Despite receiving scant attention, the evolution of categorization in early childhood is of central importance, not only in clarifying the child's understanding of the world but in terms of refining cognitive organization and augmenting the development of semantic memory. In this review, we outline how categorization develops and is made manifest…

This Special Issue on linguistic and cognitive development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) arose from the 42nd Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) (2017), when Jeannette Schaeffer, Stephanie Durrleman, and Inge-Marie Eigsti organized a symposium on this topic. It shows that the study of language development…

Psychosocial intervention programs are carried out in Latin American communities with socioeconomic disadvantage to improve their quality of life; few evaluations are carried out to measure their effectiveness. The study aimed to determine if intervention processes in vulnerable communities might favor the children's development. An analysis of…

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…

The present study aimed at investigating whether L2 learning affects phonological short-term and working memory and first language (L1) development. The performance of a group of 31 4- to-5-year-old sequential bilinguals attending an International School on tasks assessing phonological short-term and working memory and linguistic performance in L1…

The literature on human and animal learning suggests that individuals attend to and act on cues differently based on the order in which they were learned. Recent studies have proposed that one specific type of learning outcome, the highlighting effect, can serve as a framework for understanding a number of early cognitive milestones. However,…

The embodied-cognition approach views cognition and language as grounded in daily sensorimotor child-environment interactions. Therefore, the attainment of motor milestones is expected to play a role in cognitive-linguistic development. Early attainment of unsupported sitting and independent walking indeed predict better spatial cognition and…

Purpose: This preliminary investigation explored potential cognitive and linguistic sources of variance in 2- year-olds' speech-sound discrimination by using the toddler change/no-change procedure and examined whether modifications would result in a procedure that can be used consistently with younger 2-year-olds. Method: Twenty typically…

In a seminal study Simcock and Hayne (2002) showed that 3-year-olds were unable to use newly acquired words to describe a "magic" event experienced 6 or 12 months earlier. In the reference study the children's verbal recall was tested without props being present. Inspired by recent evidence, the original design was replicated, testing…

The present study was a causality study that investigate the effects of conditional factors; if x, y & z are the independent factors (e.g. socio-economic status, Anthropometric status, and home environmental status) on the dependent factors (e.g. memory, social skill, language acquisition, logical reasoning, and problem solving). The present…

Purpose: Verbal short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) skills predict speech and language outcomes in children with cochlear implants (CIs) even after conventional demographic, device, and medical factors are taken into account. However, prior research has focused on single end point outcomes as opposed to the longitudinal process of…

We review the development of the Jamaican home visiting intervention for children under 4 years and its evidence base. The intervention has focused on supporting mothers to promote the development of their children through interacting in a responsive way, labelling the environment and activities. The curriculum is structured and cognitively…

Concern for the impact of prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) on human language development is based on observations of impaired performance on assessments of language skills in these children relative to non-exposed children. We investigated the effects of PCE on speech processing ability using event-related potentials (ERPs) among a sample of…

In two experiments autobiographical memories from childhood were recalled to cue words naming common objects, locations, activities and emotions. Participants recalled their earliest specific memory associated with each word and dated their age at the time of the remembered event. A striking and specific finding emerged: age of earliest memory was…

If it is true that "new discoveries in neuroscience suggest that school readiness interventions might come too late if they start after the child is three years old", then the infant/toddler field must claim the concept of school readiness. The brain's foundation for all later learning is created in the first three years of life. As many…