To improve the neurodevelopmental outcome in infants with high grade intraventricular haemorrhage and cramped-synchronised (CS) general movements (GMs). Four very preterm infants with intraventricular haemorrhage grade III (n = 3) or intraventricular haemorrhage with apparent periventricular haemorrhagic infarction (n = 1) were diagnosed with CS…

Animals have long been used as comparative models for adult human speech perception. However, few animal models have been used to explore developmental speech perception questions. This dissertation encourages the use of domestic dogs as a behavioral model for speech perception processes. Specifically, dog models are suggested for questions about…

This article describes the development and content validation of the Child Oral and Motor Proficiency Scale (ChOMPS), a parent-report assessment of eating, drinking, and related skills in children 6 months to 7 years of age. Initially, 69 items for the ChOMPS were generated from literature review. Nineteen professionals evaluated the ChOMPS using…

This review challenges the traditional interpretation of infants' and young children's responses to three types of potentially "fear-inducing" stimuli--snakes and spiders, heights, and strangers. The traditional account is that these stimuli are the objects of infants' earliest developing fears. We present evidence against the…

Low-risk infants discharged from a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can include infants whose stay was due to late-term prematurity, suspicion of sepsis, breathing issues, and/or feeding challenges. This study aimed to identify the degree to which sociodemographic and medical factors contribute to low-risk NICU graduates being accepted into…

Teachers and school counsellors play a key role in the detection of symptoms associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and in interventions. The present study aimed to analyse differences in knowledge about and attitudes towards ADHD between five different types of educator: infant education teachers, primary education…

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is characterized by a range of register-typical characteristics. Many of those can be objectively measured, such as acoustic-prosodic and structural-linguistic modifications. Perceived vocal affect, however, is a socio-emotional IDS characteristic and is subjectively assessed. Vocal affect goes beyond acoustic-prosodic…

Objective: This study evaluated Tummy Time recommendations in patient education materials and informal sources found on the Internet. Methods: Patient education materials, available from health professionals online, and informal sources, found outside of healthcare, were evaluated for consistency with evidence-informed recommendations. Patient…

Early childhood professionals can act as catalysts in encouraging home language maintenance in multilingual families. However, there is a dearth of research on whether these professionals advise parents to speak their home language(s) to their offspring, and furthermore, little is known about what prompts professionals to proffer language advice.…

Many Western industrialized nations have high levels of ethnic diversity but to date there are very few studies which investigate prelinguistic and early language development in infants from ethnic minority backgrounds. This study tracked the development of infant communicative gestures from 10 to 12 months (n = 59) in three culturally distinct…

Infant research is providing accumulating evidence that number-space mappings appear early in development. Here, a Posner cueing paradigm was used to investigate the neural mechanisms underpinning the attentional bias induced by nonsymbolic numerical cues in 9-month-old infants (N = 32). Event-related potentials and saccadic reaction time were…

Do parents fine-tune the MLU of utterances with a particular word as the word is on the verge of appearing in the child's production? We analyzed a corpus of spontaneous interactions of 30 dyads. The children were in the initial stages of their lexical development, and the parents' utterances containing the words the children eventually acquired…

Detecting developmental delays is essential for early intervention in low to middle-income countries. A cross-sectional, within-subject, comparative design was employed to determine the performance of the Parents Evaluation of Developmental status (PEDS) tools smartphone application and the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development III (BSID…

The metarepresentational aspect of early pretend play (make-believe activities where children create or participate in creating a new situation different from a real one) has been theoretically debated. In the present longitudinal study of N = 83 children, we tested for predictive relations of shared attention at 12-18 months, implicit false…

Social-communication differences are a robust and defining feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but identifying early points of divergence in infancy has been a challenge. The current study examines social communication in 9- to 12-month-old infants who develop ASD (N = 30; 23% female; 70% white) compared to typically developing (TD) infants…