Discusses the reasons that newborns and young infants cry, the communicative effect and perception of crying, crying in sick and healthy infants, the sound spectograph, and crying for the use of clinical diagnostics. (RJC)

In his article "The 'Effects' of Infant Day Care Reconsidered," Jay Belsky (see PS 017 108) concludes that maternal employment puts infants at risk for developing emotional insecurity and social maladjustment. After a review of Belsky's and other research, a different conclusion is offered in this paper. It is agreed that infants whose…

Human infants are sensitive from birth to some intrinsic properties of objects; they are also sensitive to position. During the first weeks of life, pertinent dimensions of differentiation between objects are relative to global properties of the entire object or pattern. Position is defined by the direction of a displacement: the trajectory…

This document reviews a number of recent studies written in French that investigate the nature of communication between 2-year-old infants and others. The review includes three parts. The first part focuses on studies aiming to constitute a behavioral catalog of the child. Characteristically, these studies offer a posteriori interpretations of…