Measures of visual fixation and of focused manipulation of an array of familiar and of novel toys were evaluated for three groups of infants: thirty-two 8-montholds and thirty-two 12-month-olds for whom both arrays contained three toys, and thirty-two 12-month-olds for whom both arrays contained five toys. Prior to testing, half of the infants in each group had been habituated to the familiar array, whereas the other half had been familiarized but interrupted before habituation could be completed. The results showed that habituated infants in each group preferred to look at and manipulate toys in a novel array. In contrast, interrupted infants preferred toys in a familiar array, but only if the array was complex relative to age (three toys for 8-month-olds and five toys for 12-montholds) and only with the focused manipulation measure. If the stimulus was simple and/or the response measured was visual fixation, interrupted infants showed no preference for either array. The results provided evidence of a progression from familiarity preference to novelty preference that is not tied to a particular age but occurs repeatedly as new stimuli are encountered. Age-related changes are present, however, in the effective complexity of the stimuli, the amount of familiarization, and the form of response necessary to elicit the progression.Preparation of this article and the research reported Hunter, Ross, and Ames (1982) found faherein was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities miliarity preferences in 12-month-olds, and Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship 453-" _, 3 * f . , ~ . JT ,-j /,no<>\ 79-4479 and Natural Science and Engineering Research Rose > Gottfried, Carmmar, and Bndger (1982) Council Grant A8291.have reported similar findings for 3Va-to 6'/2-We wish to thank Katherine Covell and Susan Khazaie month-olds, for their help in data collection, and Robert B. McCall An alternative view is that the shift from fo ^™ S SSSttS Mich^A.

Attachment security was assessed in children who had spent at least 8 months in a Romanian orphanage (RO) and two comparison groups of children: a Canadian-born, nonadopted comparison group (CB) and a comparison group adopted from Romania before the age of 4 months (RC). We also assessed differences in displays of indiscriminately friendly behavior between the two adopted groups of children. Attachment security was assessed using parent report on a questionnaire comprised of the 23 items with the highest and lowest loadings on the Waters and Deane (1985) attachment Q-sort. Indiscriminately friendly behavior was assessed using parents' responses to five questions about their children's behavior with new adults. Children's attachment security scores were also compared to parents' scores on the parent attachment subscale of the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1990). RO children scored significantly lower on security of attachment than did either the RC or CB children. RC and CB children did not differ on attachment security. Based on their parents' reports, RO children displayed significantly more indiscriminately friendly behaviors than did RC children, but such behaviors were not correlated with security of attachment. Children's attachment security scores were related to their parents attachment scores only in the RO group. It is suggested that RO children's experience of extreme neglect contributed to their low attachment-security scores, and that indiscriminate friendliness may be an important behavior to consider in the study of attachment in institutionalized children.

Behaviour problems in Romanian orphans adopted to Canada were examined through parents’ interview reports of specific problems, and children’s scores on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) (Achenbach, Edelbrock, & Howell, 1987) completed by their parents. Three groups of children were studied. Romanian orphanage (RO) children had spent at least 8 months in a Romanian orphanage. Parents’ reports of RO children’s problems were compared to parent reports from 2 comparison groups: (1) Canadian-born children (CB) who were not adopted and never institutionalised; and (2) children who would have gone to a Romanian orphanage had they not been adopted before 4 months of age (Romanian Comparison: RC). RO children scored higher than CB and RC children for Total problems and Internalizing problems on the CBCL. No significant differences were found for any group comparison on Externalizing problems. CBCL scores were positively correlated with RO children’s total time in orphanage. According to parent interview, RO children had more eating problems, medical problems, and stereotyped behaviour problems than both CB and RC children. These problems were distinctive ones, rarely if ever being reported for CB or RC children. It is suggested that these distinctive RO problems arise out of a normal developmental base, and reflect either continuations of orphanage behaviours, reactions to stimuli different from those experienced in orphanage, or lack of opportunity for development or learning within the orphanage.

Infants 3 weeks, 8 weeks, and 14 weeks old were presented with checkerboard patterns which differed in the number of squares they contained. The older the infants, the more complex was the checkerboard that they looked at longest. This result does not appear to depend on changes in visual acuity or accommodation related to age.

To investigate the relationship between prior experience and subsequent preferences for novel or familiar stimuli, 12-month-old infants were tested in two familiarization procedures. Infants in one group were habituated to a stringent criterion on an array of five toys, whereas infants in another group were familiarized but interrupted before habituation could be completed. In a subsequent 10-minute test trial, the familiar array and a comparable novel array were available for both groups. In general, habituated infants were found to spend more time exploring the novel array, and the interrupted infants, the familiar array. It was concluded that preference for novel and familiar stimuli is not an agedependent phenomenon as previous research would suggest but instead is dependent on when during the habituation process stimuli are introduced.