Crawling is considered an important motor skill for infants. Although infants show variations in their crawling, the association between crawling variations and subsequent development is unexplored. This study investigates the difference in amount of crawling variation between infants with and without subsequent developmental delays. This…

Objective: In preterm and very low birth weight (VLBW) infants, attention-related problems have been found to be more pronounced and emerge later as academic difficulties that may persist into school age. In response, based on three attention networks: alerting, orienting, and executive attention, we examined the development of attention functions…

This study reports on crawling variability and differences in variability between infants with typical development (TD) and those with developmental delays. This longitudinal study included 0-year-old infants with no apparent dysfunction. The crawling movement in the video was coded objectively with reference to previous research. The infants were…

This study explored child behaviours that enable mothers to perceive their child's minds. We administered the Mind Perception Questionnaire to 216 women with children aged between 0 and 24 months and 221 working women without children. Participants responded with mind perceptions for various entities, including for their children (a 0--2-year-old…

The Japanese pedagogical strategy of mimamoru (watch and protect) has been identified by cross-culture researchers as an implicit component of early childhood education in Japan. However, little is known about the types of advice given by experts to parents regarding mimamoru. Accordingly, this study examined expert advice related to the mimamoru…

A prominent hypothesis holds that by speaking to infants in infant-directed speech (IDS) as opposed to adult-directed speech (ADS), parents help them learn phonetic categories. Specifically, two characteristics of IDS have been claimed to facilitate learning: "hyperarticulation," which makes the categories more "separable," and…

This longitudinal study aimed to investigate infants' spontaneous object interactions during naturalistic longitudinal observations in a day care centre in Japan. Infants' and caregivers' interactions during free play time were videotaped. The main focus related to how infants' object interactions changed during locomotor development. Observations…

Infant sex ratios that differ from the biological norm provide a measure of gender status inequality that is not susceptible to social desirability bias. Ratios may become less biased with educational expansion through reduced preference for male children. Alternatively, bias could increase with education through more access to sex-selective…