Two studies investigated whether 10- and 12-month-olds can use televised emotional reactions to guide their behavior. Findings indicated that 12-month-olds avoided the target object and showed increases in negative affect after observing an actress orient toward a novel object with negative affect, but their responses to positive versus neutral…

Some infants experience unusual stress from pregnancy through the postnatal period and are especially called upon to exercise coping responses. Discusses unusual stressors, how the infant naturally copes with them, and how caregivers can provide assistance. Reviews studies on stress-relieving intervention techniques. (NH)

Discusses the significance of emotional communication and social referencing of the mother by her infant as determinants of the infant's affective reactions to other social figures in the environment. (PCB)

Studied 112 preterm infants to determine developmental changes and stability of individual differences. Results indicate significant developmental gains with age, and highly significant individual stability of performance across age. (RJC)

Analyzes the development of the skill of eating with a spoon in 16 infants of 12-23 months. Discusses the acquisition of a tool-using skill in terms of the emergence of strategies for solving particular problems and the consistency and reliability with which they are deployed. (RJC)

Investigated postural constraints on movement of 15 6-month-old infants. Results suggested that each of the developing capabilities of orienting, reaching, and kicking assumed a specific function for locomotion at the stage of crawling. (RJC)

Investigates incidence and type of looking away behaviors of six infants of three-six months. Results suggest that looking away should not be interpreted as a single behavior with a fixed meaning. Types of looking away behavior identified are buffering, distracted-business, and play. (RJC)

Relations between temperament dimensions and attachment behaviors were evaluated. Results were consistent with previous findings that temperament measures do not predict attachment security. (PCB)

Discusses two problems in the study by Blass and Ciaramitaro reported in this monograph: (1) whether the measurement of behavior states as "on-off" or "graded" captures a behavioral process or reflects the measurement itself; (2) whether the term "state" explains findings as a single function that may be better…

Baseline and heelstick measures of behavioral state, heart period, vagal tone, and salivary cortisol were obtained from 50 full-term newborns. Mothers completed Rothbart's Infant Behavior Questionnaire when the infants reached six months of age. Greater reactivity to the heelstick was associated with lower scores on the…

Observers and mothers rated infant behavior in the home on dimensions of temperament once a week for eight weeks. Although week-to-week correlations were modest, aggregates of the eight observations had high reliability for both observers and mothers. When direct observations were compared with mother reports, little evidence of mother-observer…

Tested 6 infants periodically until they were 28-weeks old for head and eye coordination in tracking moving targets and fixating stationary targets while subjects were moving. Found that head movement was more prevalent than eye movement. There was improvement with age in coordination of head turning to target or body movement. (BC)

Elicited imitation was used to assess 21-month-olds' recall of familiar-canonical, familiar-reversed, novel-causal, and novel-arbitrary event sequences. Reversed sequences were reproduced in modeled and corrected canonical order; other sequences were reproduced in modeled order. (BC)

A theory of infant skill acquisition was supported by observations, over a six-week period, of the bouncing activity of eight infants while they were supported in a harness assembly. Observed three stages of activity: an initial assembly stage, when movement was irregular and variable in period; a tuning phase of more periodic movement; a final…

Uses the still-face paradigm as a framework for examining the range of social regulatory capacities available to infants during stressful times. (PCB)