Investigated emotional responses to the still-face paradigm in preterm and full-term black infants. Preterm infants spent less time than full-term infants displaying big smiles in one episode, and showed a less pronounced decrease in big smiles in a second episode. Results confirm the robustness of the still-face paradigm. (HTH)

Deals with sex differences in three types of nonelicited newborn behaviors, easily observable with the unaided eye: (1) states, (2) activity levels, and (3) several discrete behaviors such as spontaneous behavior and specific motor patterns. Subjects were 289 male and 272 female Black infants. (MP)

Argues that black mothers in the U.S. are adversely affected by the white stereotype of the quiet passive baby, citing evidence that in Africa, black neonates show a rapid growth in motor development, while in Mexico, Mayan Indian babies, just minutes old, demonstrate a precocious development in sensory perception. (Author/JM)

This document reports a study investigating the effects of father absence on measures of cognitive, social, and motivational development in infancy. The sample included 54 black infants, 27 of whom were classified "father-absent." This classification was based on two indices, (1) a dichotomy of father-absent or father-present based on…

This study examined differences between premature and fullterm infants and their mothers in three areas: infant characteristics, early mother-infant interaction and mothers' emotional involvement when the child was 9 months old. Forty-nine low-income black mothers and their infants (26 prematures, 23 fullterms) participated in the study. In…

Examined effects of prenatal drug exposure on infants born preterm and full-term to African American mothers. Found more extreme fetal growth deficits in later-born infants, and more extreme irritability increases in earlier-born infants. Gestation length did not moderate cardiorespiratory reactivity effects. Exposure effects occurred for…

The purpose of this study was to examine the social support network of mothers with high risk infants and the relation between support and mother-infant interactive behavior. Two issues were investigated: who gave what kind of support to the mother as a function of her infant's birth status; and the relation between type of support and…

The effects of low, full (normal) and high birthweights on the broad range of neonatal behaviors measured by the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale were investigated in a study which also attempted to replicate results of the authors' earlier study of the Brazelton Scale. Data from the original sample of 52 infants were included in the later…