Impairments in joint attention are considered core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and are crucial for early assessment and intervention. However, existing information about visual attention during joint attention and its relation to developmental functioning is limited. The current study investigated the visual attention differences…

Human movement plays a foundational role in cognition and learning. This topical collection brings together theoretical and empirical work examining how gestures, physical activity, and virtual movement enhance learning in language, multimedia, and activity-based learning. Regarding language learning, interacting with virtual object improves…

Psychosocial intervention programs are carried out in Latin American communities with socioeconomic disadvantage to improve their quality of life; few evaluations are carried out to measure their effectiveness. The study aimed to determine if intervention processes in vulnerable communities might favor the children's development. An analysis of…

This article examines how joint attention episodes constitute a core feature of relational pedagogy for infants and toddlers. It draws on social interactionist approaches to language and cognitive development to propose that joint attention may afford significant current and future potential for young children's learning. However, most joint…

Background: Dialogic book-sharing is an interactive form of shared reading. It has been shown in high income countries (HICs) to be of significant benefit to child cognitive development. Evidence for such benefit in low and middle income countries (LMICs) is scarce, although a feasibility study of our own produced encouraging findings.…

In this monograph, Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin presents the results of his empirical investigation into the impact of multilingual practice on an individual's creative potential. Until now, the relationship between these two activities has received little attention in the academic community. The book makes an attempt to resuscitate this theme and…

Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9- to 10-month period as a time…

A brief review is provided of recent research on the impact of early visual language exposure on a variety of developmental outcomes, including literacy, cognition, and social adjustment. This body of work points to the great importance of giving young deaf children early exposure to a visual language as a critical precursor to the acquisition of…

A controversial issue in the field of language development is whether language emergence and growth is dependent solely on processes specifically tied to language or could also depend on basic cognitive processes that affect all aspects of cognitive competence (domain-general processes). The present article examines this issue using a large…

The federal Early Head Start (EHS) program began in 1995, and a randomized trial was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of 17 EHS programs. In all, 3,001 low-income families (35% African American, 24% Hispanic, and 37% White) with a pregnant women or an infant under the age of 12 months were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group (with…

Two studies tested the observation that infants learn to use a "whole object assumption" between the ages of 8 and 15 months, meaning that they expect a word to apply to the whole object to which it refers. The first study investigated the possibility that infants of 8 to 10 months may attend differently, and more selectively, to events…

In this paper, I review some recent submissions to "Developmental Science" that advance our understanding of psychological development. More and more submissions to the journal explore the origins of knowledge and, for psychological knowledge, such origins are multiple. Here I consider the contribution of mechanisms such as contingency detection,…

Presents emergentist coalition theory of language development characterizing lexical acquisition as the emergent product of cognitive constraints, social-pragmatic factors, and global attentional mechanisms. Details 12 experiments with 12- to 25-month-olds using the development of reference as test case of the theory. Presents evidence that…

The value of language and intellectual stimulation in young children is stressed in a report designed for health administrators and family planning organizations. First year developmental milestones are outlined, and a baby's need for attention as well as the need to provide information on speech and intellectual development to parents are…

Attention regulation was studied with 35 children with Down syndrome, ages 13-42 months, and 23 children with typical development, focusing on alternating looks between a person and an object, social referencing (using emotional responses of others to appraise ambiguous events), and links to language and cognitive development. (SW)