Forty infants (mean age 5 months) of depressed mothers and non-depressed mothers were seated in an infant seat and were exposed to four different degrees of animation, including a still-face Raggedy Ann doll (about two-feet tall suspended in front of the infant), the same doll in an animated state talking and head-nodding, an imitative mother and…

Human adults are more accurate at discriminating faces from their own race than faces from another race. This "other-race effect" (ORE) has been characterized as a reflection of face processing specialization arising from differential experience with own-race faces. We examined whether 3.5-month-old infants exhibit ORE using morphed faces on which…

Different types of smiling varying in amplitude of lip corner retraction were investigated during 2 mother-infant games--peekaboo and tickle--at 6 and 12 months and during normally occurring and perturbed games. Using Facial Action Coding System (FACS), infant smiles were coded as simple (lip corner retraction only), Duchenne (simple plus cheek…

Based on doctoral dissertation, Brown University (1966), and supported by grants GB-4151 and GB-724 from the National Science Foundation.

The purpose of this research was to assess the infant's abilities to make successive discriminations in the size of a figure. The subjects were 90 10-month-old infants. (Author/MP)

Results obtained from 27 infants ranging in age from 10 to 12 weeks indicated that infants develop expectancies regarding how stimuli occurring in particular contexts should behave based on their prior experiences with these stimuli. (Author/RH)

Two experiments investigated the ability of 3-month-olds to acquire generalized expectancies of reward and the role of these expectancies in memory retrieval. In both experiments, infants exhibited positive transfer over invariant and variable stimulus series; however, in the second experiment, violations of either expected order produced a…

Two experiments examined changes in the search of infants aged six, seven, and eight months. Experiment 1 found that the majority of infants displayed transitional search before intentional search. Experiment 2 showed that the infants' awareness of a hidden object develops gradually. (Author/RH)

Investigates infant behavior with respect to the development of object permanance. Nine-month-old infants were presented with a problem in which they saw an object hidden in one of two places but were prevented from searching for it until after the spatial relationship between infant and object was changed in some way. (Author/SS)

A series of experiments demonstrated that sharing was a characteristic activity of children 18 months of age and younger. (SB)

Preterm and term infants were given a sucrose solution, a glucose solution, or water during a test period in which the amount of their crying was measured. Sucrose reduced crying in preterm and term infants by 91% and 93%, respectively, and glucose by 86% and 81%, respectively. Water was ineffective in reducing crying in both preterm and term…

Investigated the responses of 57 infants to breast and axillary odors produced by lactating females. Two-week-old bottle-fed girls responded preferentially to the breast odor of a nursing woman when it was paired with the woman's axillary odors or odors from a nonparturient female. (RJC)

In the first study, 3-, 6-, and 9- month-olds' behavior was assessed as a stranger broke contact to stare at the infant, to look at a wall, or to look at another person. Regardless of age and the reason contact was broken, the still-face reaction did not depend on the experimenter's intention. In the second study, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds…

Infants expect objects to be solid and cohesive, and to move on continuous paths through space. In this study, we examine whether infants understand that human beings are material objects, subject to these same principles. We report that 5-month-old infants apply the constraint of continuous motion to inanimate blocks, but not to people. This…

Research in the area of infant development has endless facets of investigation. No one facet of research is more important than another, and all of the findings work in a synchronous fashion to facilitate our understanding of child development. Research on child development has proliferated across the centuries. Infant characteristics like…