This article provides a synthesis of current theory and research in relation to attachment between infants/toddlers and their caregivers. Worldwide statistics show that there are a significant number of women working in the global labour market. In Australia, recent research also found that over 300,000 children aged 0-5 years are currently…

Data from an extreme-case design involving 971 women who reported symptoms of anxiety and depression after childbirth reveal that the infants of depressed mothers had the lowest social engagement, less mature regulatory behaviors and were more negative emotionally at 9 months.

In simple tests of preference, infants as young as newborns prefer faces and face-like stimuli over distractors. Little is known, however, about the development of attention to faces in complex scenes. We recorded eye-movements of 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old infants and adults during free-viewing of clips from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (an animated…

Early prosodic development (f[subscript 0] variation) was systematically measured in Mandarin-learning infants at the transition from babbling to producing first words. Spontaneous vocalizations of twenty-four infants aged 0;7 to 1;6 were recorded in 45-minute sessions. The speech production of twenty-four caregivers was also audio-recorded during…

The authors review a viewpoint on human functional brain development, interactive specialization (IS), and its application to the emerging network of cortical regions referred to as the "social brain." They advance the IS view in 2 new ways. First, they extend IS into a domain to which it has not previously been applied--the emergence of social…

This study investigated vowel length discrimination in infants from 2 language backgrounds, Japanese and English, in which vowel length is either phonemic or nonphonemic. Experiment 1 revealed that English 18-month-olds discriminate short and long vowels although vowel length is not phonemically contrastive in English. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed…

Infants rapidly accrue information via imitation from multiple sources, including television and electronic toys. In two experiments, we examined whether adding sound effects to video or live demonstrations would influence imitation by 6-, 12-, and 18-month-olds. In Experiment 1, we added matching and mismatching sound effects to target actions…

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a group of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by deficits in socialization, communication, and restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. In addition to these core deficits, individuals with ASD also experience co-occurring conditions such as problem behaviors. Problem behaviors are common to this…

Two aspects of children's early gender development--the spontaneous production of gender labels and gender-typed play--were examined longitudinally in a sample of 82 children. Survival analysis, a statistical technique well suited to questions involving developmental transitions, was used to investigate the timing of the onset of children's gender…

Infant sleep is a major source of concern for many parents. The aims of this longitudinal study were to assess: (a) the development of sleep patterns among infants, (b) the development of maternal cognitions regarding infant sleep, and (c) the relations between these domains during the 1st year of life. Eighty-five mothers were recruited during…

There is growing interest in the study of young children's "everyday" lives. Music engagement is central to young children's experience of the "everyday" yet few studies have investigated the ways young children and their families engage with and use music in their daily lives. The purpose of this article is twofold: it interrogates the ways in…

Investigates the use of the Bayley Infant Behavior Record (IBR) with premature and full-term infants. Analysis of the two discriminant functions obtained from the discriminant analysis appear to substantiate the claim that the IBR is an index of cognitive test-taking behaviors, which can be used reliably with preterm and full-term infants.…

Coping ability was assessed in 12- and 18-month-old premature and full-term infants. An experimental barrier situation was used that consisted of a double fence of boards and boxes. The infant had to remove the barrier to reach the center. Only four of the 17 children who completed the task were premature. (Author/RH)

Preference for novelty, as measured with an exploratory behavior paradigm, was compared in 8-month-old full-term and preterm infants of matched conceptional age. Subjects were 64 infants, 32 full term and 32 preterm, with 16 males and 16 females in each group. (Author/JH)

In North Carolina, the eligibility criteria for enrollment in Part C early intervention services do not exclude infants and toddlers based on the severity or laterality of hearing loss. As such, the state's early intervention population represents a widely diverse array of children ranging from those with minimal to profound hearing losses. While…