This study assessed children's visual recognition memory at seven months; their language development up to four years; and their intelligence up to five years. A greater preference for novelty in infancy was associated with later comprehension and expressive language and higher IQ scores. The relationship between novelty preference and IQ was…

Assessed daily hassles of parenting in parents of children aged 9-12, 18-24, and 30-36 months. Reported hassles were significantly greater with increasing child age; mothers and fathers did not differ in amount of hassle perceived. Perceptions of hassles were related to indices of support and social cognition. Parental social support moderated…

Two scales for measuring international health status are proposed as alternatives to the current measure--infant mortality rate. Health Status 1 is an interval scale combining infant mortality and literacy rate. Health Status 2 comprises these statistics, plus death rate for persons 65 years and older, and mental hospital admissions. (SLD)

Discusses Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, federal prekindergarten legislation. Describes task of state legislatures to operationalize concepts in this legislation. Identifies subtypes of children with special needs and considers issues in service delivery to prekindergartners. Concludes that elementary school counselors have much to…

This study of 82 hearing-impaired children (ages 6 to 36 months) sought to provide normative data concerning their communication efforts and to document the course of development of these earliest communication efforts. The study found that certain cognitive abilities and strategies are prerequisite to the development of certain language…

This study found that interactions between mothers and deaf infants (n=20) were positively influenced by social support provided to mothers in the infants' early months, mothers' visual and tactile responsiveness, and infants' ability to cope with interactive stress. The relationship between early experience and later language development was not…

Administered the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory to 25 bilingual (English/Spanish) and 35 monolingual children who were furnishing data for longitudinal study. Assessment of the degree of overlap between bilingual children's lexical development in their two languages showed that they developed early vocabulary at the same rate as…

Dialogues between hearing mothers and their prelinguistic hearing-impaired (n=3) or normally hearing (n=7) infants were analyzed. Mothers of hearing-impaired infants contributed a greater percent of dyadic topic initiations than did other mothers. No group differences were found in responsiveness of mothers or infants. (Author/DB)

Studied parent-staff communication during morning and afternoon transition times in 16 proprietary day care centers. Found that communication varied by center, and communication occurred more between parents and staff of infants and toddlers than parents and staff of preschoolers. Age differences may have been a result of staffs' rather than…

This paper reviews research on disturbances of children with developmental delays and handicaps in responding to complex stimuli, suggesting that such disturbances may deleteriously influence behavioral/neurophysiological development. Intervention programs for teaching children with autism a generalized set to use in responding to complex…

The results from four early intervention evaluation studies are described in relationship to their impact on parent-child interaction. Intervention effects on child development were unlikely to occur unless mothers modified their style of interacting. Only their level of responsiveness was associated with positive developmental outcomes.…

Compared 6-month-old hearing infants' responsiveness to infant-directed and adult-directed signing. Results replicated those found with deaf infants, namely that infants showed greater attentional and affective responsiveness to infant-directed sign than to adult-directed sign, suggesting that infants are prepared to detect sign motherese…

A study compared 26,460 maltreated infants who entered foster care between 1989 and 1994 with a random sample of 68,401 other infants. Infants in care were more than twice as likely to have single parents and low birth weight, and twice as likely to have been born with a birth abnormality. (Author/CR)

Evaluated a multimodal inservice training program designed to enhance the competence of foster parents caring for infants with prenatal substance effects, and to promote an intent to foster such infants. Findings suggested the future foster-parent training efforts in this area should focus on knowledge and skill attainment. (Author)

A survey explored funding strategies used in 16 community-based programs serving infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. Results pointed to two general funding sources: pooling or decategorization of public funds, and use of donated/raised funds for use by one or more programs to pay for unmet needs. (Author/CR)