This narrative review analyzes the visual and auditory advantages that autistic people with speech divergence (A-SD) may have compared with autistic people without speech divergence (A-NoSD) or non-autistic people. Importantly, A-SDs' intelligence and communication skills are often underestimated in research and practice. Further, this paper…

How do researchers of cognitive development work to make sure that our field evolves so that our contribution to humanity is emancipatory? We can take inspiration from researchers near and far. Inspiration may be found in other areas of psychological research (social, cultural, etc.) and other social sciences (public health, sociology, etc.).…

Maternal substance use and unpredictable maternal sensory signals may affect child development, but no studies have examined them together. We explored the unpredictability, frequency and duration of maternal sensory signals in 52 Caucasian mother-child dyads, 27 with and 25 without maternal substance use. We also examined the association between…

Although the role of the home in supporting early childhood development, early learning and school outcomes is well established, the perspectives of caregivers on child development and schooling outcomes are comparatively underexplored. This qualitative study was conducted with caregivers of children aged 6-10 years in Mahikeng, South Africa and…

Caregiver executive functions (EFs) play an integral role in shaping cognitive development. Here, we investigated how caregiver EF abilities (86 caregivers; "mean age" = 33.4 years, SD = 4.5) was associated with visual working memory (VWM) in infants (86 infants females; mean age = 250.6 days, SD = 35.8). The BRIEF-A was used to assess…

This study explores the extent to which medical and sociodemographic variables and cognitive and language skills are associated with executive function (EF) skills in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) graduates at 24 months of adjusted age. We explored cognitive, language, and EF skills in 42 NICU graduates who participated in a NICU follow-up…

Previous research on children's knowledge about the mind has primarily focused on their comprehension of false beliefs, leaving the conceptualization of thoughts and thinking less explored. To address this gap, we developed a new assessment tool, the interview about the mind (IaM), to assess children's understanding of the mind. Two studies…

During adolescence, increases in pubertal hormones lead to reproductive maturity as well as changes in cognitive development. Yet, little is known about how to best characterize interindividual differences in hormone concentrations. The goal of the current study was to examine the antecedents and consequences of membership in empirically derived…

Structural equation modelling (SEM) with longitudinal survey data was used to test a proposed developmental model of the association of family income (with children aged 6-9) to parent behaviours (for children at 10 years of age) and adolescent cognitive achievement and behaviour problems (at age 15). Data from the Child Development Supplement and…

This study explores the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa compared to existing reference data, and explores development by child age bands to examine relative levels of development. Cross-sectional analyses present data from 954 adolescents (10-19 years) and their first-born children (0-68 months).…

This study examined verbal and non-verbal features of mother-infant shared book reading in Australia during the first year of life and explored the relationship between these features and infant cognition. Mother-infant dyads were observed in this cross-sectional study reading an unfamiliar book in a laboratory setting when infants were aged 6…

Representational theory of mind--the ability to represent others' mental states and understand that these beliefs can be different from one's own and reality--emerges in early childhood alongside other meta-representational abilities, such as understanding that an image can be perceived in multiple ways. Limited research has suggested that…

Recent research on advanced theory of mind (ToM) has questioned the extent to which existing ToM measures capture a single construct, particularly for groups understudied in developmental research. The present study examined the factor structure of one of the most commonly used advanced ToM measures, the Strange Stories task, in samples of low-…

Economic difficulties in early childhood are associated with significant adverse long-term socioemotional and cognitive outcomes. In this study, we examine an understudied financial stressor that is often observed during periods of high unemployment--transient familial financial stress (TFS). We use the early childhood longitudinal study--(birth)…