The underlying theme of this review is that fine motor assessment for skills acquired during the first year of life includes a description of the coordination of reach and grasp behaviors into functional understanding, purposeful retention of an object, and manipulatian. The developmental sequence of these responses is listed in various…

Multiple regression analyses using maternal attitudes during pregnancy, obstetric analgesic medication, and labor variables as predictors did not yield impressive relationships to neonatal behavior as measured two days after delivery. (JMB)

Fifty 4-month-old infants were habituated to one wavelength of light and then tested for recognition with the original and two new spectral lights. After short- and long-term delays with different types of retroactive interference, the results indicated that the infants' recognition memory for hue was quite resilient to interference or delay. (JMB)

The relationship between visual stimulus intensity and finger movements was examined in infants ranging in age from 10 to 15 weeks and from 20 to 25 weeks. Infants were shown a cone that varied in size, brightness, and distance from them. (Author/JMB)

This study tested the hypothesis that one year old infants' wary behavior toward an unfamiliar female adult would decrease and affiliative behavior would significantly increase in the course of a relatively brief period. (Author/SB)

Experimental social histories were created for 22 6-month-old infants by providing structured interactions with three different adults (a distal interactor, a proximal interactor, and a neutral interactor) over a three-week period. Infants' social preferences (looking and approaching) for each of the interactors were then compared. (Author/JMB)

Investigated in three studies were responses of 18- and 24-month-old children to a series of commands. Results suggest that a potent incentive for obeying commands lies in the pleasure very young children take in fitting their actions to the words of others. This pleasure sustains subsequent reenactment of the actions without commands. (Author/RH)

Seven-month-old infants looked at pairs of slides of two and three objects while listening to either two or three drum beats. Study data call into question the suggestion that the influence of auditory information on infants' attentiveness to a visually presented numerical event is mediated by cross-modal matching of numerical information.…

Infants 6 1/2 months of age were first trained to discriminate a very salient speech contrast and subsequently were tested for their recognition of the contrast when it was embedded within redundant or mixed "context" syllables. Also assessed was the effect on recognition of positioning the target syllable differently within a…

Mothers of 48 infants approximately 12 months old displayed either positive or neutral affect while their infants responded to pleasant, ambiguous, or aversive toys. On the first trial maternal affect had no effect; on the second trial, positive maternal affect resulted in more positive infant responses, but only for the ambiguous toy. (Author/RH)

When not socially engaged, children showed a significantly greater percentage of reoriented attention during vocalizing than nonvocalizing periods. Findings confirm the existence of an attention/vocalization relation and are consonant with Greenfield's predictions about the nature of this relation. The relation held equally for prelinguistic and…

Results of two experiments indicate that dimensions of the social situation in which social behaviors are modeled influence eight-month-old children's tendency to imitate and their choice of recipients for their imitation. (Author/RH)

Three groups of macaque mother/infant dyads were observed while each lived in ecological settings that differed in level of foraging demand and, hence, the amount of work each mother was required to perform to obtain her daily rations. Findings suggest that in monkeys, as in humans, when mothers are psychologically unavailable to their infants,…

Data is from a short-term longitudinal study conducted at the Institute of Human Development which involved presenting two weeks of a special contingency experience to infants between their eighth and tenth weeks. (Authors/MB)