Twenty normal newborns, approximately 36 hours old, were tested using an auditory temporal conditioning paradigm which consisted of a slow rise, 75 db tone played for five seconds every 25 seconds, ten times. Responses to the tones were measured by instantaneous, beat-to-beat heartrate; and the test trial was designated as the 2 1/2-second period following the last stimulus when a tone would have been expected. Two learning groups were defined: those subjects who gave significant responses on the test trial, regardless of direction, and those who did not respond. A 2 x 11 x 3 x 3 analysis of variance was run on the heartrate data with the 2 learning groups, 11 trials, 3 conditions (anticipatory response, response to onset of tone, and response to offset of tone) x 3 heartbeats (the slope of the three heartbeats associated with the responses to the tone, summed across the three conditions). Although the groups main effect only approaches significance (p<.08), the trial x beats interaction (p<.04) shows that the first trial startle pattern is followed by decreases in trials 2-4 and habituation in trial 5. Findings show that it is possible to obtain HR decelerations in newborn babies to a temporal conditioning paradigm and that the HR curves for newborn learning behavior are similar to those found in older subjects. (Author)