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Abstract
Many young children who are in group care have difficulty relating to others in positive ways. Caregivers have concerns about the facilitation of positive, pro-social outcomes in interactions involving infants and toddlers. It is important for program planning to provide data that will chart the evolving developmental changes in children's abilities to interact positively with others. Studies have shown that infants who have regular contact with other infants tend to be more social than those with limited opportunities to interact. Infants tend to interact more positively when the interaction is guided by a sensitive caregiver. Research also has suggested that empathetic, pro-social behaviors emerge only during the second year of life. Lorenz (1943) postulated that infant and toddler girls' response to dolls was much like adult females' response to infants and, perhaps, was due to innate mechanisms. Others suggest that social expectations, reinforcements, and demands of gender-role behaviors are responsible for the increasing divergence between girls' and boys' responses to infants during the preschool years. As a means to further explore this issue, this project was designed as a 5-year longitudinal study to investigate young children's social interactions with a new baby introduced into a group care environment.