Differences were found in the ease with which newborn infants habituate to stimuli in different modalities and in the ease with which different responses habituate to the same stimulus. (MH)

Study of 64 infants showed that (1) once infants began to cry, they tended to persist, (2) only older infants specifically missed their mothers, and (3) tendency to cry was not related to maternal responsiveness or sex of child. (MH)

Infrared television recordings were made of newborns' visual activity under monocular and binocular viewing conditions. Out-of-control eye movements were substantially more frequent in the presence of uniform light fields than in darkness for both groups. A distinction between exogenous and endogenous control of eye movements in newborns is…

Thirty-one infants ages 8 to 16 days were shown a ball, a ball picture, and a homogeneous stimulus card. Infants' reaching behavior was scored for each of the stimuli according to the following: (1) lateral extension of arm, (2) arcing movement of arm toward midline, and (3) flexion of arm toward the upper half of the body. (Author/MP)

Results from one experiment indicated that the temporal pattern and spectral complexity of moderately intense auditory stimuli influenced cardiac responses in 24 alert newborns. A second study extended the temporal-pattern effect to other vowel stimuli in a no-delay discrimination paradigm. (Author/RH)

Data obtained from a group of infants ranging in age from four to seven months did not support the existence of attentional inertia in this age range. (MP)

An adaptive up/down tracking procedure was used in combination with a visually reinforced head-turn response to examine infants' (6 to 18 months of age) auditory sensitivity for 500-, 2000-, and 8000-Hz tone bursts. Six-month-olds were significantly less sensitive to the 8000-Hz tone than to either lower frequency; older infants demonstrated…

To test whether six-month-old infants recognize the auditory similarity of speech sounds sharing a value on a phonetic-feature dimension, an operant head turn procedure was used. Results indicated that the performance of infants trained on phonetically related speech sounds was far superior to that of infants in the nonphonetic control group.…

The effectiveness of the Developmental Educational Birth through Two Project is shown in increased developmental scores of the handicapped young children (changes indicative of up to four or five months of progress beyond expected levels) and less restrictive follow-up placements. (CL)

The study revealed that the frequency and duration of positive caregiver behaviors significantly increased as a result of a home-based program to improve infant-caregiver interaction. (Author/CL)

Two aspects of the cognitive development of a 14- to 18-month-old blind child are reported: the development of procedures for the intentional control of objects and the development of certain classificatory skills. (Author)

Clarifies several issues in response to recent criticisms of habituation and related novelty-preference techniques used in studies of infant memory. (RH)

Examines the motivational or affective message and impact of infants' cries on nonparents, primiparous parents, and multiparous parents. Cries were organized into three levels (difficult, average, easy) by temperament ratings and spectographic analysis. Physiological and self-report responses to audiotapes of infants' cries were obtained from 36…

Presents study analyzing gestural communication of hearing children between one and two years of age, comparing it with the communication of a deaf child of deaf parents exposed to sign language since birth. Results suggest that the capacity to combine symbols, referential words, or signs simultaneously depends on exposure to a linguistic input. (…