Results from one experiment indicated that the temporal pattern and spectral complexity of moderately intense auditory stimuli influenced cardiac responses in 24 alert newborns. A second study extended the temporal-pattern effect to other vowel stimuli in a no-delay discrimination paradigm. (Author/RH)

Tests newborns' ability to detect a dot with central vision and compares both the proportion of time the infants fixated centrally and the duration of each central fixation. Subjects were 46 newborns ranging in age from 1 to 7 days. (MP)

Argues for an interactionist model of the relation between cognition and motivation in early infancy. (Author/SS)

The capacity of newborn infants for smooth-pursuit eye movements in single-target tracking and in optokinetic nystagmus to a moving striped field was examined utilizing DC electrooculography. (JMB)

Results showed that concentrations of testosterone were significantly greater in the umbilical blood of newborn males than females. In both sexes, firstborns had significantly more progesterone and estrogens than later borns, and among males, firstborns had higher concentrations of testosterone. Temporal spacing of childbirths had greater effects…

Suggests toys and materials for changing the environment to keep babies interested in it. (CM)

First, newborns' preferential looking between pairs of stimuli which varied in real size and viewing distance was solely determined by retinal size. Second, newborns desensitized to changes in distance and retinal size strongly preferred an object of a different size to the familiar one. (RH)

States of 40 newborn infants were observed during 2, 35- to 70-minute periods that were separated by 6-48 hours. Analyses identified 3 state profiles that differentiated infants on a behavioral assessment measure at 2 weeks of age. Scores showed significant agreement on individual differences in neurologically based measures. (RH)

Describes Special Caretakers Program, project in which employees of Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) became foster parents for hospital's boarder babies, newborns and children medically ready for discharge who often waited weeks or months for appropriate foster home. Discusses problems and solutions encountered in the…

Four studies used visual habituation to determine whether infants 5, 6, and 9 months old would attend to those aspects of action related to the actor's goals. Found that infants distinguish in their reasoning about human action and object motion. Findings suggest that by 6 months, infants encode actions of persons consistent with more developed…

The functional maturity of the newborn infant's brain, the resemblances between neonatal imitation and imitation in adults and the possibly lateralized neonatal imitation suggest that the mirror neuron system may contribute to neonatal imitation. Newborn infants not only imitate but also initiate previously imitated gestures, and are able to…

This article reports the behavior of 3 newborn chimpanzees in the first 4 months of life, reared by their mothers and living in a community of 14 chimpanzees in a semi-natural enriched environment. We focused on spontaneous activity during the night partly because sleeping behavior constitutes an essential part of the infants' activity.…

We investigated newborns' sensitivity to the direction of gaze of another's face by using a preferential looking technique. This study extends earlier work on a preference for faces with direct gaze in newborns. In Experiment 1, we replicate the basic finding of Farroni and colleagues that newborns prefer to look at faces with direct gaze. In…

This document contains three reports on postnatal depression. The first, "The Maternity Blues," by Flemming Warborg Larsen, presents a literature review on the topic. It concludes that most women look back at the "blues" as an episode that was brief, unpleasant, and difficult to explain. The second report, "Postnatal…

This experiment examined the accuracy with which newborn infants orient their heads toward a sound positioned off midline within hemifields. The study also evaluated newborns' ability to update the angle of their head turn to match a change in localization of an ongoing sound. Alert newborns were held in a supine position and presented a sound at…