Notes that 4-month olds who show a low threshold to become distressed and motorically aroused to unfamiliar stimuli are more likely than others to become fearful and subdued during early childhood, while infants who show a high arousal threshold are more likely to become bold and sociable. Considers implications for psychopathology and relation…

Results of this study of 72 4-month-old infants suggest caution in using an overt demonstration of habituation as a necessary index of perceptual learning. (Author/MG)

Evaluated brainstem auditory evoked responses (BAERs) on 10- to 12-year-olds who had been classified as high or low reactive to unfamiliar stimuli at 4 months of age. Found that children previously classified as high reactive at 4 months had larger wave V components than did low reactive children, possibly suggesting greater excitability in…

A follow-up investigation of 68 children 10 years of age who had been assessed originally at ages 4, 8, 13, and 27 months, did not reveal strong relations between infant variables (such as attentiveness, vocal excitability, irritability, or activity) and reflection-impulsivity, intelligence quotient, or reading ability at age 10. (JMB)

Groups of 7 1/2-month-old infants heard 1 of 8 episodes consisting of no, slight, moderate, or large discrepancy between a habituated standard and a transformed auditory stimulus. Patterns of cardiac deceleration supported the hypothesis that attentiveness is an inverted-U function of the degree of discrepancy between stimulus event and schema.…

Describes the reaction of infants and their attention to events by actions such as vocalizing, smiling or a change in respiration rate. Suggests that understanding of infant selectivity and duration of attention should provide insight into the nature of psychological growth. (JM)

Four-month-old infants from Boston, Dublin, and Beijing were administered the same battery of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli. The Chinese infants were significantly less active, irritable, and vocal than the Boston and Dublin samples, with American infants showing the highest level of reactivity. (Author)

Deals with biologically based sex differences in early childhood. Strategy is to assume that the earlier a particular behavioral difference appears in the life cycle, the more likely it is influenced by biological factors. Such biological influences may lead to differences in fear, cognitive functioning and variability between boys and girls.…

The popular view among American psychologists has been that there is a continuity of psychological structure that is shaped by early experience. Data gathered in studies of Guatemalan villages imply serious discontinuities in the development of particular cognitive competencies and capacities for affect through preadolescence. The first two years…

The development of two temperamental characteristics--the tendency to approach (uninhibited) and the tendency to avoid (inhibited) unfamiliar events--may be partially controlled by genetic predisposition. Discusses the results of a study indicating that the level of motor responses and crying in response to unfamiliar stimuli in four month olds…