How infants come to master reaching for moving objects was studied in a situation where the distance to and the velocity of the moving object varied. Eleven infants participated in the study. (MP)

Four facial stimuli derived from the Bolton standards of craniofacial development representing a human male at 6 months, 3, 8, and 18 years of age were used in a test of Lorenz's concept of babyishness and of the discrepancy hypothesis. Subjects were 87 four-month-old infants. (Author/MP)

Describes and discusses the sequence of parental reactions to the birth of a malformed infant. Presents some developmental tasks parents must face in order to accept and meet the special needs of their child. (RH)

Infants' looking and looking-away behaviors, as well as cardiac responses to mothers' spontaneous and imitative faces and to dolls' animated and still faces, were recorded for 18 term and 19 preterm infants when they were three months old. (JMB)

Demonstrates that eye contact per se, and not solely the inherent attractiveness of the eyes and face, is salient to five-month-old infants. Five-month-old infants can distinguish when another person is looking at them, rather than at a nearby location. (Author/MP)

The schema hypothesis proposed by Kagan and Lewis was used to make predictions concerning the preferences of infants 3 to 14 months old for speech stimuli. An operant response method was used in determining the infants' preferences for inflected, monotone, and scrambled natural speech stimuli. (MS)

A total of 134 mothers and their newborn infants were studied in order to evaluate the relationship between neonatal characteristics and mother-infant interaction. (SB)

Examined how infants acquire adaptive locomotion in the novel task of going up and down slopes. Found that infants' judgments became increasingly accurate and exploration became increasingly efficient, with no transfer over the transition from crawling to walking. Infants learned to gauge their abilities on-line as they encountered each hill at…

Irritability and activity, components of temperament, were rated for 114 fullterm and 163 preterm infants during five-second application of a cold disc on the thigh and five seconds following. For fullterm infants and preterm females, irritability increased and activity decreased across five trials. Females were more irritable during stimulation,…

Discusses how providing developmentally appropriate choices to toddlers can prevent conflicts during caregiving tasks and daily routines in child care settings. Emphasizes maintaining a balance between children's needs and adult issues of time and space. Notes the importance of examining one's feelings and values to increase awareness of one's…

Investigated infants' reactions to the face-to-face/still-face paradigm. Infants reacted to the still-face with negative affect, a drop in vagal tone, and an increase in heart rate. By contrast, they reacted to the reunion episode with a mixed pattern of positive and negative affect. (HTH)

Presents a mathematical model of the development of reaching behavior in infants, along with the results of two experiments that showed that infant movements could be decomposed into the underlying submovements using a principled method; and the angular error in infant reaches matches the form and magnitude of error assumed by the model. (MDM)

Examined 7- and 9-month-olds' ability to categorize cats and dogs as separate from one another. Found that both groups formed a cat category that included novel cats but excluded a dog and an eagle, and formed a dog category that included novel dogs and a novel cat but excluded an eagle. Results mirrored those of 3- to 4-month-olds with visual…

Five experiments demonstrated that 6.5-month-olds perseverated in a violation-of-expectation task to examine reasoning about width information in containment events. After watching a familiarization event in which a ball was lowered into a wide container, infants failed to detect the violation when the same ball was lowered into a container half…

Examined relations between reactivity (peak response) and regulation (response dampening) in 6-month-olds' cortisol and behavioral responses to inoculation. Found that reactivity and regulation were unrelated for both cortisol and behavior, suggesting both measures are needed to characterize more accurately infant response to stress. Found…