Three-year-old children and their families were observed during a dinner time situation in which all family members were present. Study results suggest how the mealtime experience, filled with information concerning sex-role behavior, social manners and habits, and interpersonal relations between parents and children, is a central multifaceted…

Investigates relations among young preschoolers' social cognitive abilities, expression of emotions, and prosocial responses to others' emotions. Results suggested that subjects' social cognitive acuity and differential responding to emotion have heretofore been underrated. (Author/DR)

Examines the childrearing correlates of impulse control in 18 mothers and their 14-month-old toddlers. Shows that mothers who relied on physical punishment had infants who were more likely to ignore maternal prohibitions, to manipulate breakable objects, and to show low levels of nonverbal competence seven months later. (HOD)

Investigates whether the hypothesis that the mother's work situation influences parents' perceptions of their three-year-old children can explain reported differences in effects of maternal employment on the child. The sample consisted of 152 white, two-parent families. Results support the generalization that maternal employment may entail both…

Examines associations among contemporaneous measures of marital quality, parenting attitudes and behavior, and toddler development in two-parent families. Seventy-five families with one 20-month-old child served as subjects. Results generally indicated that good marital quality was associated with optimal toddler functioning and sensitive…

Free play and elicited language samples were obtained monthly for 10 to 12 months from five late talking children. Analysis indicated that three of the children resolved their late onset of speech by 33 to 35 months of age. Both quantitative factors (e.g., limited phonetic inventory) and qualitative factors (e.g., atypical error patterns) were…

The concurrent validity of the Battelle Developmental Inventory was explored by correlating Battelle results with scores from the Bayley Scales in 30 infants with known or suspected disabilities. Both the pattern and strength of the obtained correlations support use of the Battelle to measure development in infants with handicaps. (Author/JDD)

This study, involving three toddlers with language impairments, evaluated effectiveness of a lexical facilitation strategy designed to increase the salience or informativeness of target objects relative to other objects and actions in the context. Complications in employing the experimental task in intervention settings are discussed, along with…

This case study of a toddler with autism whose parents had videotaped her development from birth showed that the child's behavior and development were essentially normal for the first year but that she then became withdrawn in only a few months. It is suggested that early communicative screening tests might have identified the child's earliest…

This study investigated developmental patterns of acquisition of the unrounded U.S. English vowels, by following 6 normally developing children from 22 to 30 months of age. Three classes of production errors were identified: intertrial production variability, context-sensitive substitutions, and context-free systematic substitution patterns.…

Professionals and 16 mothers of disabled infants/toddlers completed the Evaluation and Programing System-I and the Parent Form Level I, respectively. Results indicated moderate to high correlations between professionals' assessments and mothers' assessments, though mothers tended to rate children higher. (Author/JDD)

Toddlers with Down's syndrome (n=42) were presented with situations in which the primary focus alternated between an object stimulus and a social stimulus. The experimental subjects monitored their environment in the same manner as did the 25 control subjects (matched for mental age) during object mastery but had a more focused attention style…

Findings of three studies indicate that young children with Down syndrome perform similarly to typical controls matched on mental ages (MAs) of approximately 3 years. However, by developmental age of 4 years, children with Down syndrome performed worse than both MA-matched typical children and children with non-Down syndrome types of mental…

This investigation addresses problems of defining verbal imitation, and suggests solutions by analyzing verbal interactions between two children and their mothers. Children were between 18 and 35 months old, with a mean length of utterance between 1.4 and 4.2 morphemes. Analyses focus upon the uses these children made of maternal models; 10…

Tested were the impact of rejection and acceptance experienced by adolescent mothers during childhood; social support received after their baby's birth; and infant irritability on angry, punitive maternal behavior. Possible links between maternal behavior and indices of child anger, noncompliance, low confidence, and social withdrawal were also…