Background: Parental intellectual disability is considered a risk factor for child removal internationally. In New South Wales, Australia, authorised clinicians are court appointed experts who assess parenting and cognitive capacity in child protection matters. Method: This study examined a sample of 20 assessment orders requesting parenting…

Children's speech is influenced by the speech they hear, in particular by the parental speech addressed directly to them. The aim of this study was to analyse toddlers' speech with their parents and to investigate the influence of specific characteristics of child-directed speech on child speech in real time during mother-child and father-child…

Many individuals with autism experience challenges using language in social contexts (i.e., pragmatic language). Characterizing and understanding pragmatic variability is important to inform intervention strategies and the etiology of communication challenges in autism; however, current manual coding-based methods are often time and labor…

This prospective study examined the developmental changes over time of adolescents diagnosed in toddlerhood with autism spectrum disorder and searched for child characteristics at toddlerhood that predict outcome at adolescence. The study included 65 participants who were divided into low cognitive (developmental quotient [less than] 85; N = 41)…

Understanding the role of negative emotionality in the development of executive functioning (EF) and language skills can help identify developmental windows that may provide promising opportunities for intervention. In addition, because EF and language skills are, in part, genetically influenced, intergenerational transmission patterns are…

The study investigated whether age at attainment of 20 developmental milestones within the areas of language, walking, eating, dressing, social interaction, and toilet training was associated with adult intelligence. Mothers of 821 children of the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort recorded 20 developmental milestones at a 3-year examination, and all…

Research on sources of individual difference in parental Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) is limited and there is a particular lack of research on fathers' compared to mothers' speech. This study examined the predictive relations between infant characteristics and variability in paternal lexical diversity (LD) in dyadic free play with two-year-olds (M…

The purpose of this study was to investigate sex differences in behavioral and emotional problems in high-functioning girls and boys with autism spectrum disorder. The results obtained by adolescents with autism spectrum disorder were compared with those of typically developing girls and boys. Correlations between parents' and adolescents' ratings…

Background: Research investigating language skills in school-aged children with non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate is sparse. Past studies focus on younger populations, lack key comparisons to demographically matched control cohorts or explore language as a component of broader academic skills. Trends of existing studies suggest that affected…

Research Findings: This study investigated the joint influence of maternal cognitive readiness to parent and children's self-esteem on children's academic achievement and behavioral adjustment in the classroom at age 10. Participants were 153 adolescent mothers and their firstborn children. Findings indicated that low levels of prenatal maternal…

Previous studies have shown high rates of comorbid disorders in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, but failed to compare them with general population and few of them have identified predictors of comorbidity. This study compared the rates of psychiatric disorders in 50 children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, 24…

The home literacy environment is a well-established predictor of children's language and literacy development. We investigated whether formal, informal, and indirect measures of the home literacy environment predict children's reading and language skills once maternal language abilities are taken into account. Data come from a longitudinal study…

Children who are iron deficient (ID) or iron-deficient anemic (IDA) have been shown to seek and receive less stimulation from their caregivers, contributing to "functional isolation". Over time, the reduced interactions between child and caregiver are thought to interfere with the acquisition of normative social competencies and…

A well-documented finding in developmental psychopathology research is that different informants often provide discrepant ratings of a youth's internalizing and externalizing problems. The current study examines youth- and parent-based moderators (i.e., youth age, gender, and IQ; type of psychopathology; offense category; psychopathic traits;…

Sixty youth (16-19 years) from two youth prison sites participate in a prospective study examining criminal offending and learning disabilities (LD), completing measures of estimated IQ, attention, reading, and mathematical and oral language abilities. Prevalence rates of LDs exceed those of international studies, with 91.67% of the offenders…