Spatial language and ability play important roles in children's cognitive development. Spatial ability in kindergarten predicts achievement in reading, math, science, and technology in primary school and therefore constitutes an important skill set in preparation for school entrance. Good spatial thinking skills are required for learning in…

Background: The social-ecological environment of undocumented children of migrant workers includes varying levels of risk factors. Growing up in these conditions compromises children's development on all levels. Many of these children are in need of psychotherapy, however, due to limited resources, only a few of them receive mental health aid.…

The impact of music activity on children's motor and cognitive skills has been investigated with music learning, instrument lessons and classroom music. While none have employed natural utterances, singing games or playground/street songs, these musical experiences of childhood are acknowledged as a major platform for child development. The…

This study aims to better understand the social ecology of infant care (IC) as experienced and perceived by mothers living in a deprived Arab Bedouin community in Israel, where children's health indicators are poor. We used the integrative model of Garcia Coll et al. (Garcia Coll C, Lamberty G, Jenkins R "et al." An integrative model for…

The researchers addressed two questions: (1) Does maternal reading mediation and family home literacy environment (HLE) relate to children's emergent literacy (EL) level? and (2) Do the relationships among these variables differ as a function of socioeconomic strata (SES) level. A total of 94 5-6-year-old children, 47 from low SES (LSES) and 47…

This paper presents and evaluates the broad results of pre-school intervention experiments and programs aimed at fostering the intellectual and social development of "disadvantaged" groups. Among the general findings discussed are (1) there is a "sensitive," or even "critical," period in child development, an age at…