Five-month-old infants were habituated to three types of visually presented rigid motion, with duration of fixation as the dependent measure. After reaching a criterion of habituation, a fourth rigid motion (not habituated) and a deformation were presented. (Author/SS)

The early phase of imitation was studied in children between 6 and 18 months by means of the presentation of 22 actions. (SB)

Examined whether early differences in stress reactivity were related to self-recognition at 18 months. Found that self-recognition was related to greater cortisol response and less rapid quieting at 6 to 18 months, whereas cortisol and quieting responses of 2- to 4-month-olds did not differentiate self-recognizers and non-self-recognizers,…

Examined visual fixation in 3- to 6-month olds for fit to attentional inertia theory. Found that look duration toward extended audiovisual stimuli had a lognormal distribution. The conditional probability of looking away decreased when look duration increased. Heart rate deceleration accompanied look onset and stimulus changes occurring within…

Compared mothers' and one-month-olds' behaviors during 20-minute bottlefeeding with standard or breastlike nipple. Found that mothers' behaviors did not differ, but infants on breastlike nipples spent less time asleep, more time awake and active and less time fussing and crying than infants on standard nipples; they also exhibited changes in vagal…

Tested 4-month-olds' memory for surface feature and location information following brief occlusions. Found that when target objects were images of female faces or monochromatic asterisks, infants increased looking times following changes in identity or color but not changes in location or combinations of feature and location. When objects were…

Preterm and full-term infants were assessed on several tasks involving retrieval of a toy. When corrected for age (since conception), but not when compared by chronological age, premature infants tolerated longer delays on AB retrieval tasks than full-term infants. There were no group differences for corrected or chronological age on any other…

Reviews research that uses autonomic responses of human infants as dependent measures. Focuses on the history of research on the autonomic nervous system, measurement issues, and autonomic correlates of infant behavior and systems. (RJC)

Suggests a framework for understanding infancy that is derived from the papers collected in this January l990 issue of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly and provides a summary of the information provided. (RJC)

Revealed that 6-month-old infants are unable to access either an original memory or a reactivated memory after lengthy intervals. Despite the fact that their memory processing is more rapid during encoding and retrieval than that of infants half their age, their facility for accessing an original or reactivated memory is weaker than that of such…

Three studies examined adrenocortical activity in infants. Morning naps were associated with decreases in salivary cortisol. Riding for 40 minutes in a car lowered salivary cortisol concentrations. Thirty minutes of maternal separation in the laboratory resulted in higher salivary cortisol concentrations than did 30 minutes of play with the mother…

Considers aspects of the structural design of conventions observed in parent-child interaction. Examines kinds of design differences that occur in conventions and the consequences of those differences, particularly for parent-child coordination. (PCB)

No main effect relations between infant proneness-to-distress temperament at 9 months and attachment classification at 13 months were found. Proneness-to-distress temperament was associated with maternal behavior and personality. (PCB)