Due to the high rates of preterm births, it is essential to examine the developmental risk factors and monitor development. The aim of our cross-sectional study is to examine the cognitive, language and motor development of LBW (<2500 g) children (N = 438) regarding sociodemographic risk factors. We measured the 2-year development with the…

In the last century, Jean Piaget proposed one of the most famous theories regarding cognitive development in children. Piaget proposed four cognitive developmental stages for children, including sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and the formal operational stage. Although Piaget's theories have had a great impact on developmental…

We examined if and when English-learning 17-month-olds would accommodate Japanese forms as labels for novel objects. In Experiment 1, infants (n = 22) who were habituated to Japanese word-object pairs looked longer at switched test pairs than familiar test pairs, suggesting that they had mapped Japanese word forms to objects. In Experiments 2 (n =…

This practical resource explains brain development from prenatal to age 8 with suggestions for activities educators and caregivers can use to foster children's cognitive growth. The authors begin with the basics of brain development, and the issues that affect it, and then provide information specific to infant, toddler, preschool, and…

If a child has been identified as needing early intervention services, parents may have questions about what that means for their child and for the family. This guide will help them understand the Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) and how it will help their child's development. The IFSP is a document that is used when providing early…

Infants' representations of physical events are surprisingly flexible. Brief exposure to one event can immediately enhance infants' representations of another event. The present experiments tested two potential mechanisms underlying this priming: enhanced encoding or improved retrieval. Five-month-olds saw a target block become hidden inside a…

This study examined associations between caregiver talk and language skills in full term (FT) and preterm (PT) children (n = 97). All-day recordings of caregiver-child interactions revealed striking similarities in amount of caregiver talk heard by FT and PT children. Children who heard more caregiver talk at 16 months demonstrated better…

Extreme prematurity is known as a risk factor for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the association between prematurity and ASD, for children born moderately and late preterm (MLPT) and those born early term (ET), is less established. This retrospective study aimed to characterize the phenotypic characteristics (i.e. behavioral profile and…

Four experiments investigated infants' and adults' knowledge of the identity of objects in a causal sequence of events. In Experiments 1 and 2, 18- and 22-month-olds in the visual habituation procedure were shown a 3-step causal chain event in which the relation between an object's part (dynamic or static) and its causal role was either consistent…

Characterizing the nature of linguistic representations and how they emerge during early development is a central goal in the cognitive science of language. One area in which this development plays out is in the acquisition of dependencies--relationships between co-occurring elements in a word, phrase, or sentence. These dependencies often involve…

Most theories of learning would predict a gradual acquisition and refinement of skills as learning progresses, and while some highlight exponential growth, this fails to explain why natural cognitive development typically progresses in stages. Models that do span multiple developmental stages typically have parameters to "switch" between…

The first year of a child's life has been considered important in shaping their cognitive development. The research literature has identified area-based socio-economic disadvantage as a possible risk factor for cognitive development but has suggested that various factors may facilitate children's resilience to socio-economic disadvantage. This…

There is little evidence regarding the benefits of early center-based care attendance (before three years old) for child development and most studies have focused on developed countries. Addressing this gap, this study examines the relationship between center-based care attendance during toddler years and children's cognitive outcomes. Research…

"Brain Drain: A Child's Brain on Poverty," released in March 2015 and prepared by intern Neil Damron, explores the brain's basic anatomy and recent research findings suggesting that poverty affects the brain development of infants and young children and the potential lifelong effects of the changes. The sheet draws from a variety of…

Studies of infant looking times over the past 50 years have provided profound insights about cognitive development, but their dependent measures and analytic techniques are quite limited. In the context of infants' attention to discrete sequential events, we show how a Bayesian data analysis approach can be combined with a rational cognitive…