This study examined the relationship between smile type (basic, Duchenne, duplay) and play type (object, physical, vocal, book reading) during parent-infant videotaped interactions at home. Loglinear analyses revealed that different types of smiles occurred during different types of play more often than expected if distributed equally. Different…

Examined extent to which parent sensitivity, infant affect, and affect regulation at 4 months predicted mother- and father-infant attachment classifications at 1 year. Found that affect regulation and maternal sensitivity discriminated infant-mother attachment groups. The association between maternal sensitivity and infant-mother attachment was…

Observed infants' manual gestures while playing with mothers. Infants were more likely than mothers to request objects and less likely to respond to requests for objects. Vocalization accompanying requests increased with age. Infant gazing was most likely during offers that infants initiated without preceding maternal request. Unsolicited offers…

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)

Examined role of infant and toddler temperament in predicting 2-year olds' empathy. Found that children showed relatively more concern for mother's distress, but were also responsive to unfamiliar victims. Unreacting infants showing little affect also showed less empathy toward the unfamiliar adult almost two years later. Inhibition toward…

Infant imitation is considered a significant component of social, cognitive, and language development. Observation of 20 infants and their mothers in 2 naturalistic settings at 4 separate ages revealed dyads' imitation and matching in vocal, verbal and action behaviors. Verbal matching increased over the second year, suggesting relation of dyads'…

Examined relationship of maternal sensitivity and infant temperament to attachment security among Korean 1-year-olds. Found that securely attached infants showed more secure-base behaviors and compliance, enjoyed physical contact, and showed fewer fussy/difficult behaviors than did other infants. Infant gender, but not security status, related to…

Background and method: The aim of this study was to examine whether a mother's sensitivity towards her one-year-old infant is related to the infant's propensity to engage in "triadic" relations--that is, to orientate to an adult's engagement with objects and events in the world, for example in sharing experiences with an adult. In order to…

This study assessed the quality of caregiver-infant feeding interaction with 3- and 9-month-old infants. Findings on several measures indicated that caregivers appear to be more vigilant to their infants' needs at three months than at nine months, although infants became clearer in their cues by nine months. Maternal personality was not related to…

A total of 48 mother-infant pairs were observed and rated in face-to-face interaction when the infant was 4 months old, and in the Ainsworth Strange Situation when the infant was 12 months old. Mothers' marital satisfaction and social support, and the involvement and support of the child's father, were assessed. The mothers constituted a low…

This study examined infants' reactions to new people by manipulating the social context in which infants became acquainted with new people. Infants (N=48) met someone new in the presence of another unfamiliar adult and their mothers. The new acquaintance either: (1) chatted and worked on a puzzle with the mother; (2) remained silent and worked on…

This study examined sequential dependencies in behavior of 10 mother-infant dyads recorded when the infants were at 7 and 20 weeks of age in an effort to determine the extent to which individuals behave responsively to their partners during interactions. Ten maternal actions and 10 infant actions were selected in face-to-face interactions. Actions…

A study is described, the results of which indicate that mothers can recognize the cries of their own infants from tape-recorded cry samples with few instances of confusion, and that the sex of an unknown infant cannot be reliably identified using a simple auditory identification paradigm. (Author/RM)

Presented are practical ideas parents can use to prevent and manage excessive crying during their infant's first year. Designed to foster the development of children's physical and emotional independence, the ideas discussed concern (1) the changing functions of crying throughout the infant's first year, (2) causes of crying, (3) the intellectual…

This paper questions social interaction studies that use frequency or duration of behaviors in mother-infant relations as reliable measures of infant interactive competence. An infant's high score on frequency and duration tests may falsely indicate that the child is more communicative than other subjects. Such results may suggest that mother and…