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Influences of information processing and disengagement in infants' looking behaviourEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study considers the joint influences of information processing and disengagement in looking behaviour within a habituation paradigm. Six-month-old infants were habituated, during which their heart rate (HR) was measured. A parametric model of habituation yielded for each infant parameter estimates of their habituation performance. These parameters were interpreted as assessing information processing and disengagement. Corresponding measures were obtained from the HR data. The HR measures and habituation model parameter estimates were significantly correlated, as predicted. In addition, an attention getter, pres...
Source: Infant and Child Development - November 16, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Holger Domsch, Arnold Lohaus, Hoben Thomas Source Type: journals

Ultrasound for evaluation of fetal neurobehavioural development: from 2-D to 4-D ultrasoundEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present the latest 4-D sonographic techniques and recent 4-D sonographic studies on fetal behaviour, especially fetal whole-body movements and facial expressions in all three trimesters of pregnancy, and the continuation of behaviour from the fetal to neonatal period. 2-D does not appear capable or comparable to 4-D ultrasound in terms of evaluating early fetal facial expressions. Moreover, we describe the safety of 3-D/4-D ultrasound during pregnancy. This novel technique may assist in the evaluation of fetal behaviour, and offer potential advantages relative to conventional 2-D ultrasound. 4-D ultrasound may be an imp...
Source: Infant and Child Development - November 16, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Toshiyuki Hata, Shu-Yan Dai, Genzo Marumo Source Type: journals

Children's ability to distinguish between enjoyment and non-enjoyment smilesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
was investigated by presenting participants with short video excerpts of smiles. Enjoyment smiles differed from non-enjoyment smiles by greater symmetry and by appearance changes produced in the eye region by the Cheek Raiser action. The results indicate that 6- and 7-year-old children have the abilities to detect these differences and are able to interpret them with above chance-level accuracy. Sensitivity was higher for the symmetry of the smiles than for the appearance changes produced in the eye region and improved in later childhood. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (Source: Infant and Child Development)
Source: Infant and Child Development - November 5, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Pierre Gosselin, Mélanie Perron, Reem Maassarani Source Type: journals

Maternal socialization and child temperament as predictors of emotion regulation in Turkish preschoolersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study investigated the role of maternal socialization and temperament in Turkish preschool children's emotion regulation. Participants consisted of 145 preschoolers (79 boys, 69 girls; Mage= 62 months), their mothers, and daycare teachers from middle-high socioeconomic suburbs of Istanbul. Maternal child-rearing practices and emotion socialization behaviours were examined together as interconnected constituents of parenting in relation to emotion regulation skills in young children. Mothers completed a set of questionnaires that measured their child's emotion regulation and temperament as well as their own emotion soc...
Source: Infant and Child Development - October 9, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Bilge Yagmurlu, Ozge Altan Source Type: journals

With a little help from my friends: maternal social support, via parenting, promotes willingness to share in preschoolers born to young mothersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Little is known about prosocial behaviours in children of young mothers. This longitudinal study involved 44 young mother (age (Source: Infant and Child Development)
Source: Infant and Child Development - October 6, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Rosie Ensor, Claire Hughes Source Type: journals

Mother-child and father-child mutuality in two contexts: consequences for young children's peer relationshipsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examines the role that context plays in links between relative balance, or mutuality in parent-child interaction and children's social competence. Sixty-three toddlers and their parents were observed in a laboratory play session and caregiving activity (i.e. eating snack). Mutuality was operationalised as the relative balance in (a) partners' compliance to initiations, and (b) partners' expression of positive emotion. Caregivers rated children's social competence with peers, and children's prosocial and aggressive behaviour with peers was observed in their childcare arrangement. Contextual differences were obser...
Source: Infant and Child Development - September 20, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Eric W. Lindsey, Penny R. Cremeens, Yvonne M. Caldera Source Type: journals

Does why we reminisce reflect how you behave? Linking maternal reminiscing goals to child behavioural and emotional problemsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that joint mother-child reminiscence may reflect both explicit and implicit socialization goals. The present study investigates mothers' explicit socialization goals that may be enacted during joint reminiscence in relation to children's behavioural and emotional problems. Two hundred and sixty-five mothers of 3- to 8-year-old children completed an online survey that included a measure of seven reminiscing goals (emotional understanding, behaviour control, bonding, interdependence, entertainment, memory skill development, and maintaining peer relationships). In addition, mothe...
Source: Infant and Child Development - September 17, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Sarah Kulkofsky Source Type: journals

What the eyes already 'know': using eye movement measurement to tap into children's implicit numerical magnitude representationsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
To date, a number of studies have demonstrated the existence of mismatches between children's implicit and explicit knowledge at certain points in development that become manifest by their gestures and gaze orientation in different problem solving contexts. Stimulated by this research, we used eye movement measurement to investigate the development of basic knowledge about numerical magnitude in primary school children. Sixty-six children from grades one to three (i.e. 6-9 years) were presented with two parallel versions of a number line estimation task of which one was restricted to behavioural measures, whereas the other...
Source: Infant and Child Development - September 14, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Angela Heine, Verena Thaler, Sascha Tamm, Stefan Hawelka, Michael Schneider, Joke Torbeyns, Bert De Smedt, Lieven Verschaffel, Elsbeth Stern, Arthur M. Jacobs Source Type: journals

Unfamiliar face recognition in children with autistic spectrum disordersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We investigated unfamiliar face recognition in low-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) using a 'part-of-face' method. This method has not previously been used for unfamiliar faces with this population. The 'part-of-face' procedure provides measures of both face recognition accuracy and of processing style. We compared the performance of the children with ASD with three control groups: children with developmental delay (DD), typically developing (TD) children matched for verbal cognitive ability and TD children matched for chronological age (CA). Compared to the DD group, the ASD group showed similar...
Source: Infant and Child Development - September 1, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Rebecca R. Wilson, Mark Blades, Mike Coleman, Olivier Pascalis Source Type: journals

Maternal pre- and postnatal anxiety and infant temperament. The generation R studyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aim of this study was to investigate whether maternal anxiety that is temporary or chronic during the pre- and postnatal period predicts infant temperament. Mothers of 2997 infants in a population-based birth cohort reported levels of pregnancy-specific anxiety (Pregnancy Outcome Questionnaire) and general anxiety symptoms (Brief Symptom Inventory) prenatal and at 6 months postnatal. Temperament characteristics were assessed by maternal report using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire - Revised when the infants were 6 months of age. Maternal pregnancy-specific and general anxiety during the pre- and postnatal period were...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 23, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Jens Henrichs, Jacqueline J. Schenk, Henk G. Schmidt, Fleur P. Velders, Albert Hofman, Vincent W.V. Jaddoe, Frank C. Verhulst, Henning Tiemeier Source Type: journals

Preschool-age adopted Chinese children's sleep problems and family sleep arrangementsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Designed to examine the relationship between family sleep arrangements and children's sleep problems in families with preschool-age children adopted from China, this study documented types of sleep arrangements and explored the nature and sources of advice received by parents on co-sleeping. Mothers of 480 children provided survey data on their children's night-time sleep locations, sleep and wake schedules, and changes in sleep arrangements. Children's sleep problems were measured with the Sleep Problem Scale of the Child Behavior Checklist. Descriptive and qualitative analyses showed that most children (71.3%) had a sing...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 20, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Tony Xing Tan, Kofi Marfo, Robert F. Dedrick Source Type: journals

Further examination of the convergent and discriminant validity of the student-teacher relationship scaleEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Two studies extended psychometric research on the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) with kindergarten and preschool children (N1 = 60-71; N2 = 35) and their teachers. These studies used a multi-method approach to replicate and extend previous findings concerning the convergent validity of the STRS Closeness, Conflict, and Dependency scale and to further examine the discriminant validity of the STRS. Study 1 investigated convergence between the STRS scales and child- and peer-reports of the same constructs based on a multi-trait multi-method approach. Study 2 examined the pattern of associations between the STRS and...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 14, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Sarah Doumen, Karine Verschueren, Evelien Buyse, Sofie De Munter, Kristel Max, Loth Moens Source Type: journals

Sleep arrangements and night waking at 6 and 12 months in relation to infants' stress-induced cortisol responsesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The objective of this short-term longitudinal study was to examine the concurrent and prospective associations of infants' sleep arrangements and night waking with cortisol responses to an inoculation at 6 and 12 months, controlling for several key covariates. To our knowledge, this was the first study to concurrently and prospectively link proximity in sleep arrangements and night waking to physiological stress reactivity. A sample of 92 mother-infant dyads participated in the study when the infants were 6 and 12 months of age, although sample sizes were reduced for some analyses. Both proximal cosleeping arrangements and...
Source: Infant and Child Development - June 24, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Rachel Lucas-Thompson, Wendy A. Goldberg, Gary R. Germo, Meret A. Keller, Elysia P. Davis, Curt A. Sandman Source Type: journals

Helping families improve: an evaluation of two primary care approaches to parenting support in the NetherlandsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We examined the interventions in pre-, post- and follow-up assessment, and compared the results. Both interventions produced significant reductions in reported child emotional and behaviour problems, that also remained after 3 months. For both groups, parenting styles were also found to have improved at both post-test and follow-up measurement. When compared with the regular Dutch parenting consultation practices, however, the Primary Care Triple P approach produced greater reductions in parental laxness and total parenting dysfunction, and greater improvement in total parenting competence at both post-test and follow-up. ...
Source: Infant and Child Development - June 15, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Ireen de Graaf, Simone Onrust, Merel Haverman, Jan Janssens Source Type: journals

Child's behaviour in mother-child interaction predicts later emotional and behavioural problemsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aims were to examine the association of maternal or child interactive behaviour with emotional and behavioural problems of the child simultaneously and 3 years later, and to assess whether there is continuity in children's emotional and behavioural symptoms from 2 to 5 years. Sixty-five 2-year-old children with their mothers were videotaped during a feeding situation. Their mothers completed the CBCL at 2 years and when the children were 5. Simultaneously, there were no strong correlations between child's emotional and behavioural problems and maternal or child interactive behaviour. Subsequently, mothers' higher sensi...
Source: Infant and Child Development - June 8, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Mirjami Mäntymaa, Kaija Puura, Ilona Luoma, Vilja Vihtonen, Raili K. Salmelin, Tuula Tamminen Source Type: journals

Language and academic abilities in children with selective mutismEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We examined receptive language and academic abilities in children with selective mutism (SM; n = 30; M age = 8.8 years), anxiety disorders (n = 46; M age = 9.3 years), and community controls (n = 27; M age = 7.8 years). Receptive language and academic abilities were assessed using standardized tests completed in the laboratory. We found a significant group by sex interaction for receptive vocabulary scores such that, within females, the SM and mixed anxiety groups had significantly lower receptive vocabulary scores than community controls. We also found that children with SM and children with anxiety disorders had signific...
Source: Infant and Child Development - May 20, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Matilda E. Nowakowski, Charles E. Cunningham, Angela E. McHolm, Mary Ann Evans, Shannon Edison, Jeff St. Pierre, Michael H. Boyle, Louis A. Schmidt Source Type: journals

Language, shyness and social contexts: commentaryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Infant and Child Development)
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 27, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Kevin Durkin Source Type: journals

Attention as a cueing function during kindergarten children's dimensional change task performanceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The purpose of this experiment is to test whether shift flexibility in kindergarten children is a joint function of rule-usage and inhibition of attention. Sixty-six children were given either a distraction or facilitation condition in a computerized version of the dimensional change card sort task. In the distraction condition, the background of the post-shift matching stimulus was inconsistent with the relevant matching dimension. In the facilitation condition, the background of the post-shift matching stimulus was consistent with the relevant matching dimension. Results revealed that children made few errors in the stan...
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 17, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Jeffrey T. Coldren, John Colombo Source Type: journals

Children's and adults' conceptualization and evaluation of lying and truth-tellingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study examined children's and adults' categorization and moral judgment of truthful and untruthful statements. 7-, 9- and 11-year-old Chinese children and college students read stories in which story characters made truthful or untruthful statements and were asked to classify and evaluate the statements. The statements varied in terms of whether the speaker intended to help or harm a listener and whether the statement was made in a setting that called for informational accuracy or politeness. Results showed that the communicative intent and setting factors jointly influence children's categorization of lying an...
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 14, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Fen Xu, Yang C. Luo, Genyue Fu, Kang Lee Source Type: journals

Shy and soft-spoken: shyness, pragmatic language, and socio-emotional adjustment in early childhoodEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The goal of this study was to examine the moderating role of pragmatic language in the relations between shyness and indices of socio-emotional adjustment in an unselected sample of early elementary school children. In particular, we sought to explore whether pragmatic language played a protective role for shy children. Participants were n=167 children aged 6-7 years, recruited from grade 1 classrooms in public elementary schools. Multi-source assessment was used to measure child shyness, pragmatic language ability, and indices of social and emotional difficulties at school. Results indicated several significant shyness-by...
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 6, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Robert J. Coplan, Murray Weeks Source Type: journals

Associations between shyness, reluctance to engage, and academic performanceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Infant and Child Development)
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 6, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Catherine Ann Cameron Source Type: journals

Fear, worry, and ritualistic behaviour in childhood: developmental trends and interrelationsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Previous studies of childhood fear, worry, and ritualistic behaviour have been limited by restricted age ranges, narrow ranges of anxiety phenomena, non-comparable methodologies, and assessment of typical behaviour within a pathological context. Content and intensity of fear, worry, and ritualistic behaviour, and associations among these variables, were assessed through a semi-structured interview individually administered to 142 children aged 7-16 years. Common themes in the content of fear, worry, and ritualistic behaviour varied predictably with age. Intensity ratings for all three phenomena decreased with age, although...
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 1, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Sarah V. Laing, Charles Fernyhough, Michelle Turner, Mark H. Freeston Source Type: journals

Shyness as a continuous dimension and emergent literacy in young children: is there a relation?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study assessed 89 children in a short-term longitudinal study from Junior Kindergarten (age 4-5 years) through Grade 1 (age 6-7 years) using a variety of tests of emergent literacy. Children were assessed for reading skill (a composite of word recognition, decoding, and letter-sound knowledge), phonological awareness, and oral language (i.e. both receptive and expressive vocabulary as well as syntax and fluency). Shyness was treated as a continuous variable rather than contrasting extreme groups of shy and non-shy children. Shyness was modestly related to vocabulary, verbal fluency, and phonological awareness. ...
Source: Infant and Child Development - March 23, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Katherine Spere, Mary Ann Evans Source Type: journals

Shyness, vocabulary and children's reticence in Saudi Arabian preschoolsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The aims of the present study are to examine whether preschool children's scores on a standardized test of vocabulary mediate or moderate the relation between shyness and reticence and to test whether any influence of vocabulary would be found for both teacher and parent assessments of shyness. Participants were 108 children (50 males), mean age, 63.96 months, attending preschool in Saudi Arabia. Teachers selected shy and non-shy children and both teachers and parents rated the children on a shyness checklist. Children completed a test of receptive vocabulary. Systematic observations of verbal behaviour were made in 'show ...
Source: Infant and Child Development - March 20, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: W. Ray Crozier, Asma Badawood Source Type: journals

Precursors of language ability and academic performance: an inter-generational, longitudinal study of at-risk childrenEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The current investigation examined whether inter-generational transfer of risk could be revealed through mothers' and preschool-aged children's expressive language, and whether continuity of risk persisted in these children's academic abilities, 3 years later. Participating families were drawn from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a prospective, longitudinal investigation of French-speaking families from low-SES Montreal neighbourhoods. At Time 1, mothers' history of childhood social withdrawal was shown to predict mothers' child-directed language. Mothers' language complexity was also shown to be predictive of pre...
Source: Infant and Child Development - March 14, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Lisa Campisi, Lisa A. Serbin, Dale M. Stack, Alex E. Schwartzman, Jane E. Ledingham Source Type: journals

Facial identity and facial expression matching in 5-12-year-old children and adultsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Facial identity and facial expression matching tasks were completed by 5-12-year-old children and adults using stimuli extracted from the same set of normalized faces. Configural and feature processing were examined using speed and accuracy of responding and facial feature selection, respectively. Facial identity matching was slower than face expression matching for all age groups. Large age effects were found on both speed and accuracy of responding and feature use in both identity and expression matching tasks. Eye region preference was found on the facial identity task and mouth region preference on the facial expressio...
Source: Infant and Child Development - February 17, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Frini Karayanidis, Megan Kelly, Prudence Chapman, Angela Mayes, Pat Johnston Source Type: journals

Parental depression, parenting behaviours, and behaviour problems in young childrenEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In the past, research has demonstrated that parental depression and parenting practices are related. More recently, there has been an increase in research examining child outcomes as they are related to maternal and paternal psychopathology. To continue with this line of research, this study examined the relationships among mothers' and fathers' symptoms of depression, characteristics of their parenting practices, and their ratings of their young children's internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems. The results of this study demonstrated that these variables are related significantly. Further, the results of this ...
Source: Infant and Child Development - February 11, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Melissa Middleton, Samantha L. Scott, Kimberly Renk Source Type: journals

The behaviour style observation system for young children predicts teacher-reported externalizing behaviour in middle childhoodEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Behaviour Style Observation System for Young Children (BSOS) was used to predict preschool-aged children's externalizing and internalizing behaviour problems in middle childhood, 3-5 years after the initial assessment. This observational measurement tool was designed to sample and assess young children's disruptive, non-compliant, and unresponsive behaviour, during a brief (11 min) observation in the child's home. In the current study, the BSOS was used to predict parent and teacher ratings of child behaviour problems after school entry in a longitudinal sample (N=81) of at-risk children at time 2. The BSOS predicted t...
Source: Infant and Child Development - January 29, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Alexa Martin-Storey, Lisa A. Serbin, Dale M. Stack, Alex E. Schwartzman Source Type: journals

The moderating effect of parental warmth on the association between spanking and child aggression: a longitudinal approachEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Using data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Study, this study analysed the stability of child aggressive behaviour beginning in infancy and tested whether spanking when the child was 36 months was associated with aggressive child behaviour among three ethnic groups and whether maternal warmth moderated the effect of spanking on aggressive behaviour in each ethnic group at 36 months, after controlling for earlier aggressive behaviour. Participants included 693 Hispanic parent-child dyads, 1013 African-American dyads and 1086 Caucasian dyads who met qualifications for participation in the Early Head Start pr...
Source: Infant and Child Development - January 26, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Ann Michele Stacks, Toko Oshio, Jean Gerard, Jacqueline Roe Source Type: journals

Motor acquisition rate in Brazilian infantsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study used the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) with the aim of characterizing motor acquisition rate in 70 healthy 0-6-month-old Brazilian infants, as well as comparing both emergence (initial age) and establishment (final age) of each skill between the study sample and the AIMS normative data. New motor skills were continuously acquired from 0 to 6 months of age by the Brazilian infants, but their acquisition rate was non-linear. When compared to the AIMS sample, Brazilian infants achieved lower percentiles, and their initial age to acquire skills requiring greater antigravity demand was higher. In contrast, Brazil...
Source: Infant and Child Development - January 23, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Virlaine Bardella Lopes, Carolina Daniel de Lima, Eloisa Tudella Source Type: journals

Parenting and child behaviour problems: a longitudinal analysis of non-shared environmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examined potential non-shared environmental processes in middle childhood by estimating statistical associations between monozygotic (MZ) twin differences in externalizing and internalizing problems and positive social engagement, and differential maternal positivity and negativity, over 1 year. Seventy-seven pairs of identical twins participated (M=6.08-years old, 65% male) in two annual home visits. Observers' ratings and maternal reports were gathered. At both assessments, the twin who showed more conduct problems (maternal report and observers' ratings) and less positive social engagement (positive affect, r...
Source: Infant and Child Development - January 23, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Paula Y. Mullineaux, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Stephen A. Petrill, Lee A. Thompson Source Type: journals

What do infants see in faces? ERP evidence of different roles of eyes and mouth for face perception in 9-month-old infantsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The study examined whether face-specific perceptual brain mechanisms in 9-month-old infants are differentially sensitive to changes in individual facial features (eyes versus mouth) and whether sensitivity to such changes is related to infants' social and communicative skills. Infants viewed photographs of a smiling unfamiliar female face. On 30% of the trials, either the eyes or the mouth of that face were replaced by corresponding parts from a different female. Visual event-related potentials were recorded to examine face-sensitive brain responses. Results revealed that increased competence in expressive communication an...
Source: Infant and Child Development - January 23, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Alexandra P. F. Key, Wendy Stone, Susan M. Williams Source Type: journals

Changes in cry acoustics and distress ratings while the infant is cryingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Acoustics and distress ratings were examined during four minutes of naturally occurring crying from 20 healthy, 1-month-old infants. Two listeners made continuous judgements of infant distress during every 10-s segment of each cry sample. Dysphonation, number of wails, and pause duration were related to distress ratings across the 4 min of crying. Means and variances of ratings and acoustics, and the predictive value of each acoustic variable to ratings, differed in the first and second halves of the samples. Differences in the pattern of results occurred for individual infants. The results highlight the importance of stud...
Source: Infant and Child Development - January 23, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Rebecca M. Wood Source Type: journals

The effect of task and maternal verbosity on compliance in toddlersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between compliance in toddlers and maternal verbosity as well as the type of task. Mothers and their toddlers completed a warm-up task, a proactive toy clean-up task, and a prohibitive forbidden objects task. Mothers were assigned to one of two verbosity conditions (high versus low) and to one of two nurturance conditions (high versus low) where the rates of verbosity and nurturance were experimentally manipulated. It was hypothesized that toddlers would demonstrate higher noncompliance when given high levels of verbosity than toddlers given low levels of verbosity. ...
Source: Infant and Child Development - January 20, 2009 Category: Child Development Authors: Melissa Hakman, Maureen Sullivan Source Type: journals

Infant-holding biases in mothers and affective symptoms during pregnancy and after deliveryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Several authors have reported that participants have a leftward bias when holding a newborn or young infant. Our study of mothers met before and after their infant's birth sought to ascertain whether particular combinations of affective symptoms (depression, anxiety) and holding positions (horizontal versus vertical) were related to holding-side biases. Our results showed that (a) mothers displayed a significant leftward (71%) holding bias, (b) mothers with affective symptoms held their newborn on the right side and more frequently in the vertical position, and (c) hemispheric specialization for perceiving visual emotions ...
Source: Infant and Child Development - December 4, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Jacques Vauclair, Céline Scola Source Type: journals

Who knows best? Preschoolers sometimes prefer child informants over adult informantsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Do preschoolers think adults know more about everything than children? Or do they recognize that there are some things that children might know more about than adults? Three-, four-, and five-year olds (N=65) were asked to decide whether an adult or child informant would better be able to answer a variety of questions about the nutritional value of foods and about toys. Children at all ages chose to direct the food questions to the adult and the toy questions to the child. Thus, there are some kinds of information for which preschoolers expect that a child would be a better informant than an adult. Copyright © 2008 John W...
Source: Infant and Child Development - November 20, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Mieke VanderBorght, Vikram K. Jaswal Tags: Research Articles Source Type: journals

Israeli kindergarten children's gender constancy for others' counter-stereotypic toy play and appearance: the role of sibling gender and relative ageEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
To test divergent theoretical predictions as to the impact of having a younger or older, same-sex sibling or opposite-sex sibling on other gender constancy, Israeli kindergarten children in two-child families responded to a gender constancy task in which a male and female picture target engaged in counter-stereotypic toy play and adopted counter-stereotypic appearance. Children were also asked whether the target child could change sex at will and to explain the difference between boys and girls. Relative age of sibling, both independently and in interaction with participant sex, was associated with greater gender constancy...
Source: Infant and Child Development - November 20, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Rachel Karniol Tags: Research Article Source Type: journals

Relationships among parenting practices, parental stress, child behaviour, and children's social-cognitive developmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study included observational and self-report measures to examine associations among parental stress, parental behaviour, child behaviour, and children's theory of mind and emotion understanding. Eighty-three parents and their 3- to 5-year-old children participated. Parents completed measures of parental stress, parenting (laxness, overreactivity), and child behaviour (internalizing, externalizing); children completed language, theory of mind, and emotion understanding measures. Parent-child interactions also were observed (N=47). Laxness and parenting stress predicted children's theory of mind performance and p...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 31, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Nicole R. Guajardo, Gregory Snyder, Rachel Petersen Source Type: journals

Fearful temperament and stress reactivity among preschool-aged childrenEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we examined the relationship between physiological stress reactivity and temperamental fearfulness in 162 preschool-aged children. Both the autonomic and neuroendocrine arms of the mammalian stress system were examined. Larger stress responses were defined as greater sympathetic activation, parasympathetic withdrawal and cortisol increases to stressor tasks. Fearful temperament was examined using parent report and behaviour in response to fear-evocative laboratory tasks. There was little evidence that larger sympathetic activation or parasympathetic withdrawal was associated with fearful temperament. Greater...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Nicole M. Talge, Bonny Donzella, Megan R. Gunnar Source Type: journals

Agree or agree to disagree? Assessing the convergence between parents and observers on infant temperamentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The assessment of infant temperament has been typically accomplished with parent questionnaires. When compared with temperament behaviours observed in the laboratory, parents and observers generally do not agree, leading some researchers to question the validity of parent report. This paper reports on a representative sample of infants whose families resided in non-metropolitan counties and whose temperament was measured in three ways: (1) standard parent report (Infant Behavior Questionnaire); (2) observer ratings across two lengthy home visits; and (3) observer coding of second-by-second reactions to specific emotion-eli...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Cynthia A. Stifter, Michael T. Willoughby, Nissa Towe-Goodman, The Family Life Project Key Investigators Source Type: journals

Homotypic and heterotypic continuity of fine-grained temperament during infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhoodEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Longitudinal continuity was investigated for fine-grained and factor-level aspects of temperament measured with the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), Early Childhood Behaviour Questionnaire (ECBQ), and Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ). Considerable homotypic continuity was found. Convergent and discriminant validity of the measures was supported, as all fine-grained dimensions exhibited stability across adjacent measurement periods, and all scales found on both the ECBQ and CBQ were most highly correlated with their equivalent scales. At the factor level, Surgency and Negative Affect factors were stab...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Samuel P. Putnam, Mary K. Rothbart, Maria A. Gartstein Source Type: journals

Genetic relations between effortful and attentional control and symptoms of psychopathology in middle childhoodEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Elucidating the genetic and environmental aetiology of effortful control (mother and father reports at two time points), attentional control (observer reports), and their associations with internalizing and externalizing symptoms (mother and father reports) is the central focus of this paper. With a sample of twins in middle childhood participating in the Wisconsin Twin Project, broad sense heritability for parental-report effortful control ranged from 68% to 79%, with a slightly higher heritability estimate of 83% for observer report attentional control, and no influence of the shared environment on either trait. Further,...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant, Lisa Doelger, H. Hill Goldsmith Source Type: journals

Focused attention in toddlers: measurement, stability, and relations to negative emotion and parentingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This longitudinal study examined individual differences and correlates of focused attention when toddlers were approximately 18 months old (T1; n=256) and a year later (T2; n=230). Toddlers' attention and negative emotionality were reported by mothers and non-parental caregivers and rated globally by observers. Toddlers' focused attention also was observed during two mother-child interactions and an independent play task. Measures of maternal emotional support and control were obtained via self-report and observation. Some contemporaneous relations among indices of toddlers' attention were obtained, particularly for observ...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Bridget M. Gaertner, Tracy L. Spinrad, Nancy Eisenberg Source Type: journals

Temperament at 7, 12, and 25 months in children at familial risk for ADHDEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
As part of a longitudinal investigation of infants at familial risk for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), mothers and fathers independently completed temperament ratings on their infants. In this paper, we examine the 7-, 12-, and 25-month temperament of 58 boys, 36 of whom were considered at familial risk for ADHD and 22 of whom were in the comparison group. Risk for ADHD was based on self-reported ADHD symptoms in the father. In addition, the influence of informant gender on temperament ratings was examined. The ADHD risk group received significantly higher scores for activity level and anger and lower sco...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Judith G. Auerbach, Andrea Berger, Naama Atzaba-Poria, Shoshana Arbelle, Nira Cypin, Adi Friedman, Rivka Landau Source Type: journals

Reactivity and regulation: the impact of Mary Rothbart on the study of temperamentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Through her theoretical and empirical work, Mary Rothbart has had a profound impact on the scientific understanding of infant and child temperament. This special issue honors her contributions through the presentations of original, contemporary studies relevant to three primary themes in Rothbart's conceptual approach: the expansive scope and empirically-derived structure of temperament, the importance of considering developmental change, and the interplay of reactive and regulatory processes. In addition to summarizing these themes, this introductory article acknowledges the ways Mary has spurred progress in the field thr...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Samuel P. Putnam, Cynthia A. Stifter Source Type: journals

Making the most of information-gathering interviews with childrenEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Because child abuse victims are often the only available sources of information about their experiences, extensive efforts have been made to understand how to maximize their informativeness. There is now broad international consensus regarding optimal interview practices, and broad awareness that children's informativeness increases when interviewers conduct developmentally appropriate interviews with children. In this paper, we (1) summarize current understanding of how children remember, retrieve, and communicate information and (2) discuss ways in which children's memory and reporting can be fostered using techniques de...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Anneli S. Larsson, Michael E. Lamb Source Type: journals

What makes responses prepotent for young children? Insights from the grass-snow taskEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Understanding how responses become prepotent is essential for understanding when inhibitory control is needed in everyday behaviour. We investigated prepotency in the grass-snow task - in which a child points to a green card when the experimenter says 'snow' and a white card when the experimenter says 'grass'. Experiment 1 (n=48, mean age=3.5 years) investigated the response method effect - whether pointing is prepotent because it is habitual. Experiment 2 (n=60, mean age=3.5 years) investigated the response set effect - whether responses are prepotent because the child plans to make them in the task. Experiment 2 also pro...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Andrew Simpson, Kevin J. Riggs Source Type: journals

Family-level coparenting processes and child gender as moderators of family stress and toddler adjustmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The goal of this multi-method study was to examine how child gender and coparenting processes influence associations between family stress and toddlers' social adjustment. The participants, 104 dual-earner couples and their 2-year-old children, were videotaped in their home during a freeplay activity. Mothers and fathers completed questionnaires about stress in their roles as partners, workers, and parents and their child's social-emotional adjustment. Consistent with previous research, higher levels of family stress were associated with poorer adjustment for children. Family harmony, represented by warmth and cooperation,...
Source: Infant and Child Development - July 30, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Amy M. Kolak, Lynne Vernon-Feagans Source Type: journals

A practitioner's commentary on 'Making the Most of Information-Gathering Interviews With Children'Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
No Abstract (Source: Infant and Child Development)
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 22, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: David P. H. Jones Source Type: journals

Associations between mothers' sensitivity to their infants' internal states and children's later understanding of mind and emotionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study investigated associations between mother-infant interactions and children's subsequent understanding of mind and emotion. Mothers' tendency to comment on their infants' internal world and their general sensitivity to their infants' internal states were measured through coded play interactions at 10 months. The latter measurement included ratings on four aspects of maternal behaviour: mindful facilitation, joint attention commenting, pacing, and affect catching. In contrast to mothers' internal state language, these behaviours did not tap mothers' explicit linguistic representation of their infants' mental states...
Source: Infant and Child Development - April 9, 2008 Category: Child Development Authors: Katharina Ereky-Stevens Source Type: journals