This paper used longitudinal data from five studies conducted in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda to examine the links between family stimulation and early childhood development outcomes (N = 4904; M[subscript age] = 51.5; 49% girls). Results from random-effects and more conservative child-fixed effects models indicate that…

Maternal cortisol levels (at 15, 19, 25, 31 and 37 weeks' gestation) and fetal movement response to vibroacoustic stimulation (VAS; at 25, 31 and 37 weeks) were assessed in 190 mother-fetus pairs. Fetuses showed a response to the VAS at 25 weeks and there was evidence of increasing maturation in the response at 31 and 37 weeks. Early elevations in…

Parenting is traditionally conceptualized as an exogenous environment that affects child development. However, children can also influence the quality of parenting that they receive. Using longitudinal data from 650 identical and fraternal twin pairs, we found that, controlling for cognitive ability at age 2 years, cognitive stimulation by parents…

Prior research has demonstrated intersensory facilitation for perception of amodal properties of events such as tempo and rhythm in early development, supporting predictions of the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis (IRH). Specifically, infants discriminate amodal properties in bimodal, redundant stimulation but not in unimodal, nonredundant…

A nonverbal false belief task was administered to children (mean age 5 years) and two great ape species: chimpanzees ("Pan troglodytes") and bonobos ("Pan paniscus"). Because apes typically perform poorly in cooperative contexts, our task was competitive. Two versions were run: in both, a human competitor witnessed an experimenter hide a reward in…

Animal studies demonstrate that maternal touch and contact regulate infant stress, and handling during periods of maternal deprivation attenuates the stress response. To measure the effects of touch on infant stress reactivity during simulated maternal deprivation, 53 dyads were tested in two paradigms: still-face (SF) and still-face with maternal…

Prenatal exposures to neurotoxins and postnatal parenting practices have been shown to independently predict variations in the cognitive development and emotional-behavioral well-being of infants and children. We examined the independent contributions of prenatal cigarette exposure and infant learning stimulation, as well as their…

The aim of this study was to investigate developmental changes in heart rate response to repeated low-intensity (85 dB) sound stimulation in fetuses between 32 and 37 weeks of gestation. We measured amplitude changes in heart rate as our index of fetal response. At 35 to 37 weeks of gestation, the majority of fetuses showed a deceleratory response…

Maturational changes in the capacity to process quickly the temporal envelope of sound have been linked to language abilities in typically developing individuals. As part of a longitudinal study of brain maturation and cognitive development during adolescence, we employed dense-array EEG and spatiotemporal source analysis to characterize…

The effects of environmental stimulation and parental nurturance on brain development have been studied extensively in animals. Much less is known about the relations between childhood experience and cognitive development in humans. Using a longitudinally collected data set with ecologically valid in-home measures of childhood experience and later…

We assessed whether exposure to amodal properties in bimodal stimulation (e.g. rhythm, rate, duration) could educate attention to amodal properties in subsequent unimodal stimulation during prenatal development. Bobwhite quail embryos were exposed to an individual bobwhite maternal call under several experimental and control conditions during the…