Speech development occurs in highly variable environments; however, little is known about the effect of situational context on emerging infant vocalizations. At 4 time points (4, 6, 9, and 12 months), we longitudinally measured vocalizations of 104 White infant-caregiver dyads (41 girls) during three play contexts: book-sharing, toy play, and…

Sozo Kurahashi's (1882-1955) theories, formed from his profound respect for children, have influenced Japanese early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners for a long time. They also have influenced the national ECEC curriculum in Japan, which emphasizes the need for a rich environment where children can actively learn and play rather…

Previous research has supported selecting development-matched targets rather than age-matched targets to teach play skills to children with autism spectrum disorder. However, few studies have been conducted, and replications and extensions of this research are needed. The current study replicated Pane et al. (2022) by comparing the acquisition of…

Independent locomotion is associated with a range of positive developmental outcomes, but unlike cognitive, linguistic, and social skills, acquiring motor skills requires infants to generate their own input for learning. We tested factors that shape infants' spontaneous locomotion by observing forty 12- to 22-month-olds (19 girls, 21 boys) during…

Objective, quantitative measures of caregiver-child interaction during play are needed to complement caregiver or examiner ratings for clinical assessment and tracking intervention responses. In this exploratory study, we examined the feasibility of using automated video tracking, Noldus EthoVision XT, to measure 159 2-to-7-year-old autistic…

This study is a qualitative investigation of caregiver-child interactions, involving 15 autistic children who are in the early stages of language learning. Data consisted of 15-min videos of free-play interactions recorded in a University clinic. We use conversation analysis to examine the sequence organization of proposal episodes, where the…

Prematurity is a particular challenge for parents that severely affects the interaction and relationship dynamics between children and their caregivers. Previous studies mostly focused on the infancy of preterms but did not examine the development process. This study highlights whether preterm children and their main caregivers still differ in…

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…

The study adopts a multimodal perspective, looking at adults' use of gestures in variation sets (VS; i.e. sequences of partial self-repetitions occurring in successive utterances of varying form) addressed to Spanish-learning toddlers in adult-child interactions. We seek to address the following question: Do adults make simultaneous use of VS and…

Children learn to perform actions on artifacts in their environments from infancy, but the ways caregivers support this learning during everyday interactions are relatively unexplored. This study investigated how naturalistic caregiver-child teaching interactions promoted conventional action learning in toddlers. Caregivers of 32 24- to…

Since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted in-person learning, fears about children's learning loss remain a primary concern for parents, teachers, and policymakers. These concerns, combined with longstanding issues of inequity regarding children's access to learning opportunities have sparked widespread discussion about how to reimagine education.…

We report preliminary results of computer vision analysis of caregiver-child interactions during free play with children diagnosed with autism (N = 29, 41-91 months), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, N = 22, 48-100 months), or combined autism + ADHD (N = 20, 56-98 months), and neurotypical children (NT, N = 7, 55-95 months). We…

Infants can help and share in the second year of life. However, there is limited knowledge as to variability in these behaviors as a function of target (e.g., caregiver vs. unfamiliar adult) and the influence of caregiver support on infant prosocial behavior. Infants (N = 268, 124 female) at 1-2 years of age (M = 1.47, SD = 0.27) and again at 2-3…

Autistic children's play provides insights into social, communication, and other skills; however, methods for measuring these observations can be labor-intensive and rely on subjective judgment. This study explored whether children's movement and location during play measured via automated video tracking correlates with clinical features. Movement…

Interactions between preschool teachers and children, taking place in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions, have an enormous impact on child development. The quality and quantity of these interactions are crucial. This study aims at observing the actual behaviour of preschool teachers during their interactions with children in…