Studied across a 16-month period, young children of deaf parents showed accelerated early language development, on the average producing their first recognizable sign at 8.5 months, their tenth sign at 13.2 months, and their first sign combination at 17.0 months. Findings are inconsistent with previously reported patterns of synchrony between…

Teachers and researchers of public speaking, rhetoric, small group, or interpersonal communication are all affected by research in communication competence. This essay discusses the consequences of applying a developmental-biological perspective to understanding the nature of communication competence. (PD)

The behavior of a preverbal infant was analyzed in a search for orderly and systematic patterns. Basic elements of the infant's repertoire were distinguished. A comparison was made between the nonverbal and those verbal structures which appear early. (Author/RM)

Seven-month-old infants require redundant information such as temporal synchrony to learn arbitrary syllable-object relations. Infants learned the relations between spoken syllables, /a/ and /i/, and two moving objects only when temporal synchrony was present during habituation. Two experiments examined infants' memory for these relations. In…

Authors look at a range of variation in experience of five- to six-month-old infants on a concrete behavioral level, and conceptualize these discrete behaviors. (Authors/MB)

Qualitatively, the more suppressive and critical the mother, the less responsive the baby was in social play with her. The more the baby responded to his mother, the less he responded to a stranger. (Author)

An infant's unique style and temperament is thought to develop during a given small time segment as a consequence of the initiatives taken by caretaker or infant; usually an interaction of the two. (WY)

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of the Brazelton exam as a parent education tool for mothers and fathers. Target parents in treatment groups were taught to perform the Brazelton exam on their own infant, with attention being drawn to the infant's most positive interactive and physical abilities. (Author/RH)

This paper focuses on infants within a family system as specific sources of stress that may lead to child abuse. Current prevention efforts are assessed and potential prevention efforts are discussed. (Author/EB)

Examines mother-infant and father-infant interaction over time at three different levels: dyadic, individual, and specific content. (Author/MP)

Tests the hypothesis that, while the difference in rate of smiling to O degree v non-O degree orientations will diminish with increasing age with silent and/or unfamiliar faces, infants over 14 weeks of age should continue to discriminate between a talking familiar 0 degree face, and all other combinations of orientation, familiarity, and silent…