Ating It Points of View or Opinions Stated Do Not Necessarily Repre

Examined was the association between affective and cognitive development in 14 Down's Syndrome infants (4to 8-months-old). Mothers administered a series of 30 laughter items each month, and experimenters gave the Uzgiris-Hunt scales of cognitive development at 13 and 16 months, and the Bayley scales and Infant Behavior Record at 16 months. Available data indicated that Ss lagged well behind normal infants in onset of laughter and smiling although they followed the order of laughter items category by category (laughing first at auditory and tactile items and then at more cognitively complicated social and visual items). Results also demonstrated a clear relationship between cognitive and affective development, especially with regard to stages of object permanence and operational causality. (CL) *********************************************************************** * Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. * *********************************************************************** r,. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE Lrl NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO trN DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGIN (NJ ATING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRE r-1 SENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY r-4 CZ) w The Relationship Between Affective and Cognitive Development in Down's Syndrome Infants Dante Cicchetti and L. Alan Sroufe Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Convention in Denver, Colorado, April 11, 1975. Introduction In previous research with several samples of normal infants between four and twelve months of age,. changes in laughter were found which were associated with cognitive development (Sroufe and Wunsch, 1972). Infants in the first half year laughed primarily in situations which were physically intense or vigorous (auditory and tactile stimulation). Increasingly during the second half year,. however, infants laughed at progressively more subtle and complex social and visual stimulation, while laughter at simple stimuli abated. For example, younger infants laughed at being kissed on the stomach, popping sounds of the lips, and bouncing on the knee, while only older infants laughed consistently at mother sucking on the baby's bottle, crawling on the floor, or covering her face with a mask, These findings suggest that later laughter is related to developmental changes in available schemata. Accordingly,. a subsequent study of.infants with Down's syndrome was conducted to extend and elaborate the reported association between affective and cognitive development. If affective development is a function of cognitive development and not merely a function of chronological age, then the sequence of affective stages should occur at a rate corresponding to the degree of cognitive retardation of the child. Since items such as mother hiding behind a human mask elicit laughter when the normal infant has achieved the appropriate cognitive developmental level (eg. stage 4 object permanence), such affective and cognitive occurrences should also appear concurrently in the retardate, although they will be delayed until