24 infants, 12 4-month-olds and 12 6-month-olds, were repeatedly shown slides of 3 facial expressions. The expressions were previously judged by obervers to be indicators of joy, anger, and no emotion, respectively. The duration of the first visual fixation to each presentation of the slides was monitored for each subject. The data indicated that the infants looked at the joy expression significantly more than at either the anger or neutral expressions. The results suggest that infants are capable of discriminating emotion expressions earlier in their development than previous studies have implied.

Parent-child dyadic gaze patterns were examined in fragile X [fra(X)] males and in non-fra(X) autistic males across three age groups--early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence. Absolute probabilities of social gaze did not significantly differ across diagnostic groups. Event lag sequential analyses indicated that fra(X) males were sensitive to social gaze initiation by their parents but found eye contact aversive. Non-fra(X) autistic males, by contrast, were insensitive to parent-initiated social gaze, and did not find eye contact aversive. Implications for research on the social characteristics of fra(X) and autistic children are discussed.

Five adults with profound physical and intellectual disabilities were taught to respond to photographs of preferences embedded in Microsoft PowerPoint (Microsoft, 1997) presentations by operating microswitches that functioned as mouse clicks. Rate of responding was generally correlated with changes in types of presentation, although variability in rate was often high, and session durations were quite short. Two participants showed substantial increases in responding when fitted with switches that were easier to manipulate. This exploratory study demonstrates that people with extremely limited physical and cognitive abilities can be taught to operate switches that produce changes in visual arrays on a computer screen and sometimes differentially so. Implications for responding to photographic representations of preferences, rather than the tangible preferences themselves, are discussed.

Dyadic social gaze and eye contact were examined in fragile X [fra(X)] males and in non-fra(X) autistic males as a function of age and level of communicative ability. Lag sequential analysis showed that responsive eye contact was highly correlated with age and communicative ability in non-fra(X) autistic males but not in fra(X) males. Older, more communicative non-fra(X) autistic males exhibited more responsive eye contact than their fra(X) cohorts. Implications of these observations for theory and intervention are discussed.

As part of a longitudinal study on the environmental origins of mastery motivation, 68 infants were observed at home with each parent separately and their motivational characteristics were assessed in a laboratory setting at ages 6 and 12 mo. Differential relationships between 2 aspects of parental stimulation and the infants' mastery motivation were found. At 6 mo, parental sensory stimulation was found to be associated with boys' and girls' persistence at problem solving. Mothers' sensory stimulation and attention focusing was related to a broader range of mastery motivational behaviors for boys than for girls. At 12 mo, the significant relationships were confined to the boys' persistence at practicing sensorimotor skills, with the father being the major contributor. Results suggest that the associations between the animate environment and infant behavior are a function of the child's age, sex, type of stimulation, and parental sex. (40 ref)