This study evaluated the impact of a parenting intervention on children's cognitive and socioemotional development in a group of caregivers and their 21-to-28-month-old children in a low-income South African township. A randomized controlled trial compared an experimental group (n = 70) receiving training in dialogic book-sharing (8 weekly group…

Adults recognize emotions conveyed by bodies with comparable accuracy to facial emotions. However, no prior study has explored infants' perception of body emotions. In Experiment 1, 6.5-month-olds (n = 32) preferred happy over neutral actions of actors with covered faces in upright but not inverted silent videos. In Experiment 2, infants…

Associations between maternal sensitivity to infant distress and nondistress and infant social-emotional adjustment were examined in a subset of dyads from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 376). Mothers reported on infant temperament at 1 and 6 months postpartum, and maternal sensitivity to distress and nondistress were observed at 6…

Poverty-related developmental-risk theories dominate accounts of uneven levels of household functioning and effects on children. But immigrant parents may sustain norms and practices--stemming from heritage culture, selective migration, and social support--that buffer economic exigencies. "Comparable" levels of social-emotional functioning in…

Three-, 5-, and 7-year-olds and adults (N = 64) listened to stories depicting 2 protagonists of different ages (infant and child or child and grownup) that encounter an entity that looks like a real (e.g., a snake) or an imaginary (e.g., a ghost) fear-inducing creature. Participants predicted and explained each protagonist's intensity of fear.…

It was examined whether secure infant-mother attachment contributes to emotionally congruent and organized mother-child dialogues about emotions in later years. The attachment of 99 children was assessed using the Strange Situation at the age of 1 year and their emotion dialogues with their mothers were assessed at the ages of 4.5 and 7.5 years.…

Examined in two studies referential understanding in 12- and 18-month-olds' responses to another's emotional outburst. Found that infants relied on the presence versus absence of referential cues to determine whether an emotional message should be linked with a salient object and they actively consulted referential cues to disambiguate the…

This study examined the effect of a mother-baby intervention on the quality of mother-child interaction, infant-mother attachment security, and infant socioemotional functioning in a group of depressed mothers with infants aged 1-12 months. A randomized controlled trial compared an experimental group (n = 35) receiving the intervention (8-10 home…

Investigates the relationship between self-recognition and self-evaluative emotions in two studies on 27 children aged 9-24 months and 44 children aged 22 months. The results of both studies indicate that embarrassment but not wariness was related to self-recognition. (RJC)

Examined emotion regulation strategy use in 75 infants between 6 and 18 months during interactions with strangers. Compared to 12- and 18-month olds, the 6-month olds were more likely to use gaze aversion and fussing as their primary regulation strategy and were less likely to use self-soothing and self-distraction. (HTH)

Examined relationship between emotion regulation at ages 5, 10, and 18 months, and compliance at 30 months. Found that infants with low levels of regulatory behavior were more likely to be noncompliant as toddlers. High cardiac vagal tone was related to noncompliance to toy clean-up, whereas low cardiac vagal tone was related to noncompliance to…

A preferential looking procedure was used to investigate 7-month-olds' perception of positive and negative affective facial expressions in which a single vocal expression was concordant or discordant with the videotaped facial expression. Results indicated that 7-month-olds discriminated among happy, interested, angry, and sad expressions.…

Assessments of temperament, emotion, cognition, and language acquisition were obtained for 200 pairs of 14-month-old twins. Comparisons between the assessment correlations for identical and fraternal twins indicated an influence of genetics on inhibition, activity, temperament, empathy, negative emotion, spatial memory, categorization skills, and…

Examined whether putative regulatory behaviors widely assumed to be conceptually associated with certain behavioral strategies were associated with the changes in fearful and angry distress in 6-, 12-, and 18-month-olds. The key finding was that the use of some putative regulatory behaviors (distraction and approach) reduced the observable…

Examined 8- to 10-month-olds' responses to standard procedures eliciting joy, fear, anger, and discomfort. Found that response parameters to standard procedures cohered strongly within each episode. Responses cohered across same-emotion episodes, except for anger. Responses and father-reported temperament related to infant's emotional tone in…