considered to…

Federal and local mandates to expand the services of school psychologists downward to children ages 3 to 5 and interest in private practice and employment in institutions other than public schools have increased school psychologists' desires for broader role definitions. To meet the needs of the client group created by recent changes in the…

Following a prefatory description of infant development and high-quality infant day care centers, this paper focuses on the construction of learning centers for infants and toddlers in day care. Issues for consideration are specified, and 18 different care/learning centers and 6 work sstations for parents/staff are briefly described. In addition…

The relationship between symbolic play and early language was studied in 40 girls and 39 boys between 12 and 24 months of age. Subjects were individually tested during two or three sessions by a female experimenter in a day care center in Jyvaskyla, Finland. Children's symbolic play level was assessed according to a developmental structure of five…

This document summarizes 20 articles and books which stress the importance of movement in the overall development of the human species. Each summary ranges in length from 100 to 200 words and often includes direct quotations. A wide range of movement activities suitable for people of all ages (from infants to adults) are discussed. Many summaries…

This paper contributes to the debate on whether day care is harmful or beneficial to infants by describing some of the realities of child care for infants in Massachusetts circa 1987. Randomly sampled were 750 Massachusetts families with children under 13. Respondents were interviewed by phone about child care arrangements and family demographics.…

Part of a volume which explores current issues in service delivery to infants and toddlers with handicapping conditions (ages birth to 3), this chapter discusses issues relating to staffing of early intervention programs and reports the results of a study designed to clarify the staffing and teaming options currently used by selected intervention…

This resource guide to evaluated print and audiovisual nutrition materials has been developed to assist state and local staff of the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and the Commodity Supplemental Foods Program (CSFP), in selecting, acquiring, and developing accurate and appropriate materials for nutrition…

The study examined the relationship between perinatal stress and decreased right handedness and decreased left cerebral dominance for speech with 215 children born prematurely, followed from birth, and tested at age 5. Results indicated that neither hand preference nor hand performance correlated with degree of perinatal stress and that eye…