This Kids Count special report examines brain development during infancy and early childhood in order to provide a basis for an informed discussion about the need for preventive programs to foster healthy child development. The report summarizes information on early brain development and how experience shapes neural connections. It focuses on the…

This study examined patterns of social interactions and play activities in Japanese day care settings. Fifty children between 6 and 36 months of age in five day care centers in Tokyo were observed over several prescribed time intervals. Variables measured during the observations included: (1) type of social interaction; (2) type of activity…

Research on the development of social competence in children is reviewed in this ERIC digest. The focus is on the social development of infants and toddlers which takes place in the family, in peer groups, and in preschool. The importance of infant bonding with at least one particular adult, socialization of the developming child within the family…

Reported is an evaluation of a program providing information and services to first-time parents and their children from the third trimester of pregnancy until the children were three years of age. Interventions were designed to provide educational guidance to parents, to make parenting less stressful and more pleasurable, and to help parents…

The final report provides a detailed description of the development of the Peabody Mobility Kit for Infants, which provides programmed instruction in orientation and mobility for multiply impaired blind infants. It describes the development of the criterion referenced assessment scales and instructional activities, the empirical validation of the…

This multivariate, longitudinal study examined the role of mothers' employment with respect to children's cognitive and social development, children's home environment, and mothers' attitudes toward employment. A total of 130 middle class children and their mothers participated. Data on children's cognitive and social development, the home…

The report describes the development and field testing of the Early Social-Communication Scales (ESCS), a measure intended to reflect developmental dimensions of the at-risk infant's and toddler's adaptive interactions. The ESCS was designed to assess three major communicative functions (social interaction, joint attention, and behavior…

The aims of this paper are to document the need for quality infant day care, to encourage the formation of a statewide policy for infant day care in Maryland, and to recommend specific components of that policy. Discussion refers to both family day care and center-based day care. After the first section's introductory presentation of data…

Written from a developmental interactionist viewpoint, this guide for teachers provides practical and useful ideas for working with infants through 9-year-olds. (Developmental interactionists contend that activities designed to foster one area of a child's development will tend to foster development in other areas as well.) Section I of the guide…

A study was conducted of the language development of a hearing child whose mother was deaf and communicated only in sign and whose father was hearing and communicated in both sign and oral language. Results showed similarities in development between the two modalities as well as similarity between development in two separate modalities and two…

Based on the belief that structured preschool activities aid in the development of disadvantaged children, this study attempted (1) to evolve a tutorial program to accelerate spontaneous development in disadvantaged children and prevent cognitive and language deficits, and (2) to assess growth of the infant's cognitive and language development…

Studies on learning in infants show that in infancy every month of life represents a new level of learning. The functional state of the central nervous system can be influenced by physiological factors which cause fluctuating changes in functions important for learning. Once a stimulus becomes a conditioned signal, it acquires strong power in…

This study examined (1) the level of symbolic capability as revealed in play, (2) the use of spontaneous vocal imitation, and (3) the nature of certain classes of words occurring in spontaneous infant language. Facets of child behavior were examined during the period of single-word utterances and early multiword combinations with a view to…

Describes research that examines the specific behaviors of mothers sharing books with their infants in order to ascertain the associations that exist between specific maternal reading behaviors and infants' intellectual development. (FL)

Reviews bases for contemporary discontinuity theories of mental development, presents findings that support alternative proposition of continuity and scrutinizes assessment methods from which these continuity results derive. Also offers several models that help explain the continuity findings, and argues that individual differences in mental…