Adults' behaviour in interactions with children is assumed to influence children's playfulness. However, little is known about how the quality of teacher-child interaction in early childhood education and care affects the development of children's playfulness, although the interaction quality has been identified as a strong predictor of children's…

Background and Aims: Individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS) characteristically struggle with language and communication throughout the life course, but there is limited research on the development of communication before 24 months. The purpose of this study is to describe the early communication of infants and toddlers with FXS using the…

Purpose: The ability to identify children early in development who are at substantial risk for language/literacy difficulties would have great benefit both for the children and for the educational and therapeutic institutions that serve them. Information that is relatively easily available prior to the age of 3 years, such as late talking, family…

Children who rapidly recognize and interpret familiar words typically have accelerated lexical growth, providing indirect evidence that lexical processing efficiency (LPE) is related to word-learning ability. Here we directly tested whether children with better LPE are better able to learn novel words. In Experiment 1, 17- and 30-month-olds were…

An extensive literature links language problems with behavioral difficulties and academic underachievement. Although less extensive, emerging literature suggests that temperament, Positive Affectivity (PA) in particular, contributes to language development. Thus, the present study was focused on PA related temperament dimensions in infancy as…

The vocabulary size of 16- to 30-month-old children (N = 1235) was assessed using the Estonian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (ECDI-II). The relationship between children's expressive vocabulary size and different factors of the child and his/her social environment was examined. Results…

Purpose: This study examines the relationship between parental interaction style (responsive vs directive) and child-initiated joint engagement within caregiver-child interactions with toddlers diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Method: Videotaped interactions of 85 toddler-caregiver dyads were coded for child engagement and both parental…

Background: Maternal responsiveness has been shown to predict child language outcomes in clinical samples of children with language delay and non-representative samples of typically developing children. An effective and timely measure of maternal responsiveness for use at the population level has not yet been established. Aims: To determine…

Background: Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However,…

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…

The link between behavior problems and low academic achievement is well established, but few studies have examined longitudinal relations between early externalizing behaviors before school entry and low academic achievement following transition to formal schooling. Early inattention has been particularly overlooked, despite strong associations…

This prospective study of the FIRST WORDS® Project examined restricted and repetitive behaviors in a sample of 55 toddlers at a mean age of 20 months who were later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Restricted and repetitive behaviors were coded using the Repetitive Movement and Restricted Interest Scales in two video-recorded observation…

The purpose of this study was to identify the predictors of change in parental stress (including parent and child factors), depression, and interaction style in parents of toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), exposed to two types of early intervention (EI) programs, PLAY and Community Standard (CS). This study utilized secondary data of…

This study examined the prevalence, predictors, and outcomes of spanking and verbal punishment in 2,573 low-income White, African American, and Mexican American toddlers at ages 1, 2, and 3. Both spanking and verbal punishment varied by maternal race/ethnicity. Child fussiness at age 1 predicted spanking and verbal punishment at all 3 ages.…

Breastfeeding is a key public health measure to protect and promote the health of one of the most vulnerable groups of the population--infants and children. Northern Ireland, however, has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. This paper reports the results of a questionnaire survey of 120 mothers attending mother and toddler groups…