Examined effects on duration of gaze of infant- and adult-directed (ID and AD) speech signalling presentation of adult faces. Found that, when ID speech segments signaled presentation of a smiling, sad, fearful, or angry face, significant and comparable conditioning occurred with the smiling and sad faces, whereas nonsignificant and more variable…

Conducted spectrum analysis of standard and vociferous cries from infants with Wessel's colic, non-Wessel's colic, and comparison infants. Vociferous cries had longer duration, higher fundamental frequency, and greater percentage of dysphonation than standard cries. After feedings, problematic criers had greater percentage of dysphonation in…

Investigated the effect of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact on self-regulatory processes of premature infants. Found that infants treated with prolonged skin-to-skin contact showed improvements in state distribution, sleep-wake cyclicity, emotionality thresholds, arousal modulation, mother-infant shared attention, and infant sustained…

Used a habituation-dishabituation procedure to test ability of 4-, 5-, and 7-month-olds to differentiate between a subjective ellipse and a nonsubjective pattern that were constructed by displacing the inducing elements of the illusory figure. Found that even 4-month-olds discriminated between the subjective ellipse and nonillusory display. This…

Discusses the social development of infants in terms of a set of tasks which include identity, culturation, and reproduction. Focuses on the task of identity, the role of self-awareness in relationships, and the relationship between identity and emotional life. (RJC)

Investigated temperament ratings among three groups of preterm infants, differing by degree of risk status, and a full-term group. Findings concerning internal consistencies demonstrated that preterm parents found the Rothbart Infant Behavior Questionnaire temperament dimensions to be coherent constructs, regardless of initial severity and…

Develops a classification system for the physical environment based on 3 dimensions of stimulation. Intercorrelations of physical and social environmental measures obtained for 88 infants of 12 months supported the validity of the decision rule that nonresponsive animate stimulation is primarily physical rather than social. (RJC)

Suggests that the findings in the study by Blass and Ciaramitaro reported in this monograph support the claim that two systems of infants' behavior state regulation accessible by oral stimulation are mediated by different neural pathways. Discusses the findings in light of the immediate aims of the study itself and for the broader context of…

Mothers viewed videotapes of interaction with their 20 full-term healthy, 20 preterm healthy, and 20 preterm sick infants between 11 and 26 weeks of age. Relationships between infant gazing, laughing, and fussing and maternal interpretation of emotional state, attention preference, attention curiosity, and physical needs were analyzed. (Author/SW)

Investigated the possibility that previous reports of a relation between locomotor status and stage-4 object permanence performance could be generalized to performance on an object localization task. Findings suggest that the effects of locomotor experience on infants' search performance are quite specific and mediated by a variety of factors that…

A total of 80 infants, divided equally among 4 age groups, participated in a contingency learning task. Of these infants, 48 received an audiovisual stimulus contingent on arm movement, and 32 served as a yoked control group. Findings indicated that exposure to a period in which the infant's expectancy regarding contingent outcomes is violated…

Describes 4 experiments examining 10-month-old infants' causal event perception. Results from all experiments indicated that infants perceived causality of simple events by associating a specific agent with a causal action. These results provide more support for an information-processing view of causal perception than for a view that explains…

Comments on Thelen and Ulrich's monograph in this issue. Examines theoretical and empirical sections and findings, concluding that the authors have taken a major step forward by introducing the dynamic systems perspective to the study of behavioral coordination in infants, thus opening the way for experimental investigation of phenomena that could…

Infants participated in a nonsocial contingency task immediately after a social interaction with their mothers. The amount of time mothers and infants spent in a state of vocal turn-taking predicted individual differences in infants' subsequent performance on the contingency task. (PCB)

Videotaped 2-, 4-, and 6-month olds during interaction with a female adult stranger engaging in organized or disorganized peekaboo games. Found that from a diffuse sensitivity to the presence of a social partner, infants by 4 months develop a new sensitivity to the narrative envelope of protoconversation, in particular the timing and structure of…