Children's fuzziness leads to increased variance in the data, data loss, and high dropout rates in developmental studies. This study investigated the importance of 20 factors on the person (child, caregiver, experimenter) and situation (task, method, time, and date) level for the data quality as indicated via the number of valid trials in 11…

Morgante et al. (in press) find inconsistencies in the time reporting of a Tobii T60XL eye tracker. Their study raises important questions about the use of the Tobii T-series in particular, and various software and hardware in general, in different infant eye tracking paradigms. It leaves open the question of the source of the inconsistencies.…

Urges that novelty-preference research be placed in a broader context encompassing the full range of memory-related behaviors shown by infants. (Author/RH)

Developmental trajectories provide the empirical foundation for theories about change processes during development. However, the ability to distinguish among alternative trajectories depends on how frequently observations are sampled. This study used real behavioral data, with real patterns of variability, to examine the effects of sampling at…

Indicates that Kemler raises a number of important issues needing resolution before the understanding of infant categorization is complete, but claims Kemler misunderstands both the goals of the Husaim and Cohen experiment and the extent to which the goals were met. (Author/RH)

Questions Husaim and Cohen's basic assumption that stimulus dimensions or attributes defined by the experimenter have psychological reality for infant subjects. Suggests that infants may perceive different attributes in the stimulus, or they may not articulate the stimulus into attributes at all. (Author/RH)

Based on comments by Kagan (1982), Rothbart (1982), and Plomin (1982) in response to an article on difficult temperament by Thomas, Chess, and Korn (1982), the author concludes that the study of temperamentally difficult children has a favorable prognosis. (Author/MP)

Offers an explanation of why Cohn and Tronick's (1988) result replicates that of Kaye and Fogel (1980) in spite of important differences in the way interactive behavior is conceptualized, coded, and treated statistically. Suggests that stochastic variability in onset times has profound implications for the understanding of interaction process and…

Clarifies several issues in response to recent criticisms of habituation and related novelty-preference techniques used in studies of infant memory. (RH)

Examines some of the methodological issues in the assessment of temperament and raises questions about the desirability of labeling infants as having "difficult temperaments." (Author/MP)

Maintains author's interpretation of 6-month-olds' behavior is consistent with task requirements in the 2000 study and previous work showing that infants use explanatory inferences to make sense of their world. Asserts that ability to understand that people communicate with persons but act on objects is precursor to infants' understanding at 9 to…

A total of 114 infants at three age levels (11, 18, and 28 weeks) were rated by their mothers on a termperament questionnaire and subjected to a habituation procedure. Results suggest that subject loss in habituation studies may be the result of nonrandom individual difference factors and not just the result of temporary fluctuations in state.…

Places the current controversy concerning the adequacy of parental ratings of temperament into the larger perspective of personality issues, which have been hotly debated for the past two decades. (Author/MP)

This study of the stability of parent behaviors toward toddlers over a 3-week period used both aggregated and nonaggregated data. Comparison of stability correlations indicated higher stabilities for aggregated scores, with the level of stability increasing as scores from additional single sessions were aggregated. (PCB)