Process praise (i.e., praise for effort) facilitates childhood persistence. However, less is known about the mechanism by which process praise influences persistence in infancy. Here, we propose that well-timed process praise reinforces the link between effort and success, thus promoting persistence in young children. In Experiment 1, U.S. infants…

From their origins, Italian early childhood services paid attention to the transition from family to childcare centre, explicitly referring to attachment theory. In the present study, the "Parent Attachment Diary" was adapted and applied within a childcare centre context to examine the development of infants' relationship with their…

The current study focuses on infants' sleep-wake states in group child care and relations of those states to infant-caregiver interactions. Qualitative case studies were conducted with four infants (3-7 months old) in an infant room at a child care centre. Video-recordings were the main format for data collection with the four infants and video…

Research Findings: This study examines the frequency of reasoning talk used by 56 educators during their naturally occurring play interactions with infants in their early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers. Using Hasan's semantic framework, reasons were coded as social (based on social rules) or logical (based on rules of nature). The…

Caring for infants is a significant cultural activity, yet the subjective nature of this work has received little attention in socioculturally informed infant pedagogies. This article presents an alternative way of conceptualising the subjective and affective nature of infant care, and critiques the "downward" sociological focus applied…

Relations between infant-mother attachment security at 15 months and infants' (N = 206) joint attention behaviors (a) with an experimenter at 8 and 15 months, and (b) with their mothers at 15 months were investigated. No concurrent or longitudinal relations were observed between attachment security and infants' tendency to respond to an…

Child care teachers cope with juggling multiple competing demands: (1) managing relationships with parents; (2) coping with individual infant temperaments; and (3) meeting the group needs of the other infants in their care. Infant teachers often play a unique role in that they may be the first adults to listen and understand what the experience of…

Notes that early infancy, rather than being a period of helplessness, is a period of active exploration and reciprocal interaction with caregivers. Includes activities caregivers can engage in with infants to stimulate infant sensory abilities. (HTH)

Describes the significance of culture in infant care. Questions the universality of child development theory and research findings. Discusses cultural issues related to sleeping routines, including co-sleeping arrangements, the role of cultural elders or expert specialists, consequences of co-sleeping, and using an evolutionary, cross-cultural,…

The behaviors of 57 mothers, their preschool-age children, and their infants were observed using a modified "strange situation" to explore the older siblings' potential to act as subsidiary attachment figures. Gamelike tasks were used to assess the conceptual perspective-taking abilities of the older children. (Author/RH)

"Child Care Health Connections" is a bimonthly newsletter published by the California Childcare Health Program (CCHP), a community-based program of the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing, Department of Family Health Care Nursing. The goals of the newsletter are to promote and support a healthy and safe environment…

Focusing on infants' physical attractiveness and behavior, this study explores reasons some infants receive greater amounts and different types of attention from adults than do others. Subjects were observed in 21 groups of three, consisting of one adult and two same-sex infants. Adult subjects were unmarried, childless undergraduate women…

Discusses the causes of shaken baby syndrome and how to recognize, respond to, and prevent it. Identifies horseplay to avoid and recommends never shaking baby even for apnea. Offers 12 tips for working with crying babies and includes ten discussion questions to test knowledge of the syndrome. (DLH)

This report describes the development and testing of a screening method designed to describe the Cornell Infant Nursery environment and infant activities in quantitative terms. The scanning procedure developed is basically a time-sampling way of collecting data on the normal operation of the nursery. Two long lists of variables (categories of…

This study investigated whether the interactions of biological mothers and their offspring differ from those of institutional caregivers and infants in their charge. The subjects--43 three-month full-time Greek infants (22 home-reared infants and 21 from the institution, Babies' Center Metera) were studied while interacting with their primary…