The National Research Council (NRC), through the Center for Education (CFE), wishes to build on the work in early childhood it has already done. In particular, the NRC wishes to focus on research on young children and their learning of mathematical and scientific ideas. The workshop that is the subject of this report, one in a series of workshops…

Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) begin to manifest during the first 2 years; there is limited evidence regarding type and timing of symptom onset. We examined factors related to parental age of recognition (AOR) of early abnormalities and the association between AOR and diagnosis and levels of functioning at 2 and 4 years in 75 toddlers…

A health education program was evaluated which used child development specialists as home visitors and served a population of first-time mothers living in rural communities. The evaluation compared health and safety outcomes between intervention and control groups. The research staff, separate from the intervention staff, collected data in the…

Little is known about how grandmothers may influence children's development, although they may frequently assist parents in the raising of their children, especially among low-income families. Data from Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study were used to explore how preschoolers function academically and psychologically over time…

Longitudinal analyses on normal versus impaired functioning across 7 domains were conducted in children who had experienced profound institutional deprivation up to the age of 42 months and were adopted from Romania into U.K. families. Comparisons were made with noninstitutionalized children adopted from Romania and with nondeprived within-U.K.…

This study describes the development of a parent resource center at a university child care center. The parent resource center is funded by a federal grant and is designed to provide support to low-income student-parents on campus. Early childhood education interns work in the center to learn how to build family relationships. The program has been…

The present study investigates whether the Early Development Instrument (Offord & Janus, 1999) measures school readiness similarly across different groups of children. We employ ordinal logistic regression to investigate differential item functioning, a method of examining measurement bias. For 40,000 children, our analysis compares groups…

Current theory on mentoring describes the process as a mutual learning relationship in which both the mentor and the mentee gain knowledge. Many research studies have supported the benefits of mentoring programs for at-risk elementary school children. One particularly interesting mentoring project with preschool children is Jumpstart, a national…

The Growth, Learning and Development (GLAD) study aimed to examine how a broad range of factors influence child weight during the first year of life. Assessments were undertaken within a multidisciplinary team framework. The sample was drawn from the community and data collection was undertaken in the four Greater Belfast Trusts. Two hundred and…

Objective: Thin body preoccupation and social pressure to be thin (TBPSP) in adolescence are risk factors for the development of full and partial bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. This study examined precursors of these potent risk factors. Method: A prospective study followed 134 children from birth to 11.0 years and their parents.…

A 24-item short form of the 96-item Developmental Behaviour Checklist was developed to provide a brief measure of Total Behaviour Problem Score for research purposes. The short form Developmental Behaviour Checklist (DBC-P24) was chosen for low bias and high precision from among 100 randomly selected item sets. The DBC-P24 was developed from…

This study was designed to determine whether children's knowledge and ability to solve problems about parenting and caregiving could be promoted by means of a school-based curriculum. The study took place over 2 years and involved 138 fifth graders the first year and 217 fifth and sixth graders the second. Subjects were divided into treatment and…

To explore dominant theoretical influences on parent education, emerging views of child nature and development, and implicit strategies for recruiting parental agreement and participation, this study analyzed "Radio Talk," a 1920s parent education program produced by child psychologists in Minnesota. A qualitative analysis of the…

To explore early sex-role development, this study examined the gender schemas of parents in relation to the sex-typed toy preferences of their own young children. Subjects were 82 parents of children between the ages of 3 and 8. Test stimuli consisted of 2 equivalent lists of 24 occupations, each list containing 8 occupations coded as typically…

This study tested the theoretical proposition that family histories of destructive adult conflict reduce children's emotional security. Subjects were 112 children--ages 6, 11, and 19 years--with equal numbers of males and females in each age group. Subjects viewed the videotapes of an adult couple engaged in either a destructive conflict or a…