Reddy and Trevarthen explore what we can learn from emotionally engaging with babies. Theirs is a different approach from 20th-century psychology, in which doubt and detachment play a role in discerning other people's feelings and thoughts. Instead, the authors suggest that emotions are the key to psychological engagement. When interacting with an…

In the studies presented here, infants' understanding of others' attention was assessed when gaze direction cues were not diagnostic. Fourteen-, 18- and 24-month-olds witnessed an adult look to the side of an object and express excitement. In 1 experimental condition this object was new for the adult because she was not present while the child and…

The experiment measured attention-getting and attention-holding processes independently. Results confirmed the necessity for separating these measures and indicated differences between male and female infants in their demonstration of memory. (JMB)

A developmental sequence of adult-infant social play is proposed in this paper. Many adult interactions with infants take the form of early social play, although such play is often thought to originate with the onset of peer interaction. The sequence of five levels proposed in this work is based on, and approximately reverses, the Howes (1980)…

Two component skills of object permanence were studied: existence constancy -- the infants' ability to expect that an object continues to exist after it is hidden, and localization skill -- infants' ability to search in the correct place for a hidden object. Contradictions within the literature may occur because of task lability caused by failure…

This article serves as a rejoinder to TM 502 436, focusing on the potential resilience of human cognitive growth. (DEP)

Two experiments compared responses of 5-month-old infants to a live person, the person's photograph, photographs of dissimilar persons, and photographs of similar persons. Results indicated that infants use gross physiognomic features to perceive similarity between live persons and their photographs. (Author/JMB)

Fifteen mothers were trained to administer tactile-kinesthetic stimulation to their premature infants for 15 minutes four times a day for 1 month. At 4 months of age, experimental infants were compared to 14 controls for neurophysiological development. (Author/SB)

To determine why the familiarization-novelty paradigm tends to underestimate the ability of infants under 4 months of age to detect unidimensional differences between stimuli, groups of 14- and 20-week-olds were given unidimensional discrimination problems of varying difficulty under conditions of brief and prolonged familiarization. (Author/JMB)

Examines whether infant awareness of efficacy and control relates to increases in socioaffective behavior. Focuses on the relationship between socioaffective behavior and infant experience of contingent and noncontingent events. Explores alternative means of assessing response acquisition. (RH)

Displaying no evidence of recognizing the axillary odors of their fathers, breastfed infants discriminated between their mother's axillary odor and odors produced by nonparturient or unfamiliar lactating females. Bottle-fed infants appeared unable to recognize the odor of their mother when presented along with odors from a nonparturient female or…

Videotapes of 50 mothers interacting with each of two siblings when each child was 12 months old showed that mothers behaved very similarly towards the siblings. Results suggest that differential maternal treatment of children at the same age in infancy is unlikely to be a major source of observed marked individual differences in siblings.…

In three experiments, one-year-old infants were observed responding to mechanical, noise-making toys that operated predictably or unpredictably. Interest centered on (1) whether increasing temporal predictability would reduce distress, (2) causes of reduction in distress, and (3) the role of information about the onset of each bout of stimulation…

The issue of pediatric euthanasia for handicapped newborns is examined and contrasting viewpoints emphasizing the quality and the sanctity of life are considered. The author asserts that advocacy for handicapped children involves decisions regarding the euthanasia question. (CL)

Examined the associations between sensorimotor and early communication abilities in three groups of children with mental ages ranging from two to seven months, eight to 13 months, and 14 to 21 months. Data were used to determine the generality of the local homology described by Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, and Volterra (1979). (RH)