Research supported by a Public Health Fellowship and by grant MR-11803-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Paper presented at the Merrill-Palmer Institute on Research and Training of Infant Development (Detroit, Mich., Feb. 15-17, 1968).

Paper presented at the Merrill-Palmer Institute on Research and Training of Infant Development (Detroit, Mich., Feb. 15-17, 1968).

Thirty papers are presented from a 1981 workshop on the relationship between health care and education for infants with special needs and their families. Following a synopsis of the keynote speech, "Assessment in Early Infancy as an Intervention" by T. Berry Brazelton, three theme speeches are presented: "Building Relationships:…

A product of a study to gather information describing model infant and preschool programs for handicapped children, the document contains descriptions of 142 programs including validated First Chance projects, Outreach projects funded by the Bureau of Education for the Hnadicapped, Master Plan agencies in California, innovative and preschool…

The paper summarized the rationale for early intervention programs and describes the major components of the Project WISP (Wyoming Infant Stimulation Program) center-based program for handicapped young children (18-36 months). Early intervention for handicapped children is justified from five points-of-view: prevention of failure during subsequent…

This study reports the interrater agreement of the Maternal Language Classification Scale (MLCS), a functional language classification system, developed partly to avoid problems identified with previous scales. The MLCS is a comprehensive system for classifying the functional content of maternal language addressed to children whose mean length of…

The spontaneous speech of two Zulu girls was monitored for use of nominals. The data for one girl, 23 months, are reported in detail. Analysis of prefixed and prefixless nouns in isolated citation forms and in syntactic construction revealed that the child perceived the internal structure of nouns before the age of two, although the prefix often…

Children ranging in age from 1;1 to 1;3 were presented with 16 contrived lexical concepts, each consisting of a nonsense word (eight object words and eight action words) and four unfamiliar exemplars that served as the referents for that word. Overall, the children used 65% of the experimental words one or more times to refer to at least one of…

The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (BNBAS) was administered to a group of 73 premature infants at approximately 34, 36, and 40 weeks of gestational age. Six behavioral cluster scores and one reflex cluster score were computed for each examination. Repeated measures analyses of variance showed significant steady improvement on all…

This study provides evidence of sex-typed behavior in the spontaneous play of infants between 9 1/2 and 15 1/2 months. Eight boys and eight girls at 9 1/2, 11 1/2, 13 1/2, and 15 1/2 months were observed during 15 minutes of free play with a variety of realistic toys equally divided into male, female, and neutral categories. Stereotypical,…

This study investigated whether the acuity threshold for distant targets is elevated for infants ranging in age from 24 to 63 days. Using square wave gratings and a modified staircase procedure, acuity thresholds for each of 331 infants were determined for one or more of the distances 30 cm, 60 cm, 90 cm and 150 cm. Acuity threshold was defined as…

This new addition of a government pamphlet is a guide offering advice and information to new parents. Sections include: You and Your New Baby (handling the baby, care of the mother, feeding, etc.); First Weeks at Home (equipment, formula preparation, bathing, sleeping, crying, colic, etc.); After the First Weeks (temperament, "difficult" babies,…