Examined consistency in behavioral state organization for 30 fetuses and neonates. Assessed heart rate pattern and presence or absence of eye and gross body movements during sleep, finding quiet sleep (QS), active sleep (AS), and indeterminate states in nearly identical proportions. Duration of enclosed QS epochs provided only stable measure of…

Examined the relation between infant-sibling affective involvement and the attachment security of 1-7-year-old children of 53 mothers. Secure infants reacted less negatively than insecure infants when mothers turned their attention to an older child. (RJC)

Investigated the distinctiveness and recognizability of taste-elicited facial expressions in 12 newborns two hours of age. Findings demonstrated that newborns differentiate sour and bitter from each other and from salty, and discriminate between sweet and nonsweet. Judges accurately identified newborns' responses to sucrose, but systematically…

Examined emotion regulation strategy use in 75 infants between 6 and 18 months during interactions with strangers. Compared to 12- and 18-month olds, the 6-month olds were more likely to use gaze aversion and fussing as their primary regulation strategy and were less likely to use self-soothing and self-distraction. (HTH)

Three studies examined infants' responses to tactile stimulation by adults who offered neutral facial expressions to the infants. Results implied that adult touch and facial expressions act as modulators of infant affect and attention in social exchanges. (BC)

Examined affective and motoric reactivity hypothesized to be associated with later inhibited and uninhibited behavior. Affect and reactivity were classified at four months. Brain electrical activity was assessed at 9 months, and behavior toward novelty, at 14 months. Found that greater activation in both the left and right frontal hemispheres was…

Reports two experiments which were designed to establish whether errors in infants' manual searches for objects are caused by changes in the location of an object or by the change in the relation between old and new hiding places. (JMB)

Human neonates selectively fixated patterns with curved rather than straight contours when the outermost contours differed in this form variable and when quantitative variables were controlled. Data indicated the presence from birth of a discrimination ability basic to later form perception. (Author/ED)

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)

A reanalysis of first-year longitudinal data suggests that infants' reactions to a stranger up through the middle of the first year are attributed to a wariness of the unfamiliar while by 9 months, learned aversions which have their roots in prior disturbing experiences may become an important additional determinant. (Author/JMB)

Face-to-face interaction between 26 infants and their mothers and a relatively unfamiliar figure was observed longitudinally in the home environment when the infants were between 6 and 15 weeks of age. Normative findings indicated that infants became more responsive over this time period, whereas maternal behavior did not change. (Author/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.…

The short-term reliability and long-term stability of visual habituation and dishabituation in infancy were assessed in a sample of 186 infants from four age groups (3-, 4-, 7- and 9-month-olds) seen for two within-age sessions, and in a sample of 69 infants seen longitudinally at 3, 4, 7, and 9 months of age. (Author/BN)

Multiple discriminant function analysis was conducted with data from Strange Situations. Results enable researchers to obtain attachment classifications directly from scores on interactive behavior and crying during reunion episodes. (PCB)