Maternal Behaviour
Voice Processing
These two papers both concern how infants learn to recognize and to respond to human voices.
Adult Attachment
This is an important paper for the development of theories of how the brains of infants and their care-givers change as a bond grows between them.
Synchronous and Intrusive mothering
Observations of mothers' behaviour have shown that it can be classified broadly into two types, synchronous behaviour, which leads to strong mother-infant attachment bonds, and "intrusive" behaviour which does not lead to attachment.
Mother Superior?
This review summarises research on the effect of day care on the stress response and emotional development of babies and young children.
When Mothers Go Wrong
Both animal experiments and observations of humans suggest that females who are not mothered well are themselves likely to become poor mothers.
Facial Expressions
This suggests that infants at this young age are already able to respond to objects that they observe to have caused fear in adults.
Breast-feeding Cohort Study
A 15 year cohort study researching whether breastfeeding protect against substantiated child abuse and neglect, suggest that long-term breastfeeding can protect infants against neglect and abuse.
Affection at 8 Months
The researchers investigated stress responses in adults aged 34 whose parents had taken part in an observational study of early childhood when they were infants.
Environmental Influences
It is now well known that some children are more vulnerable than others to maltreatment and that this may be due to differences in genetics and/or temperament. Jay Belsky and his co-workers have proposed that this vulnerability may be more accurately thought of as "plasticity", in that children who are vulnerable to adverse events may also be more sensitive to favourable ones. These three papers review the literature on this subject.
Obesity
Three papers looking at the relationship between maternal behaviour and chilodhood obesity.
What's In A Smile?
This study used magnetic resonance imaging to investigate which regions of a mother’s brain are stimulated by her infant’s facial expressions.
Respiratory Health
Three studies looking at the incidence of respiratory illness in infants. All studies concluded that risk of respiratory infections could be reduced if children were cared for at home until at least their first and optimally their second birthdays.