socioemotional development indicate that infants are
qualitatively different from adults; infants are not
simply miniature adults. Furthermore, development
is characterized by several reorganizations both with-
in and between domains, thereby precipitating
changes in infants’ perceptions of the world, as well
as the way in which they act upon it. The period of in-
fancy is likely to continue to generate fundamental
and important questions that challenge scientists.
See also: STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
Bibliography
Ainsworth, Mary S., M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, and S. Wall. Patterns
of Attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1978.
Bowlby, John. Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1: Attachment. New York:
Basic, 1969.
Fogel, Alan. Infancy: Infant, Family, and Society. Belmont, CA: Wads-
worth, 2001.
Muir, Darwin, and Alan Slater, eds. Infant Development: The Essential
Readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000.
Piaget, Jean. The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic,
1954.
Stern, Daniel N. The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York:
Basic Books, 1985.
Matthew J. Hertenstein
David C. Witherington
INFANT MORTALITY
Infant mortality is defined as the death of a live-born
infant within the first year of life. As an indicator of
a nation’s health status, infant mortality can serve as
a reflection of a society’s available resources and tech-
nology (including social distribution, access, and use),
the status of women in society, and the health care
provided to the most vulnerable segments of the pop-
ulation. Common causes of infant death include birth
defects, complications related to prematurity, sudden
infant death syndrome (SIDS), and respiratory dis-
tress syndrome. In 1996 these accounted for more
than half of all infant deaths in the United States.
Other causes include maternal and placental compli-
cations, infections, and unintentional injuries.
While the yearly infant mortality rate (the annual
number of infant deaths/annual number of live-born
infants per thousand) in the United States has been
declining steadily from 100 in 1915 to 7.2 in 1998, its
ranking among other developed countries continues
to worsen, leaving the United States ranked behind
most Western European countries. This poor ranking
internationally can be attributed in part to global vari-
ations in live birth definitions and recording prac-
tices, but it also reflects racial and ethnic disparities
in health status, access to health care, and socioeco-
nomic conditions.
See also: BIRTH DEFECTS; BIRTHWEIGHT;
PREMATURE INFANTS; PRENATAL CAREBibliography
Kleinman, Joel. ‘‘Infant Mortality.’’ Healthy People 2000: Statistical
Notes 1, no. 2 (1991):1–8.
Peters, Kimberly, Kenneth Kochanek, and Sherry Murphy.
‘‘Deaths: Final Data for 1996.’’ National Vital Statistics Reports
47, no. 9 (1998):85.
Singh, Gopal, and Stella Yu. ‘‘Infant Mortality in the United States:
Trends, Differentials, and Projections, 1950 through 2010.’’
American Journal of Public Health 85 (1995):957–964.
Guyer, Bernard, Marian MacDorman, Joyce Martin, Stephanie
Ventura, and Donna Strobino. ‘‘Annual Summary of Vital Sta-
tistics: 1998’’ Pediatrics 104, no. 6 (1999):1229–1247.
Guyer, Bernard, Mary Anne Freedman, Donna Strobino, and Ed-
ward Sondik. ‘‘Annual Summary of Vital Statistics: Trends in
the Health of Americans during the Twentieth Century.’’ Pe-
diatrics 106 (2000):1307–1317.
Mary Ann Pass
Martha Slay
Greg R. AlexanderINJURIES
Accidents, according to dictionary definitions, are
events that happen by chance and are not predictable
and therefore are not preventable. In contrast, from
a public health perspective, injuries were first clearly
conceptualized by William Haddon (1964) as damage
done to the body as a result of often predictable and
therefore preventable energy exchange. This energy
exchange may be kinetic, thermal, or chemical. For
example, kinetic energy can result in injury when
someone falls, hits the dashboard in a car crash, is
penetrated by a bullet, or is hit on the head with a
baseball bat. Injuries associated with thermal energy
result in burns. Chemical energy can create injury
through contact with caustics or via ingestion of a
wide assortment of poisonous substances. Injuries can
also occur when there is a lack of energy (e.g. frost-
bite) or an essential agent such as oxygen (e.g. drown-
ing). Consequently, because of the connotation that
accidents happen by chance, and therefore aren’t
preventable, injury control specialists no longer use
the term ‘‘accident,’’ preferring to refer to injury oc-
currences in terms of the specific circumstances—
‘‘crashes,’’ ‘‘falls,’’ ‘‘fires’’—or as ‘‘events’’ or ‘‘inci-
dents.’’
The literature on traumatic injury includes both
unintentional injuries (known in common parlance as
‘‘accidents’’) and intentional injury (i.e. violence).
Some types of injury are not so easily categorized in
this way—for example, traumatic brain injury result-
ing from having been a shaken baby. While this type
of injury is inflicted, it does not usually result from a210 INFANT MORTALITY