The authors of this article have noticed that many child care providers do not appear to be proud of their profession. Unfortunately, it seems they understand that society does not really appreciate what they do and have been negatively affected by that perception. The authors, as early childhood educators, find this attitude to be very…

Neuroconstructivism is a theoretical framework focusing on the construction of representations in the developing brain. Cognitive development is explained as emerging from the experience-dependent development of neural structures supporting mental representations. Neural development occurs in the context of multiple interacting constraints acting…

In recent years, educators have been looking increasingly to neuroscience to inform their understanding of how children's brain and cognitive development are shaped by their learning experiences. However, while this new interdisciplinary approach presents an unprecedented opportunity to explore and debate the educational implications of…

Rigorously evaluated prenatal and infancy home visitation programs for families at risk have proven to effectively prevent the development of early onset and later conduct problems. the German pilot project "Pro Kind" is an adaptation of the US evidence-based Nurse-Family Partnership program. It has been evaluated in a longitudinal…

Poverty remains an urgent crisis worldwide. In the United States, 28.6 million children live in low-income families and 12.7 million children live in poor families. In nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 47 million children live below national poverty lines. These figures pertain to…

The effects of environmental stimulation and parental nurturance on brain development have been studied extensively in animals. Much less is known about the relations between childhood experience and cognitive development in humans. Using a longitudinally collected data set with ecologically valid in-home measures of childhood experience and later…

Derived changes in genes associated with primary microcephaly (MCPH) have been suggested to be "currently sweeping to fixation" i.e., increasing in frequency in most populations, with the likely outcome that the derived allele will completely displace the ancestral allele over time. Possible causes for this sweep include effects on human reasoning…

Adolescence is a time of considerable development at the level of behaviour, cognition and the brain. This article reviews histological and brain imaging studies that have demonstrated specific changes in neural architecture during puberty and adolescence, outlining trajectories of grey and white matter development. The implications of brain…

Serious depression in parents and caregivers can affect far more than the adults who are ill. It also influences the well-being of the children in their care. The first joint Working Paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child and the National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs summarizes recent evidence on the…

Since boys are more commonly diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) than girls, the majority of theories and published research studies of ADHD have been based on samples comprised primarily (or exclusively) of boys. While psychosocial impairment in girls with ADHD is well established, the neuropsychological and…

Music learning and music performance involve all aspects of the individual: cognitive, emotional, social, and psychomotor. John Feierabend shows that music requires a special kind of intellectual process that is unique to the discipline. Brain density reaches its peak in a child's first few years of life; hence, as with language, music learning…

States that Demetriou and Raftopoulos's theory of cognitive developmental change based on the nature of representation is flawed. Argues against theme of representation as encoding as well as an alternative model of representation as interactivism. Concludes that other issues such as architectural support, variation and selective retention,…

Lennox-Gastaut (L-G) syndrome is an intractable generalized epilepsy of childhood onset, associated with spike waves at a slow rate and paroxysmal fast activity. These epileptiform discharge patterns are thought to reflect excessive neocortical excitability and arise from neuronal and synaptic features peculiar to the immature central nervous…

This article aims to provide a theoretical framework to elucidate the neurophysiological underpinnings of deviance detection as reflected by mismatch negativity. A six-step model of the information processing necessary for deviance detection is proposed. In this model, predictive coding of learned regularities is realized by means of long-term…

New research on brain development has profound implications in the areas of child development and education. This review of the research describes how the brain develops to shape children's growing intelligence, addressing such questions as: (1) What are the brain's functions? (2) What are the critical or sensitive periods in brain development?…