Identifying infants at elevated likelihood for autism and other developmental differences in the first year of life remains a significant challenge. This study explored associations between behavioral differences in infancy and developmental outcomes in toddlerhood. We conducted a secondary data analysis of 256 infants with an older autistic…

Imitation plays a crucial role in early social learning. Numerous studies indicate that young children copy even actions that are clearly irrelevant for goal achievement--a phenomenon called overimitation (OI). The present study tested whether this finding can be generalized to different forms of faithful nonsense imitation presented in different…

Few studies have examined the developmental pathways linking early pesticide exposure to children's socioemotional problems. Infant temperament is an important early indicator of socioemotional development and may be influenced by early environmental contaminants. However, no study to date has examined the association between household pesticide…

To date, virtually no studies have examined toddlers' non-response in developmental tasks. This study investigates data from 3667 toddlers to address (1) whether two aspects of non-response (completion and engagement) are separable, (2) how stable these aspects are from ages two to three, (3) how non-response relates to background characteristics,…

Social scientists know little about the experiences of transgender and nonbinary (TGNB) parents and their children's development. In this study of 138 transgender parents (age M = 35.28 years; 86.2% White/European American) with binary (52.9%) and nonbinary (47.1%) gender identities, we explore the links between family processes and young…

Research Findings: The present study investigated the potential mediating role of maternal parenting in the intergenerational effects of maternal childhood traumatic experiences (CTEs) on prosocial behaviors of their offspring and examined whether the offspring's sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) moderates this association using a 1-year…

The development of children's future-oriented cognition has become a popular research topic in the past two decades. Much of this research focuses on the preschool and middle childhood years, but very little is known about the future-oriented cognitive abilities of toddlers and young preschoolers. The present study investigated the emergence of…

Over the past 20+ years, researchers have worked toward identifying early behavioral predictors of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developing observation-based screeners to supplement existing parent-report methods. This study is a follow-up, 3 to 8 years later, with parents/caregivers of 57 children previously enrolled in a U.S.…

Purpose: Behavior and temperament (e.g., emotional reactivity, self-regulation) have been considered relevant to stuttering and its developmental course, but the direction of this relation is still unknown. Knowledge of behavior difficulties and temperament in childhood stuttering can improve screening and intervention. The current study examined…

Adults' behaviour in interactions with children is assumed to influence children's playfulness. However, little is known about how the quality of teacher-child interaction in early childhood education and care affects the development of children's playfulness, although the interaction quality has been identified as a strong predictor of children's…

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…

In this study, our objective was to examine the relationship between the self-perception and sexual development of children aged between five and six. The study group of the study included 110 children in the five-six age group attending pre-primary education institutions in Erzincan city center and their mothers. As part of this research, the…

Family is an important context for the development of adaptive child coping. Further, both family and child coping can promote positive mental health. This study examines whether family coping predicts child coping over 1 year among Mexican-origin immigrant families. Participants included 104 families with a child aged 6-10 years (M[subscript age]…

This study quantified changes in self-reported sexual orientation from adolescence to early adulthood, and whether childhood gender nonconformity (GNC) predicted sexual orientation changes. Youth (2,678 boys and 3,359 girls; 96.09% ethnically White) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were included. Self-reported…

Self-regulation in early childhood is an important predictor of success across a variety of indicators in life, including health, well-being, and earnings. Although conceptually self-regulation has been defined as multifaceted, previous research has not investigated whether there is conceptual and empirical overlap between the factors that…