Previous research has suggested that early development may be an optimal period to implement cognitive training interventions, particularly those relating to attention control, a basic ability that is essential for the development of other cognitive skills. In the present study, we administered gaze-contingent training (95 min across 2 weeks)…

A national survey by Custodero & Johnson-Green (2003) examined how parents experienced music with their infants, and found that many reported playing and singing music frequently. More than half of the parents described playing recorded music for their children daily, and parents who had played an instrument and taken music lessons themselves…

Habituation of looking time has become the standard method for studying cognitive processes in infancy. This method has a long history and derives from the study of memory and habituation itself. Often, however, it is not clear how researchers make decisions about how to implement habituation as a tool to study processes such as categorization,…

Goal-directed persistence of 44 mentally retarded young children on tasks used to assess mastery motivation among nonretarded infants was examined to determine whether retarded children were motivated to solve or work on tasks that were slightly challenging to them. Results indicated significant age-related increases in children's goal-directed…

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)

This paper presents the results of a comparative analysis between full term typical infants and those born micropremature in the developmental construct of mastery motivation. The sample consisted of 10 micropremature infants with developmental levels within the normal limits and 10 full term 9- to 12-month-olds (adjusted for prematurity) matched…

This paper discusses preliminary results of a project investigating the phenomenon of mastery motivation with three significant groups: provider, family, and extremely premature infant. Three focus groups to determine the state of early intervention's knowledge and utilization of mastery motivation were conducted in three states. A repeated…

The authors used the Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence (J. F. Fagan, L. T. Singer, J. E. Montie, & P. A. Shepherd, 1986) to examine preferences for novelty and to evaluate several indicators of attention (off- and on-task indexes and durations) in 6- and 9-month-old infants who had been prenatally exposed to cigarette smoke only or to cocaine plus…