Global Family Research Project joined with four other organizations as part of the LEGO Idea Conference to take an in-depth look at letting families guide the creation of programs and services that best meet their needs. This summary of the event session, held in Billund, Denmark, includes international examples of collaborating with families and…

This research article attempts to determine strategies that can be used to support children's cognitive and social-emotional development in early childhood care and education programs. By synthesizing empirical evidence about pedagogical techniques that promote children's competencies, the article aims to identify those characteristics of programs…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to analyze verbal and nonverbal maternal response types following infant vocalizations in younger (ages 4-8 months) versus older (ages 10-14 months) infant groups and their potential implications for infant vocal development or word learning. Method: Maternal response types that occurred within 3 s of infant…

Longitudinal tracking of 107 three- to-thirteen-year-olds in a cross-sequential design showed a 6-step theory of mind (ToM) sequence identified by a few past cross-sectional studies validly depicted longitudinal ToM development from early to middle childhood for typically developing (TD) children and those with ToM delays owing to deafness or…

Joint engagement--the sharing of events during social interactions--is an important context for early learning. To date, sharing topics that are only heard has not been systematically documented. To describe the development of auditory joint engagement, 48 child-parent dyads were observed 5 times from 12 to 30 months during seminaturalistic play.…

This special issue on early self- and co-regulation addresses a topic that is founded on a rich mix of theoretical perspectives, including self-determination theory, socio-cultural theory, attachment theory and artificial intelligence. Reflecting this diversity, the papers adopt a diverse range of approaches to cutting-edge questions regarding…

Background: Parenting behaviours influence many domains of child development, and recent work has demonstrated the specific effects of parenting on the development of executive function (EF) abilities. The relationship between parent-child interaction patterns and EF has been examined in typically developing (TD) children but has not yet been…

This current article is drawn from a qualitative study investigating the motivations and uses of digital devices of Singapore parents with their toddlers and preschoolers (age range: 1-5-year-old children). The article focuses on three prominent empirical findings. First, parent participants tend to try using a digital device with children to…

The construction of self, a fundamental process for development. Twins, as they grow together, may encounter greater difficulties in individuation process. The present study aims to investigate the construction of the image of the self and of the self with its own twin/sibling through the drawing of the human figure and to highlight any…

Play is how children explore, discover, fail, succeed, socialize, and flourish. It is a fundamental element of the human condition. It's the key to giving schoolchildren skills they need to succeed--skills like creativity, innovation, teamwork, focus, resilience, expressiveness, empathy, concentration, and executive function. Expert organizations…

The study reported in this paper contributes to the exploration of the development of children's mathematical drawing. 36 preschool children produced drawings of 'something tall and something short'. Open-ended analysis of the forms and structures of the drawings revealed four categories ranging from scribble to the base-line comparison of two…

Associative word learning, i.e., associating a word with an object, is an important building block of early word learning for TD infants. This study investigated the development of word-I object associations by TD infants and infants and toddlers with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic disorder associated with delayed language and cognitive…

The initial application of evolutionary theory to the universal practice of music-making in humans was at best marginal and at worst dismissive of non-Western musics. Darwin's biography defines an agenda for musicality in the emergence of human culture that is receiving considerable attention in several disciplines, presenting a robust case for…

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted with preschool teachers trialling an intervention in which executive function activities are embedded in teachers' daily practices and imaginary play is used to build meaningful problem situations that children solve using executive functions. The participants were 227 preschool children (53%…

Previous research has demonstrated a positive and long-running effect of mother-child interaction on numerous areas of child development. Yet, most of what is currently known derives from research on children in Western countries. Employing data from recent Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) on women (ages 15-49), this study examined…