Children's media is replete with human-like portrayals of animals and objects that wear clothing, speak, drive cars, and experience human emotions. Recent research has shown that anthropomorphic portrayals of animals in books lead children to think anthropomorphically about real animals. Here we asked whether this is also the case for an inanimate…

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may present sensory processing alterations that are specific to each environment in which they develop, inevitably impacting their daily functioning. Method: The aim of this study is to compare the different types of sensory modulation vulnerabilities (over-responsiveness,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of speech intervention provided with a low intensity with speech intervention provided with a high intensity on the speech and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Dutch-speaking children with a cleft palate with or without a cleft lip (CP ± L) between 4 and 12 years. Method: A…

This study investigates the hypothesis of a child differential sensitivity to parenting improvement. One hundred and fourteen parents of preschoolers participated in two parenting micro-trials aiming to increase parental self-efficacy in view of improving child behavior. The first micro-trial took place in a short-term laboratory experiment; the…

Background: Sleep affects children's cognitive development, preparedness for school and future academic outcomes. People with Down syndrome (DS) are particularly at risk for sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). To our knowledge, the association between SDB and cognition in preschoolers with DS is unknown. Methods: We assessed sleep by using…

Subclinical traits of autism were measured in children with somatic symptom disorder (SSD, n = 28) and compared with age-matched controls (n = 26) using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) children's version. The KINDL[superscript R] quality of life questionnaire was used to assess functional disability. Although there was no significant group…

The objective of this study was to examine the different development characteristics of gifted children during the preschool period in comparison with normal developing children according to family observation. For this purpose, face-to-face interviews were carried out with the parents of 112 children identified as gifted and data regarding the…

Vagal tone is widely believed to be an important physiological aspect of emotion regulation and associated positive behaviors. However, there is inconsistent evidence for relations between children's baseline vagal tone and their helpful or prosocial responses to others (Hastings & Miller, 2014). Recent work in adults suggests a quadratic…

Although the use of praise for young children is well documented, its use in a stand-alone intervention warrants further exploration. This study aimed to determine whether a brief intervention to raise parental awareness of effective praise had any significant impact on children's behaviour. A mixed methods, control group design was used to…

The mediators of real-world executive functions in autism during the transition into adulthood are mainly unknown. This study aimed to identify the mediators for the behavioral and cognitive domains of real-world executive functions in late adolescent and young adult autistic populations. We followed up 289 autistic children (aged 11.6 ± 3.8, male…

There is considerable variability in the extent to which young people with developmental language disorder (DLD) experience mental health difficulties. What drives these individual differences remains unclear. In the current article, data from the Twin Early Development Study were used to investigate the genetic and environmental influences on…

This investigation examines the development of two scales that measure elaboration and behaviors associated with stewardship in children. The scales were developed using confirmatory factor analysis to investigate their construct validity, reliability, and psychometric properties. Results suggest that a second-order factor model structure provides…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether previously reported parental questionnaire-based differences in attentional shifting and inhibitory control (AS and IC; Eggers, De Nil, & Van den Bergh, 2010) would be supported by direct measurement of AS and IC using a computer task. Method: Participants were 16 Finnish children…

This study aims to explore Chinese parents' understanding about the importance and feasibility of quality pre-school inclusion and how these beliefs are affected by their levels of education and the types of disabilities in the Chinese socio-cultural and policy contexts. Findings support parents are highly supportive of the philosophy of…

Longitudinal data from a large sample of twins participating in the Netherlands Twin Register (n = 42,827, age range 3-16) were analyzed to investigate the genetic and environmental contributions to childhood aggression. Genetic auto-regressive (simplex) models were used to assess whether the same genes are involved or whether new genes come into…