Designed for child caregivers, this guide to research on infants and toddlers offers references to works that provide reasons for high quality care and increase caregivers' understanding of ways to facilitate the optimal development of babies. Citations concern abuse, attachment, caregiver role, child care effects, child care quality, child…

Observations suggest that 12-month-old children show little evidence of possession rules, while 18- and 24-month-olds are still coming to differentiate purely personal possession rules from shared possession rules that take into account the other child's status or rights as a possessor. Children 12 months old exhibited the highest frequency of…

This study examined the ability of 59 2- and 3-year-old children to monitor goal-directed activities with respect to an anticipated outcome. The study focused on two skills: error monitoring and error avoidance through anticipatory monitoring. To elicit monitoring, a variety of simple tasks were presented to the children. In each, a successful…

The purpose of this research was to examine 18- to 30-month-old children's use of scripts for representing common events. A script is defined as a model that specifies the roles and props appropriate to an event and identifies a sequence of acts for achieving the goal defined by the event. Two aspects of script knowledge were investigated: (1) the…

A study of Kagan's peer play situation for measuring heritable influences on children's behavioral inhibition (that is, shyness) drew its data from the large, multimethod, multivariate MacArthur Longitudinal Twin Study. The MacArthur study examined behavioral inhibition across four ages and two situations, looking for possible sex differences and…

The study examined actual communicative expressions of five 3-year-old profoundly, prelingually deaf children and their mothers, along with nonverbal contextual information. Each subject was videotaped in the home while interacting with the mother in toy play and usual daily activity. Results identified more than 4,500 communicative expressions,…

Reported are studies attempting to describe the sorts of skills that toddlers need if they are to successfully complete intentional, or volitional, actions. A variety of tasks designed for children 15 to 35 months of age were administered; additional data were gathered that were relevant to the child's awareness of producing an outcome and…

This study examined the playfulness of toddlers, ages 18-24 months, participating in a situational context with a non-maternal adult play partner. The goal was to investigate adult interaction styles and outcomes in terms of children's playful dispositions. Play behaviors were observed and coded from videotapes. A qualitative analysis of…

The purpose of this study was to clarify and empirically examine the role played by a toddler's self comforting skill in facilitating the separation-individuation process. On the basis of psychoanalytic ideas and empirical findings it was predicted that self comforting would be positively related to both secure attachment and self awareness. It…

The purpose of this study was to extend understanding of affiliative interaction between parents and toddlers and to correlate affiliative behaviors with frequency and type of mothers' and fathers' caregiving activities, play experiences, and support-control interactions. The research was conducted with 10 families who each had one toddler between…

The purpose of this study was to provide a description of the kinds of prosocial behavior that 2- and 5-year-old children naturally exhibit. Caretakers were asked for their observations of children's prosocial behavior in natural settings. Specifically, 40 parents and teachers who had daily interactions with 2-year-olds were asked to name the most…

This study investigated questions asked during two types of mother-child interaction and demonstrated ways in which mother-child dyads may structure their interactions differently in different settings. Participants were 16 first-born girls between 2.5 and 3.5 years of age who were videotaped on four occasions when they played in their home for 15…

This study explored how toddlers' increasing social sophistication and increasing ability to coordinate attention between the social and object realm are reflected in toddlers' mastery play. A total of 57 toddlers (24 boys and 33 girls from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds) between the ages of 15 and 35 months participated in 7 mastery…

This study investigated the association between the nature of parent-caregiver relationships and child behavior and examined the parent-caregiver relationship as a social support. A total of 120 parents of 2-year-olds who used child care at least 20 hours a week were randomly selected. Participants were asked to complete a survey that included a…

The paper describes interventions which can be used by parents of infants or toddlers with feeding problems. General considerations center on the critical nature of food intake, the importance of controlling events associated with feeding, and the reinforcing nature of certain adults. The paper suggests the need for selecting interventions which…