There is a renewed scientific interest in the role of childhood in human evolution, pointing to the explorative phase of a human's life history that shapes how children learn and develop. This study presents a synthesis from evolutionary sciences that considers biases in childhood learning through activities in play, exploration, and social…

In an age when play is often seen as frivolous or unproductive, this book explains the importance of play in early childhood education. Each chapter focuses on a specific type of play, includes suggestions for putting theory into practice, and offers recommendations for language and information educators can use to help parents understand that…

For a century, America's early childhood policy has been premised on a myth. This falsehood--which dictates that child care and education are somehow separate and distinct--not only suboptimizes the most important window into all human development, but costs American taxpayers an untold fortune. It's time to think differently. Written in plain yet…

Play is a developmentally appropriate practice for young children and enhances children's holistic development. However, recent educational policies and pressure to focus on academic goals and high-stakes testing have resulted in an emphasis on teacher-directed instruction, minimizing play-based child directed experiences in kindergarten…

Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) have a strong and growing evidence base. Yet, NDBIs are not implemented on a wide scale within early intervention programs for children on the autism spectrum. Potential reasons for the slow adoption of NDBIs likely stem from the differing theoretical orientations of behavioral and…

A large and growing body of work has documented robust illusions of area perception in adults. To date, however, there has been surprisingly little in-depth investigation into children's area perception, despite the importance of this topic to the study of quantity perception more broadly (and to the many studies that have been devoted to studying…

Despite receiving scant attention, the evolution of categorization in early childhood is of central importance, not only in clarifying the child's understanding of the world but in terms of refining cognitive organization and augmenting the development of semantic memory. In this review, we outline how categorization develops and is made manifest…

Societal views of Deaf people typically stem from a medical or deficit perspective, which then informs educational practices. In contrast, educational settings that embrace a cultural perspective provide visual language and strategies that can benefit all students. This article will address three common myths about American Sign Language (ASL) and…

This report examines the critical role of home visitors in supporting dual language development among Latino children, who represent a growing share of the U.S. population. Through surveys and interviews with home visitors, UnidosUS identified gaps in training and resources needed to effectively serve culturally and linguistically diverse…

The current research aims at constructing a developmentally sensitive mindreading scale (i.e., a battery of tasks measuring different aspects of mindreading ability in children from 1 to 3.5 years of age). Over 300 Polish children were tested at six-month intervals with 48 different tasks designed to measure mindreading ability (for a total of six…

In this essay, I reflect on my lived experiences as a girl child growing up in my home country of Botswana, and also as a mother in a foreign country, Canada. I am experimenting with my personal essay and making connections with academic articles that will help me understand my behaviors, attitudes, and responses to challenging situations that…

"Whole-child development" can mean different things to educators, researchers, other child- and youth-serving professionals, and policymakers. Multiple bodies of research and methods of analysis affirm that child development (and human development in general) is dynamic, bi-directional (i.e., the child and context influence each other),…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends (InPACT) 2022, organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.), held in Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal, from 23 to 25 of April 2022. Modern psychology offers a large range of scientific…