Although previous research with adult humans and nonhumans has suggested a relationship between sleep behavior and brain serotonin levels, no studies have been made of the relationship of normal children's or infants' sleep patterns to serotonin levels, tryptophan metabolism, or diet. This study investigates the relationship between dietary…

The major purpose of this study was to examine bimodal coordination of featural stimuli in infancy. Specifically of interest was infant sensitivity to the auditory and visual combinations that characterize male and female stimulus configurations. A total of 27 male and 27 female subjects of 3, 6, and 9 months of age participated in the study.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the alternative forms of young children's help-seeking in free play and problem-solving contexts. A total of 72 children aged 18 (N=36) and 24 (N=36) months were observed in pairs in free play and problem-solving settings, as well as in different social contexts--same-age versus mixed-age pairing. Both…

Looking beyond the overall effectiveness of sensory stimulation, this study aimed to identify specific aspects of infant behavior most responsive to early stimulation. Subjects were 65 premature infants with a birth weight of less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces and a gestational age under 37 weeks. Experimental group members had completed a multimodal…

An experiment was designed to demonstrate that infants as young as 3 months of age would show face/voice coordination in matched and mismatched conditions if exposure trials were extended to 1 minute in duration. A total of 16 infants participated in each of four experimental conditions. Conditions were (1) mother present with mother's voice…

Research has demonstrated the occurrence of two structurally distinct modes of vocalization in the infant/mother pair--coaction and alternation--that change developmentally over the first year of the infant's life. The present study investigated the vocalization latencies of three infant/mother pairs at three stages of infant development: at 10…

Pressure variations applied by newborns and by infants 1 to 4 months old to rubber nipples were recorded in three different procedures under no-fluid conditions. In the first study, infants were presented for 90 seconds with novel nipples varying in shape and in shape plus material. Results suggested that a developmental trend existed for an…

The influence of negative affect on the retrieval of information from memory during infancy was investigated in two studies through the use of an operant conditioning paradigm. The procedure used, known as "mobile conjugate reinforcement," involves a free operant task in which an infant is reinforced for footkicking by the movement of an…

Studies on peer interaction in infancy seem to imply that social group structure emerges from infants' and toddlers' dyadic interactions. In contrast to this position, the present study hypothesizes that attention structure may be a major precursor for social group structure. To investigate that possibility, an attempt was made to develop a…

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…

Videotapes of mother/infant pairs were made to assess the influence of selected infant and maternal characteristics on parent/child interaction. Characteristics of interest were infant mental age, infant chronological age, infant gender, and parity. Subjects were 37 mothers (20 primiparous, 17 multiparous) and their infants (19 males, 18 females)…

The objectives of this study were to investigate (1) whether prior opinions concerning a child's sex influence the qualities attributed to the child; (2) whether differences exist in the responses of male and female raters; and (3) the effect of forced-choice responses vis-a-vis non-forced responses. An 8-minute videotape of a 22-month-old infant…

The primary purpose of this study was to describe the linguistic behavior exhibited by a female subject (age 2 years, 4 months) during naturally occurring social interaction with children of different ages. Verbal and nonverbal behavior were studied; of additional interest were variables influencing the emergence of linguistic behavior. Data were…

Discussing findings from three studies, this report focuses on questions mothers ask their children while looking at picture books and recent family photographs. In the first study, 30 mothers and their 12-, 15-, and 18-month-old children "read" a simple ABC book that had one picture for each letter in the alphabet. In the second study,…

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…