BACKGROUND Parental sensitivity is the interaction process by which parents (a) recognize cues from their infant, (b) interpret these cues adequately, (c) identify an appropriate response and (d) apply this response in an appropriate time frame. In the neonatal intensive care unit, parents of preterm infants often encounter factors hampering the establishment of their parental sensitivity. Pare...

The very unfavorable infant mortality ranking of the United States in international comparisons is often used to question the quality of health care there. Infant mortality rates, however, implicitly capture a complicated story, measuring much more than differences in health care across countries. This article examines reasons behind international infant mortality rate rankings, including varia...

BACKGROUND Recent evidence indicates that infant faces capture attention automatically, presumably to elicit caregiving behavior from adults and leading to greater probability of progeny survival. Elsewhere, evidence demonstrates that people show deficiencies in the processing of other-race relative to own-race faces. We ask whether this other-race effect impacts on attentional attraction to in...

This article presents the elements of the Intervention section of the Infant Care Path for Physical Therapy in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The types of physical therapy interventions presented in this path are evidence-based and the suggested timing of these interventions is primarily based on practice knowledge from expert therapists, with supporting evidence cited. Physical thera...

Three-month-old infants were carried by their mothers in a soft infant carrier designed for infants being faced inward or faced outward. A within subjects comparison of these two positions revealed that when the infants were carried facing-in, they spent significantly more time sleeping and were rarely actively awake and looking at the environment. In contrast, the infants were more active in t...

OBJECTIVE To identify contemporary Cree infant care practices and any risk factors associated with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. METHODS A questionnaire conducted and recorded in the homes of 70 Cree women (83% of sample available) with infants under 12 months of age, living full time on a Cree reserve. Participatory observation was also used with mothers who agreed to demonstrate certain fea...