A total of 80 infants, divided equally among 4 age groups, participated in a contingency learning task. Of these infants, 48 received an audiovisual stimulus contingent on arm movement, and 32 served as a yoked control group. Findings indicated that exposure to a period in which the infant's expectancy regarding contingent outcomes is violated…

In this study of the visual placing response (an extension of the paws or arms on approach to a visual surface), infants extended their arms almost as much to a gray surface as to a patterned one. (Author/CS)

Study supported in part by Research Grant MH-13703-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Two-year-olds' reactions to strangers were related to ratings of their emotionality, sociability and activity and to ratings of parental love and control by both fathers and mothers. Each child received two sessions with strangers, one male and one female. Four times per session a stranger, in a friendly manner, approached each child as it sat in…

This paper describes the initial organization of the infant's reaction to having his vision occluded by an opaque cloth; traces the development of this reaction over the first six months; and probes the role the occlusion of vision plays in provoking the reaction. Fifty videotaped sessions of infants during two conditions - eyes covered with an…

A looming paradigm was used to determine what depth information infants process in addition to that provided by the expansion of a single, closed contour of an object. A total of 18 male and 15 female infants aged 22-48 days watched a film in which the circular elements and inter-element spaces of the projected image alternately expanded and…

The objective of this study was to provide intensive, consistent experience in the following developmental areas: relation to objects and vocal and gestural imitation. The curriculum was developed in an inner city industry-based day care center with 14 infants aged 8 to 19 months initially. The Hunt-Uzgiris Scales measuring development in these…

To document movement patterns and to examine developmental interrelationships, the ontogeny of rooting, lip, lateral tongue, mouth opening, biting, and Babkin reflexes and the development of emerging chewing behaviors were observed in two normal infants over a period from 1 week to 35 weeks of age. (Author/RH)

Development of object identity was studied within the framework of a hiding game that varied the objects themselves instead of their spatial positions. (Authors)

Data from infants unable to complete experimental sessions were compared to those for whom there were complete data. Results suggest that the elimination of large numbers of infants may have a potentially biasing effect on reported data. (Authors)

In two sessions, the duration and tempo of toy play of infants and reaction of frustration were measured. Correlations indicated a general relationship between response persistence during play and attempts to escape frustrating situations. (Author/CM)

Three experiments examined whether newborns are sensitive to an operant-conditioning task involving unprepared relation between a response and a stimuli. Found that newborns tested under the High-Amplitude Sucking procedure were involved in an operant-learning situation, in that an increase in sucking rates could be obtained after an auditory…

Discusses important recent strides in the documentation and understanding of the infant's learning and memory capacity. Focuses on the psychobiology of learning, hedonic mediation of approach-avoidance and learned behavior, infant memory, and critical conditions of infancy and behavioral misadventures. (RJC)