Far from egocentric, infants and toddlers advance significantly in their understanding of others' feelings, desires, goals, intentions, preferences, and views during the first 2 years of life. In so doing, they establish the foundation for later social and emotional understanding. This article surveys those accomplishments, speculates about how…

The authors share results from two longitudinal studies exploring the impact of father's alcohol use on child development. The Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS) has followed a sample of alcoholic families with 3-5 year old children for 20 years. The Buffalo Longitudinal Study (BLS) has followed a sample of alcoholic and nonalcoholic families…

For thousands of years military children have been faced with many challenges that result from the combat deployment of their parents. These challenges are likely to be particularly burdensome to infants, toddlers, and preschoolers because of their emotional and cognitive immaturity, their reliance on magical thinking, and their dependence upon…

The Executive Committee at "ZERO TO THREE" created a Task Force on Culture and Development to deepen our understanding of the role of culture in child development and to guide the organization through a self-assessment process to better understand how staff and board members address the issue of culture in their work. The task force's literature…

"Zero to Three" is a single focus bulletin of the National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families providing insight from multiple disciplines on the development of infants, toddlers, and their families. Noting that knowledge of childrens musical experiences in context is central to understanding childrens lives, and that reciprocally,…

The explosion in the rate of multiple births has led to new questions about how adequately prepared parents are for the demands of raising triplets and the implications for the healthy development of the infants. The authors examined the relationship between mothering, infant social behavior, and cognitive development in a longitudinal study of 23…

Heckman et al. discuss how cost-benefit analysis of prekindergarten education programs demonstrates that the highest per child benefits stem from programs that focus on economically disadvantaged children. Indeed, studies have shown that these children make significant gains in cognition, social-emotional development, and educational performance…

The ZERO TO THREE Policy Center has three areas of focus: good health, strong families, and positive early learning experiences. Effective policies must promote healthy functioning in all domains, including cognitive, physical, and social and emotional development. Comprehensive services are essential to meeting the needs of very young children…

"Zero to Three" is a single-focus bulletin of the National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families providing insight from multiple disciplines on the development of infants, toddlers, and their families. Noting that America's babies and toddlers live in a world full of television sets, VCRs, computers, videogames, and interactive…

This newsletter issue presents five articles addressing intervention with infants and toddlers having pervasive developmental disabilities. The first article is by Stanley I. Greenspan and is titled "Reconsidering the Diagnosis and Treatment of Very Young Children with Autistic Spectrum or Pervasive Developmental Disorder." This article…

This special issue focuses on infant and toddler child care. The title article, by J. Ronald Lally and others, examines the sources of problems in the management and planning of quality child care. It also explores six key components of early group experience: group size, quality of the physical environment, primary caregiving assignments,…

In the Infant Development, Environment and Lifestyle (IDEAL) Study of methamphetamine (MA) effects on children, the authors screened approximately 27,000 newborn infants for MA exposure, and from that pool derived a sample of in utero MA-exposed children as well as a comparison group matched for other drug use and other factors. IDEAL measures…

The Kids First program at the University of Arkansas Medical School (UAMS) is an outgrowth of the Infant Health and Development Program, a randomized trial of an early intervention approach for premature, low birth weight children, which showed that intensive intervention had significant initial benefits in the cognitive development and behavior…