The purpose of the present study was to investigate the unconditional and conditional relations between amount of intervention and language development in children with autism. Joint attention skills were proposed as child characteristics that might moderate this relation. The results replicated previous findings that better joint attention skills were associated with greater language development. The results further indicated that the relation between amount of intervention and gain in language age was conditional; it depended upon the child's ability to respond to bids for joint attention from others and initial language skills. The current study demonstrated the utility of employing characteristics of children as moderators of relations between interventions and developmental outcomes.

Mothers of infants who developed colic were compared with mothers of non-colic infants on their perceptions of parenting self-efficacy, and separation anxiety as well as their attachment relationship with their infants. Colic was identified prospectively through telephone contacts with mothers. Questionnaires on self-efficacy and separation anxiety were completed when infants were 5 months of age. At 18 months of age mothers and infants (colic and non-colic) participated in a laboratory situation to measure attachment. Results revealed that mothers of colic infants reported feeling less competent as mothers. In addition, while mothers of colicky infants tended to have more separation anxiety than mothers of non-colic infants, they felt that these separations did not have a negative effect on their child. Finally, no differences were revealed for attachment classifications between colic and non-colic infants at 18 months.

Forty‐nine mother‐infant dyads participated in the study. Mothers were observed during free play with their infants to assess their attention‐directing strategies. Infants were observed during the Bayley to assess their focused attention abilities. Assessments were made when infants were 10 and 18 months. Whereas consistently high levels of maintaining over time were modestly associated with better infant focused attention at 18 months, consistently high levels of redirecting were moderately associated with poorer infant focused attention at 18 months. Additionally, more focused attention was associated with higher Bayley scores at both ages. Although the direction of effects could not be determined, the findings suggest links between maternal attention‐directing strategies (maintaining and redirecting) during play and infant attentional abilities during problem solving.

The goal of the present study was to examine parental characteristics associated with the emergence of infant colic using a prospective longitudinal study. When infants were 2 weeks of age, parent measures of personality, marital satisfaction, parenting stress, and social support were obtained. In addition, parents were asked about their definition of colic. When infants were 6 weeks of age, parents completed a 4 day, 24 hour cry diary. Parents also completed a stress questionnaire. Based on the fussing/crying data derived from the diaries, 22 of the 128 infants were identified as having colic. Results showed colic infants to have distinctive crying and fussing patterns. Differences in parent conceptualizations of colic were also identified for colic and non-colic families. Results indicated that parental variables, particularly parenting stress and marital satisfaction, may have contributed to the parents' report of excessive crying and fussing.Much of our current knowledge about crying in early infancy, particularly excessive crying, is based on parental report. Using either interviews, questionnaires, screening mechanisms, or cry diaries, the results have provided important evidence for a cry peak during the 6th to 8th week of life and confirmation of a more extreme condition of crying in an otherwise healthy infant, i.e. colic (Barr, 1990;Brazelton, 1963;St. James Roberts, 1989). Parental reports have been instrumental in colic research because of the intensive and temporal properties of this condition. The most widely used definition of colic, fussing or crying lasting for a total of more than 3 hours a day occurring on more than 3 days a week for at least 3 weeks in the infant's first 3 months (Wessel et al., 1954), demands daily observations by necessity. Consequently, parents are regarded as the most logical and efficient observers of their infants' cry behaviour.

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