This study used an ethological approach to explore the behavioural adaptation of nineteen infants during their first six weeks in Residential Care (RC), or a Foster Family (FF) or an Infant-Mother Centre (IMC). Direct observations were conducted once a week at bath time. Observed behaviours were: sleep-wake states, visual exploration, motor…

International research, while mostly conducted in high-income countries, repeatedly states that parents of premature infants have increased needs and require additional information and varied support channels after the infant's initial discharge from hospital. However, the perceived self-reported needs of parents concerned with the caregiving of…

Parent-mediated interventions for infants and young children with an increased likelihood of autism may help ameliorate developmental concerns; however, generalization of parents' teaching strategies to novel child target skills has not been consistently demonstrated. This study expanded our parent training program, Parent Intervention for…

Unintentional injury represents a significant health threat to children, and infancy marks a particularly vulnerable stage. This multi-method study (questionnaire, diary) measured parents' (N = 143) use of three popular home-safety practices (teaching about safety, environment modification to reduce access to hazards, supervision) and child injury…

Many parents express concerns for their children's multilingual development, yet little is known about the nature and strength of these concerns - especially among parents in multilingual societies. This pre-registered, questionnaire-based study addresses this gap by examining the concerns of 821 Quebec-based parents raising infants and toddlers…

In children with a hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) under the age of 2, regular assessments are conducted to monitor auditory and linguistic progress. However, the collection of authentic, representative, and reliable expressive language data on young children with CIs remains a challenge. The purpose of the study was to determine…

Policymakers, child care providers, and parents face tradeoffs in determining how much to spend on child care, including how many hours to purchase, and the features of programs that might influence quality. Given these tradeoffs, it is useful to understand what constitutes quality, the cost of care features associated with quality, the effects of…

This study aimed to test a 5-wave sequential mediation model linking maternal mind-mindedness during infancy to children's school readiness in kindergarten through a serial mediation involving child language and effortful control in toddlerhood and the preschool years. Among a sample of 204 mother-child dyads, we assessed maternal mind-mindedness…

Early visual deprivation impairs some, but not all, aspects of face perception. We investigated the possible developmental roots of later abnormalities by using a face detection task to test infants treated for bilateral congenital cataract within 1 hour of their first focused visual input. The seven patients were between 5 and 12 weeks old…

This article features Discovery Children's Centre, one of the highest quality centres in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Discovery Children's Centre believes that children, who may have little or no voice in a democratic society, can be heard if some adult will speak on their behalf. Even as it has grown from 35 to 230 children, quality has…

Infant feeding guidelines recommend exclusive breast-feeding to the age of 6 months; complementary foods should not be introduced before this age. This study examined parent and infant psychosocial determinants of the early introduction of complementary foods. Analyses were conducted on a representative sample of children born in Quebec (Canada)…

This study examined 6-month-old infants' abilities to use the visual information provided by simulated self-movement through the world, and movement of an object through the world, for spatial orientation. Infants were habituated to a visual display in which they saw a toy hidden, followed by either rotation of the point of observation through the…

We study the impact of maternal care on early child development using an expansion in Canadian maternity leave entitlements. Following the leave expansion, mothers who took leave spent 48-58 percent more time not working in their children's first year of life. This extra maternal care primarily crowded out home-based care by unlicensed…

Reviews literature on attachment process between adopted children and their mothers. Explains empirical research in relation to Bowlby's theoretical formulation of attachment, basic thesis of which is that infants develop affectional bonds at specific ages of their development and, therefore, child's age at time of adoption is important…

Assesses ability of infant tests to predict language and cognitive development and to detect infants at risk for developmental problems. The Bayley Mental Development Index was particularly capable of detecting infants at risk for developmental delay. The Caldwell Inventory of Home Stimulation identified home environment as a key factor in…