Home visits and parental diaries revealed that children of deaf parents produced their initial recognizable sign at 8.2 months of age, attained a lexicon of 10 signs at 13.5 months, and combined signs at 16.1 months. Children did not use signs to name new things until 12.6 months, typically after they had demonstrated communicative pointing. (BC)

Reviews literature on attachment process between adopted children and their mothers. Explains empirical research in relation to Bowlby's theoretical formulation of attachment, basic thesis of which is that infants develop affectional bonds at specific ages of their development and, therefore, child's age at time of adoption is important…

Examined whether young infants produced differentially organized hand and arm actions in relation to affective expressions when the infants were presented with social and nonsocial stimuli. (PCB)

Attempted to replicate findings of a previous study which found that mother-toddler interaction during problem solving was related to the child's prior attachment security. Examined the relationship between problem-solving interactions on the one hand, and mother-child interactions at home and infant temperament on the other. (PCB)

Two experiments tested whether newborns could discriminate their own and another newborn's cry. Results indicated that awake newborns expressed facial distress more frequently and longer to another newborn's cry than to their own. Sucking decreased significantly between pretest phase and first minute of another infant's cry. Asleep infants'…

Examined three components of the attachment-transmission model in 48 kibbutz dyads from communal and home-based sleeping arrangements. Found that security of infants' attachment relations and autonomy of mothers' attachment representations were associated with higher emotional availability scores. Poorer emotional availability was found in dyads…

Offers a framework for understanding how early separation and maltreatment affect infants' ability to securely rely on a foster parent. Argues that disruptions in primary attachment relationships, combined with maltreatment, place these infants at risk for insecure or disorganized attachments to foster parents. Maintains that foster parents need…

Analyzed vocalizations/verbalizations from children acquiring English or French in later single-word period to identify trochaic bias. Found that neither language's vocalizations were exclusively trochaic. French/English differences in iambic productions and acoustic realization of accent were traceable to adult input. Distribution of trochaic and…

Two experiments investigated factors affecting joint visual attention in 12- and 18-month-olds. Findings indicated that parental pointing at objects elicited more episodes of joint visual attention than looking alone. Although infants most reliably followed gestures to targets in front of them, even 12-month-olds followed gestures to targets…

Three experiments examined the relation between language acquisition and other symbolic abilities in 18- and 26-month-olds. Found that 18-month-olds spontaneously interpreted gestures, like words, as names for object categories. At 26 months, they spontaneously interpreted words as names and novel gestures as names only when given additional…

Examined whether putative regulatory behaviors widely assumed to be conceptually associated with certain behavioral strategies were associated with the changes in fearful and angry distress in 6-, 12-, and 18-month-olds. The key finding was that the use of some putative regulatory behaviors (distraction and approach) reduced the observable…

Evaluated in three experiments a dynamic systems theory account of perseverative errors on "A-not-B" task. Found that 9-month-olds perseverated when reaching for identical targets, but made nonperseverative responses when reaching in the presence of a highly distinctive B target. Reach direction was jointly determined by target's…

Examined three possible explanations for findings that infants detect textural discrepancies based on individual features more readily than on feature conjunctions. Found that none of the proposed factors could explain 5.5-month-olds' superior processing of featural over conjunction-based textural discrepancies. Findings suggest that in infancy,…

Four experiments examined very young infants' expectations about containment events. Found that 2- to 3.5-month-olds recognized that objects could be lowered inside a container with an open but not a closed top. Three-and-a-half-month-olds realized that objects could not pass through the container's back wall and should have moved with it to a new…

Compared disyllabic sequences from infants and adults according to their use of frequency, intensity, and duration to mark stress. Concluded that infants in English language environments produce adult-like stress patterns before they produce lexical items, which specify stress. Acoustic and perceptual analyses indicated infants use three acoustic…