Examined parents' and 4-month-old infants' behavior during face-to-face interactions. Results indicated that mothers and fathers were equally sensitive to their infants, and that infants' affect and regulatory behaviors were stable across mother-infant and father-infant situations in the still-face model. (BC)

This study examined motivation (prosocial goals), individual characteristics (sex, ethnicity, and grade), and friendship characteristics (affective quality, interaction frequency, and friendship stability) in relation to middle adolescents' prosocial behavior over time. Ninth- and 10th-grade students (N=208) attending a suburban, mid-Atlantic…

The effects of the presence of an attachment object upon preschoolers' emotionality and discrimination performance in a novel learning situation were evaluated. Blanket-attached and blanket-nonattached children were assigned to one of three task conditions: (1) mother present, (2) blanket present, (3) no familiar object present. (Author/SB)

When mothers of 12 infants 10 weeks of age displayed noncontingent, practiced facial and vocal expressions of joy, anger, and sadness, infants responded differently to each expression. Infants' matching responses to maternal affects were only part of complex but predictable behavioral patterns that indicate meaningful affect states and possibly…

A longitudinal study addressed the question of stability of individual expressive behaviors and replicated the basic findings of a cross-sectional study. Subjects were 25 infants for whom videotape records were available of four diptheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) inocculations scheduled at roughly 2, 4, 6, and 18 months. (Author/RH)

Ninety 5- and 6-year-old children equally divided by sex were assigned randomly to one of three emotion-inducing conditions (self-focused happy, other-focused happy, or neutral emotion-inducing) and then given varying numbers of rewards. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive processes initiated by emotional states that may influence…

Happy or sad moods were experimentally induced in elementary-aged children by asking them to reminisce about things that made them happy or sad. Voice affect (with verbal content filtered out) was compared to a baseline neutral condition. (Author/SS)

Three experiments using "backward reasoning" found that: age differences occurred in predicting surprise relative to false belief; by age five or six, children claim that surprise occurs when gaining knowledge where one was previously ignorant or held a false belief; by age seven to nine, they understand that surprise will more likely…

To determine whether 1 or 2 dimensions of infant emotionality best characterized infant functioning, parental reports (10 months) and elicited emotion (12-13 months) were examined. Found that early positivity (12-13 months) predicted later positivity (18-20 months) better than later negativity, with the reverse being true of early negativity.…

Facial responsiveness to pleasant and unpleasant odors was examined in 5- to 12-year-old children. Children failed to display reflex-like patterns, but exhibited facial configurations that varied according to odor and social condition. Results suggest that facial responsiveness to odors is flexible and able to reorganize and supports emotional and…

Observed 9- to 14-year-old physically abused and nonabused children engaged in tasks with a close friend. Found that dyads with an abused child displayed less intimacy and more conflict than dyads with nonabused children. Compared to other dyads, those with abused boys displayed more negative affect during games, and those with abused girls…

Examined were electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetries during the presence of discrete facial signs of emotion among 10-month-old infants who were tested in a standard stranger- and mother-approach paradigm that included a brief separation from mother. Data underscore the usefulness of EEG measures of hemispheric activation in differentiating among…

Provides an overview of research on infant and child emotion regulation, beginning with consideration of emotion as a set of responses to particular stimuli. Emotion regulation is the process through which activation in one response domain serves to alter, titrate, or modulate activation in another response domain. (RH)

Evaluates the validity of extrapolating research findings from the Monadic Phases Coding System (MP) to the Maximally Discriminative Facial Movement Coding System by coding videotapes of 12 4-month-old infants engaged in mother-infant interaction. (RJC)