The second of a four-part series on the development of infants and toddlers, this article reviews current research on social and emotional development during the first two years and provides a selected list of activities designed to promote infants' optimal development. Attachment behavior and affective behavior are two major topics explored. (EV)

One longitudinal and one cross-sectional study evaluated the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous influences on infants' attention allocation by assessing the role of target familiarity on distraction latency during object exploration. Findings indicated that 9- and 10-month-olds, but not 6.5-month- olds, exhibited longer latencies as…

As an example of current trends in research on children's coping, this article reviews a small set of recent pediatric psychology studies that describe children's active, information-seeking styles of coping versus avoidant or information-denying coping. The review highlights the need for tighter, more complete concepts and improved methods.…

Two studies involving 108 infants of 6, 9, and 12 months showed that providing infants with multiple action-relevant properties elicits a rich action repertoire. (RJC)

Discusses the reasons that newborns and young infants cry, the communicative effect and perception of crying, crying in sick and healthy infants, the sound spectograph, and crying for the use of clinical diagnostics. (RJC)

Defines crying as a baby's tool of communication and suggests an alphabet of ideas that assist in interpreting reasons and developing solutions for a crying infant. (BAC)

Compared the spontaneous leg movements of 10 infants with Down Syndrome to those of nondisabled infants matched for chronological age and motor age. Contrary to expectations, no significant difference was found in the frequency of leg movements between the two groups. However, Down Syndrome subjects demonstrated significantly fewer of the most…

This article evaluates the "Frames, then Content" hypothesis for speech acquisition, which sees babbling as a direct result of producing syllabic "frames" by rhythmic mandibular oscillation with little of the "content" seen under mandible-independent control. Analysis of 6,659 utterances of 6 normally developing…

Proposes a theoretical sequence of cognitive developments as influencing representational play and language in the second year of life. Structural and temporal links between play and language indicate influence of developing mental representation, but variation in timing of developments points to influence of variables. (ET)

Trained 3 month olds to move a 10-object mobile. Changing the mobile to two objects resulted in crying for half the infants. A retention test was given one and seven days later. All infants exhibited retention at one day but only noncriers at seven days. Criers displayed more anger than noncriers in the one-day retention test. (BC)

The potency of different sugars as calming agents in human infants was investigated in 2 experiments with 40 infants. Sucrose and fructose were equally effective calming agents, whereas glucose was less effective. Results indicate that the calming effects of milk lie in components other than its sugar. (LB)

Explored patterns of emotional communication in 70 mother-infant dyads, emphasizing both mother and child roles in affect regulation. Display of maternal positive and negative affects decreased with age; child affects were unchanged. Maternal sensitivity was associated with maternal matching of son's affects and daughter's creation of shared…

Examined the effect on father-infant relationships of a parent training program on infant massage and bathing. Infants in the treatment group greeted fathers with more eye contact, smiles, vocalizing, reaching, and orienting responses and showed less avoidance behavior than did control group infants. Fathers in the treatment group showed greater…

Studied the ontogeny of walking by prelocomotor infants. Results support a dynamic systems view of development and the view that upright locomotion emerges from the self-organization of multiple cooperating elements rather than as a result of a preexisting neural code. (Author/GR)

Social experiences and stranger anxiety of infants of working mothers were compared with those of infants of nonworking mothers. Mothers' employment status, and sex and age of infants, were analyzed in relation to anxiety. Maternal work status was not found to be a significant parameter in infant reactions to a stranger except when physical…