The dominant approach to children with disabilities is grounded in a biomedical model that assumes a direct relationship between the biological defect and the disability. From a cultural-historical point of view, this approach fails to notice how a child with a biological defect has to act in social institutions adapted to typical children. The…

Aim: The collection of data on longer-term neurodevelopmental outcomes within large neonatal randomized controlled trials by trained assessors can greatly increase costs and present many operational difficulties. The aim of this study was to develop a more practical alternative for identifying major cognitive delay in infants at the age of 24…

Clear associations of sleep, cognitive performance, and behavioral problems have been demonstrated in meta-analyses of studies in adults. This meta-analysis is the first to systematically summarize all relevant studies reporting on sleep, cognition, and behavioral problems in healthy school-age children (5-12 years old) and incorporates 86 studies…

Executive functions and social cognition develop through childhood into adolescence and early adulthood and are important for adaptive goal-oriented behavior (Apperly, Samson, & Humphreys, 2009; Blakemore & Choudhury, 2006). These functions are attributed to frontal networks known to undergo protracted maturation into early adulthood…

The present study investigated the relations among fetal testosterone, child socio-emotional engagement and language development in a sample of 467 children (235 boys) from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study. Bioavailable testosterone concentration measured in umbilical cord blood taken at birth was found to be significantly…

The quality of the home learning environment has been proven to be of major importance for child development, but little is known about the role of domain specificity in promoting early childhood learning at home and its dependence on family background. This article presents a framework of the home learning environment in early childhood that…

Background: Early child nutritional deficiencies are prevalent in low- and middle-countries with consequences linked not only to poor survival and growth, but also to poor development outcomes. Children in disadvantaged communities face multiple risks for nutritional deficiencies, yet some children may be less susceptible or may recover more…

Children whose parents are more highly educated enjoy greater age-linked gains in cognitive abilities and academic achievement. Different researchers have typically focused on different outcomes, and the extent to which parental education relates to multiple child outcomes via a single developmental pathway has received little empirical attention.…

Using data ("n" = 3,790 with 2,119 in the 3-year-old cohort and 1,671 in the 4-year-old cohort) from 353 Head Start centers in the Head Start Impact Study, the only large-scale randomized experiment in Head Start history, this article examined the impact of Head Start on children's cognitive and parent-reported social-behavioral outcomes…

Taiwan has over the past three decades been experiencing demographic changes that may pose important concerns for children's quality of life. This study examines the relationships and potential pathways between family structure transitions and early childhood development. Our analysis is based on 19,499 children from the 2005 birth cohort who…

In this paper, the author focuses on C of the ABC's of being smart. She continues to categorize the points for readers. These categories include the following: (1) being; (2) doing; and (3) stretching.

Executive functioning skills develop rapidly during early childhood. Recent research has focused on specifying this development, particularly predictors of executive functioning skills. Here we focus on sustained attention as a predictor of inhibitory control, one key executive functioning component. Although sustained attention and inhibitory…

The purpose of the current study was to examine further the relationship between counterfactual thinking and false belief (FB) as examined by Guajardo and Turley-Ames ("Cognitive Development, 19" (2004) 53-80). More specifically, the current research examined the importance of working memory and inhibitory control in understanding the relationship…

Past research has focused on pretend play in infants with autism because it is considered an early manifestation of symbolic or imaginative thinking. Contradictory research findings have challenged the meta-representational model. The intent of this paper is to propose that pretend play is the behavioral manifestation of developing imaginative…

This article, using the National Child Development Study, estimates the causal relationship between parents' schooling and children's cognitive and non-cognitive development using the 1947 compulsory schooling legislation in Great Britain. The least squares estimates suggest strong correlations between parental education and these developmental…