Background and aims: Play is used by practitioners from across disciplinary backgrounds as a natural and enjoyable context for providing intervention and support in early childhood. In the case of autism interventions, many therapies are based on the association between social play and the development of social skills, language development, and…

The current study investigated the impact of birth order on vocabulary and social language development in 1338 first-born and 1049 s-born autistic youth (M age = 9.03 years, SD = 3.57; 86.4% male) from the Simons Simplex Collection. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses revealed mixed findings in language development. There were no differences in…

Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are at higher risk of poorer mental health compared with children without DLD. There are, however, considerable individual differences that need to be interpreted, including the identification of protective factors. Aims: Pathways from the early language and communication environment…

The mobility of peoples and their settlement in our country has created a new dynamic in dealing with population groups with particular linguistic, cultural and social characteristics. At the same time, it brought to the fore the case of the Roma, who have been active in Greece for decades without being fully integrated into the social and…

Purpose: Children with poor language tend to have worse psychosocial outcomes compared to their typically developing peers. The most common explanations for such adversities focus on developmental psychological processes whereby poor language triggers psychosocial difficulties. Here, we investigate the possibility of shared biological effects by…

The quality of a child's early language and communication environment (ELCE) is an important predictor of later educational outcomes. However, less is known about the routes via which these early experiences influence the skills that support academic achievement. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (n = 7,120) we…

Background: Several studies show that socio-economic status (SES) is related to the developmental trajectories of children with typical development (TD). However, few studies have analysed this relationship regarding children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as Down syndrome (DS). In this paper, we analyse the impact of SES in the…

Designing instruments for children and youth that result in reliable and valid data requires consideration beyond calculating grade-level equivalence of the text. Very little methodological research has been conducted on the survey response processes of children and youth and there are no comprehensive guidelines informing instrument development…

Background: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is common in children, but little is known about its association with quality of life (QoL) in middle childhood. QoL is a complex construct, aligning with an individual's sense of well-being and is related to functional limitations associated with DLD. Biopsychosocial models of disability account…

"Child Development and Learning" integrates concepts of learning and development into one comprehensive text for understanding child development. At its core is the belief that learning and development are intertwined. As children learn, they also develop. As children develop, they also learn. With an understanding of how children…

In a report of the effectiveness of MEHRIT, a social-interaction-based intervention for autism, Casenhiser et al. ("Autism" 17(2):220-241, 2013) failed to find a significant advantage for language development in the treatment group using standardized language assessments. We present the results from a re-analysis of their results to…

Little is known about outcomes of early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder reared in bilingual homes. There are concerns that social communication deficits among children with autism spectrum disorder may reduce the developmental benefits of early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder raised in bilingual…

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder have impairments in social behaviours that require systematic intervention. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cool versus not cool procedure implemented in a small group (dyad). Method: The cool versus not cool procedure consisted of the researcher demonstrating the targeted behaviour…

Background: Language development has been characterised by significant individual stability from school entry. However, the extent to which trajectories of language growth vary in children with language disorder as a function of co-occurring developmental challenges is a question of theoretical import, with implications for service provision.…

In recent years, the intersection of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience with regard to deaf individuals has received increasing attention from a variety of academic and educational audiences. Both research and pedagogy have addressed questions about whether deaf children learn in the same ways that hearing children…