The aim of this research was to assess global and socio-emotional development and infant's language of caregivers by means of the third edition of Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development. Literature points peculiarities on the institutional setting and that presence or absence of mother can impact infant's development in several forms.…

Early childhood development (ECD) practitioners from low-resource communities may find it challenging to provide developmentally appropriate services to support child development, due to the increased risk of developmental delays. Practitioners rely on their ECD knowledge when delivering ECD services, but many practitioners in South Africa are…

Autobiographical remembering develops in childhood. A late-developing cognitive tool is the cultural life script. The present study aimed at exploring the beginnings of its acquisition and at replicating its acquisition in early adolescence in a Southern-European culture. Study 1 established the Portuguese normative adult cultural life script,…

Divergent cultural, religious, and ideological beliefs and practices are often challenging to contemplate and difficult to accept when they conflict with an individual's own convictions and way of life. The recognition that children and adolescents grow up in an increasingly diverse world has led to a general interest in fostering tolerance. In…

Accumulating information and knowledge is a major task of development. A common assumption is that we build our storehouse of world knowledge, our semantic memory, through direct experience. Although direct experience is involved, to explain fully how we know all that we know, we also must consider processes that allow for integration of…

This dissertation develops a cognitive model describing when children learn to group distinct sound segments (allophones) into abstract equivalence classes (phonemes). The allophones an individual acquires are arbitrary and determined by their particular input, yet are intricately involved in language cognition once learned. The proposed…

Caregivers are increasingly recognised as significant in providing naturalistic interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder in high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries including Sri Lanka. It is imperative to assess the impact of programmes targeting desired parenting skills within cultural boundaries. A preliminary…

Priority-setting is a collective responsibility centred around inclusive engagement and alignment with the needs and desired outcomes of the community. In this study, we leveraged the collective expertise of stakeholders from the child and family service system, to identify priorities for supporting the health, education and wellbeing of children…

Purpose: As part of a larger grant-funded project, a professional development (PD) series was conducted within the framework of a school-university partnership to improve teachers' capacity to meaningfully include fathers and father figures in the school environment, with a particular focus on fathers of children with disabilities. The authors…

Violent crimes and domestic violence are notoriously high in South Africa, which leaves many children defenceless to struggle with emotions such as loneliness and sadness. The healthy development and socialisation of children can be difficult in a society characterised by domestic tribulations, poverty, crime, single-parent homes, and absent…

Indigenous frameworks suggest environmental risk and protective factors for American Indian (AI) children's development can be understood in terms of connecting and disconnecting forces in five domains: spirituality, family, intergenerational ties, community, and environment/land. This study examined the prevalence of these forces among 156 urban…

Given the hegemony of developmentalism in early childhood education and care, this article uses a poetic juxtapositional approach to bewilder Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Critical consideration of how the theory of cognitive development has contributed to the imagining of a universal, ahistorical child and childhood(s) are discussed…

This article recounts the changes that occurred when a research study was redesigned to become more participatory, involving children, teachers, families, and the wider symbolic cultural neighbourhood. What emerged was a research study that was "integrated" into the curriculum of a four-year-old classroom. Here, the process is…

This meta-analysis examined the associations between teachers' language practices and children's language development from preschool to third grade. We screened 14,852 articles. A total of 119 articles from 104 distinct studies were analyzed, comprising 415 effect sizes across 13,572 teachers and 112,533 child participants. The result of the…

Every year brings new research studies that aim to describe early childhood development. Despite this boom in research, there has been little useful translation of these studies into clear recommendations for educators and mental health practitioners. This book shows experienced educators and mental health practitioners who work with young…