Since the enactment of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EHA), Public Law (P.L.) 94-142 and its successor statute, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, or the Act), the Secretaries of the U.S. Department of Education and their predecessors, the Commissioners of Education at the U.S. Department of Health,…

The study focused on the adaptation and development of the first diagnostic instrument to assess the visual communication and Flemish Sign Language skills of deaf signing children (age [less than or equal to] 24 months). An adaptation of the standardized Visual Communication and Sign Language Checklist for Signing Children (VCSL; Simms et al.,…

The University of Colorado PROMISE Clinic is an integrated mental health program housed in the obstetrics/gynecology outpatient clinics. A team of medical and mental health professionals care for a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse patient population. They provide integrated mental health services from consultation through…

This article is a call to action to the infant mental profession to consider infant mental health (IMH) practice as care work that is often marginalized in contemporary American society. The author examines critical elements of care work that juxtapose competent IMH practice. Investigating the experiences of those performing IMH work is necessary…

Early symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) develop through the second year of life, making a stable ASD diagnosis possible around 24 months of age. However, in general, children with ASD are diagnosed later. In this study we explored the use of a short observation list to detect symptoms associated with ASD in children 12-24 months of age…

Power to the Profession is a national collaboration working to define the early childhood profession by establishing a unifying framework for career pathways, knowledge and competencies, qualifications, standards, and compensation. This initiative is led by a National Task Force comprised of leaders from 15 national organizations, including ZERO…

Even today, with all of the hearing technology and bilingual programs available, many Deaf children arrive at school with severe language delays. With a renewed focus on having Deaf children kindergarten-ready, assessment of language milestones becomes critical as seen in the campaign Child First and the legislation referred to as Language…

The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Childhood Nonverbal Communication Scale (CNCS) to assess nonverbal communication skills in children from birth to 18 months old. An extensive review of existing research provided evidence used to generate items representative of nonverbal communication behaviors. The final version of the CNCS…

Decontextualized talk is assumed to be used only rarely when children are younger than 30 months. Motivated by Bühler's (1934/1999) linguistic theory that describes different dimensions of (de-)contextualization, we provide evidence that this kind of input can already be found in caregivers' talking to their 12-month-old children. Such early input…

Our aim was to assess whether infants influence the quantity and quality of their mothers' speech to them and, in turn, whether this maternal speech influences children's later language. As 189 mothers interacted with each of their twins at age 0;5, we calculated the number of utterances, the proportion of sensitive utterances, and the proportion…

Purpose: Early language input plays an important role in child language and cognitive development (e.g., Gilkerson et al., 2018; Hart & Risley, 1995). In this study, we examined the effects of child's hearing status on lexical repetition properties of speech produced by their caregivers with normal hearing (NH). In addition, we investigated…

Very few studies have assessed infant capacity for bidirectional, contingent communication at birth, and to our knowledge there are none with preterm infants in the neonatal period. Presence versus absence of such interactive contingency makes a difference for our theories of development. We examined whether preterm infants can contingently…

We estimated risk factors associated with suspected neuropsychomotor developmental delay at age 2 years, in a birth cohort in the Brazilian Amazon. The Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition in Acre (MINA-Brasil) study is a population-based birth cohort involving children born between July 2015 and June 2016 in the municipality of Cruzeiro do…

In this study, infant vocabulary development was tracked in a multilingual society (Singapore) within a socioeconomically diverse sample. The sample comprised 1316 infants from 17.4 to 27.7 months (669 females, 647 males; 88% Chinese race, 4% Malay, 4% Indian, and 0.004% mixed-race [4% declined to provide race information]). Children varied in…

This study examined implementation of a newly developed shared book reading intervention program, to boost infants' early skills and provide a solid foundation for continued language learning. A randomised control study was conducted to elevate the effects of Shared Book Reading Intervention with 20 parents (n = 10 experiment, n = 10 control) and…