Research on sources of individual difference in parental Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) is limited and there is a particular lack of research on fathers' compared to mothers' speech. This study examined the predictive relations between infant characteristics and variability in paternal lexical diversity (LD) in dyadic free play with two-year-olds (M…

Adult responsiveness is related to language development both in young typically developing children and in children with autism spectrum disorders, such that parents who use more responsive language with their children have children who develop better language skills over time. This study used a micro-analytic technique to examine how two facets…

Research Findings: The objective of this study was to understand how two dimensions of parent-child book-reading quality--instructional and emotional--interact and relate to learning in a sample of low-income infants and toddlers. Participants included 81 parents and their children from Early Head Start programs in the rural Midwest. Correlation…

The study evaluates a social-communication-based approach to autism intervention aimed at improving the social interaction skills of children with autism spectrum disorder. We report preliminary results from an ongoing randomized controlled trial of 51 children aged 2 years 0 months to 4 years 11 months. Participants were assigned to either a…

Significant correlations were obtained between Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory scores and two clusters of items from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development: goal directedness and language use. HOME assessments were made when children were 6 and 12 months old; the Bayley was administered at 12 months.…