This report describes the implementation variation of physical and occupational therapy for 43 motor-delayed infants in early intervention programs. The influences of infant, family, and program variables on the actual therapy services were determined. Therapist availability and severity of motor delay were the critical factors influencing the…

Argues that research does not warrant Belsky's position that infant child care for more than 20 hours per week is a risk factor for infants' insecure-avoidant attachment and children's maladaptive social behavior. Suggests that quality of care and family characteristics are major influences. (NH)

Describes observer-based technique for assessing auditory capacities of infants from three to 12 months of age. This technique, referred to as the Observation-based Psychoacoustic Procedure (OPP), combines features of the Forced-choice Preferential Looking Technique and of the Visual Reinforcement Audiometry. Pure-tone detection and frequency…

Describes the English infant-primary school system in terms of its history, its current program and curriculum design, and the cultural differences inherent in England that make its educational system unique. (BB)

The article describes an alternative approach to preparing infant interventionists by providing interdepartmental training in special education and maternal and child health. The program recognizes the transactional nature of infant development, infants as part of a family system, and the ecological notion that the family system is nested within…

The article describes Public Law 98-199 and its Early Childhood Plan Grant Program which makes planning, development, and implementation grants available to all states for provision of interagency collaborative services to disabled children ages birth through 5. Ways in which parent advocacy groups can influence early intervention services are…

Analysis of a one-year-old's lexical development suggested factors causing overextensions: using known words for more recently acquired or unknown words; expressing incomplete knowledge of defining features of two or more similar meaning words; producing overextensions of preferred words; using phonologically simpler more than difficult words; and…

Examines effects of age, sex, and sibling status on children's ideas about infants and infant care. The sample consisted of 43 preschoolers and 42 second graders, half of whom were boys, half were girls, and half were singletons. Older children with siblings were more knowledgeable than either their singleton peers or younger children.…

This study investigates the nature and the factor structure of infant intelligence. The Bayley Mental Scale items were administered. According to the analysis, intelligence at any age is a set of separate mental abilities at each age, and there are a variety of paths through which mental development occurs. (JAZ)

A group of 43 children classified as either behaviorally inhibited or uninhibited at 21 months were observed at four years of age in situations designed to evaluate behavior with an unfamiliar peer, heart rate and heart rate variability to cognitively challenging tasks, reluctance to answer difficult questions, and differential fixation of an…

Studies the ability of 5-month-old infants to recall temporal information and use temporal organization by training them to fixate a hierarchically structured or unstructured sequence of stimuli which appeared in four spatial positions. Results are interpreted within a temporal organizational framework; infants appear to use organization within…

Experienced and volunteer caregivers' interactions with young children in a group program were observed to determine if children with varying characteristics were given different amounts of attention. Results indicated that caregivers pay varying amounts of attention to individual children--especially in terms of physical attractiveness and…

Attempts to replicate Ainsworth's Baltimore study by conducting lengthy home observations of mother-infant interactions before observing the infants in the strange situation. (NH)

Examines the mental development scores for two groups of at-risk infants throughout their childhood--those classified as small for gestational age (SGA) and those twins falling below 1,750g birth weight--and determines that SGA twins showed only a modest deficit in IQ scores as compared to the full twin samples. (HOD)

Tested two models of the relationship between a hypothetical attachment mechanism and an incompatible motivation (a tendency to explore) by pitting two levels of attachment motivation against two levels of exploratory motivation among 15- to 18-month-old infants, alternating freely between play with novel toys at one end of the room and visits…