Crawling is considered an important motor skill for infants. Although infants show variations in their crawling, the association between crawling variations and subsequent development is unexplored. This study investigates the difference in amount of crawling variation between infants with and without subsequent developmental delays. This…

While much work has emphasized the role of the environment in language learning, research equally reports consistent effects of the child's knowledge, in particular, the words known to individual children, in steering further lexical development. Much of this work is based on cross-sectional data, assuming that the words typically known to…

Teachers and allied professionals change the brains of students with their instruction and interventions. Since their efforts lead to physiological changes through the brain's natural propensity for plasticity, it is perplexing that very few educators know about the brain, or how their actions influence brain development in the children they…

The human capacity for rational decisions hinges on modal judgment: the discernment of what could, has to, or cannot happen. This ability was proposed to be a late outcome of human cognitive development, contingent on the mastery of linguistic structures. Here, we show that preschool-age children are capable of sophisticated forms of modal…

Interpersonal synchronization between infants and parents emerges early in life and serves as a critical foundation for the development of cognitive, social, and communicative abilities. Traditionally, researchers have assessed this synchrony using composite scores that capture the overall degree of reciprocal, coordinated interaction within a…

"Research Findings:" Despite the prevalence of integrating early childhood education (ECE) into formal schooling, there is limited evidence on how school-based ECE affects children compared to other types of ECE, particularly in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Therefore, this study examined school-based ECE programs compared…

Toddlerhood is a period of intensive and rapid socio-emotional development. The effects of different types of childcare settings on child development have been widely studied, but the results have often been contradictory. The aim of this study was to compare social competence and socio-emotional problems in two-year-old children (n = 1104; girls…

In this extensively revised edition, Martha Ann Bell and her contributors synthesize the newest research on how cognitive and emotional processes influence each other in child development. Historically, research in child development has treated cognitive processes as separate and distinct from social-emotional processes. However, many of the…

Mapping skills between different codes to represent numerical information, such as number symbols (i.e., verbal number words and written digits) and non-symbolic quantities, are important in the development of the concept of number. The aim of the current study is to investigate children's mapping skills by incorporating another numerical code…

Identifying preservice teachers' perspectives about play and their role as a teacher in play is critical because their perspectives are related to how they organise and involve play in early childhood education. However, very few empirical studies have been conducted to examine how preservice teachers view play. In the present study, 46 preservice…

The family unit exerts a crucial influence on early childhood development across all domains: physical, cognitive, and emotional and social. Prior research consistently underscores the significant role of parental involvement in shaping early childhood developmental trajectories. However, in numerous countries, particularly within developing…

Background/purpose. This study investigates "manjujai," a traditional Minangkabau parenting practice, as a culturally embedded method of early childhood care and education. The research aims to uncover the meaning and function of "manjujai"--specifically its role in transmitting cultural values, historical narratives, and…

Happiness is one of the most important parenting goals in today's modern society. To promote a happy childhood, we need to understand what happiness means to children. Contrary to the view that young children may equate happiness with satisfying material desires and experiencing simple pleasures, in this article, I review recent developmental…

Counterfactual emotions such as regret may aid future decision-making by encouraging people to focus on controllable features of personal past events. However, it remains unclear when children begin to preferentially focus on controllable features of such events. Across two studies, Australian 4-9-year-olds (N = 336, 168 females; data collected…

Aperiodic electroencephalography (EEG) activity is hypothesized to index biological mechanisms that underpin brain functioning. This longitudinal study characterized the developmental trajectories of the aperiodic slope (i.e., aperiodic exponent) and offset from infancy to 7 years of age in a US community sample (N = 391, 46.5% female,…