This paper follows an earlier report of young children's object play activities investigated in a cross-sectional sample of 289 typically developing children. Thirty-minute videotaped observations were taken of children at 8, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, and 60 months of age in their homes. Forty-nine percent were boys. Children were identified…

Object play yields enormous benefits for infant development. However, little is known about natural play at home where most object interactions occur. We conducted frame-by-frame video analyses of spontaneous activity in two 2-h home visits with 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, and 23-month-old walking infants (N = 40; 21 boys; 75%…

Background: While delays in cognitive development are detectable during early development in Down syndrome, the neuropsychological and biomedical underpinnings of cognitive skill acquisition in this population remain poorly understood. Method: To explore this issue, 38 infants with Down syndrome [mean chronological age = 9.65 months; SD = 3.64]…

Objective: Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy of the Sitting Together and Reaching to Play (START-Play) intervention in young infants with neuromotor disorders. Method: This randomized controlled trial compared usual care-early intervention (UC-EI) with START-Play plus UC-EI. Analyses included 112 infants with motor delay (55 UC-EI, 57…

Background: Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for…

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…

Prior research suggests that children younger than age 3 or 4 do not understand that an agent may be deceived by an object's misleading appearance. The authors asked whether 14.5-month-olds would give evidence in a violation-of-expectation task that they understand that agents may form false perceptions. Infants first watched events in which an…

The Department of Early Learning (DEL), in partnership with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and Thrive Washington, has published the Early Learning and Development Guidelines (guidelines) for children from birth through third grade. The guidelines replace the Early Learning and Development Benchmarks, which were first…

This commentary endorses J. Kagan's (2008) conclusion that many of the most dramatic findings on early perceptual, cognitive, and social competencies are ambiguous. It supports his call for converging research operations to disambiguate findings from single paradigms and single response indices. The commentary also argues that early competencies…

From the first moments of life, infants begin the exciting journey to gain control of their bodies. These beginning movements are an essential way of playing and learning for infants. During their first year, infants learn more motor skills than at any other time in their lives. Brain research has revealed that the motor area of an infant's brain…

Focuses on the impact of severe visual impairment on the development of play skills that facilitate concept development and discusses interventions that can enhance play experiences for infants and young children with severe visual impairments. Strategies encourage intrinsic motivation, spontaneity, active engagement, positive effect,…

Tested infants in their second year with a box task to determine whether they would show a hand preference in solutions involving complete differentiation of roles for the two hands. (HOD)

Cortical blindness is defined and its diagnosis is explained. Guidelines and sample activities are presented for use in a cognitive/visual/multi-sensory stimulation program to produce progress in cortically blind infants. The importance of using the eyes from birth through early development in order to form the nerve pathways responsible for…

In order to evaluate possibilities of fitting myoelectrically controlled prosthetic arms on infants, this study examined whether 32 infants (1-6 months) could learn to control environmental contingencies by means of contracting the forearm flexor muscle group. Results indicated that older subjects (age greater than 104 days) demonstrated learning,…

A federally funded research report, titled "The Development of a Program in Orientation and Mobility for Multi-Handicapped Blind Infants" by Randall Harley et al., is briefly summarized in this one-page abstract. The report discusses the development of the "Peabody Mobility Kit for Infants," a package of assessment and training…