This book articulates and defends the "theory theory" of cognitive and semantic development: the idea that very young children just beginning to talk are engaged in profound restructurings of several domains of their knowledge. These restructurings are analogous to theory changes. The children's early semantic development is closely tied…

This collection of 21 suggested outcome measures for early childhood intervention services is designed to assist families in evaluating the quality of early intervention services they receive. The measures apply to all types of service and support program models for children with various developmental delays and/or disabilities and their families.…

This paper describes five programs of early intervention for children with hearing impairments and their families. Programs are described according to their mission, services, and unique contribution to the field of early intervention. First, essential components of all programs are identified. These are evaluation, audiological management, parent…

This document presents national data on: (1) children, families, and working parents; (2) the importance of child care; (3) the current status of child care; and (4) funding for child care. Specifically, the report includes figures on: (1) parents in the labor force and children with parents in the labor force; (2) the familial, economic, social,…

A major synthesis of the latest research on early language acquisition, this book explores what gives infants the remarkable capacity to progress from babbling to meaningful sentences, and what inclines a child to speak. The book examines the neurological, perceptual, social, and linguistic aspects of language acquisition in young children, from…

A search of requests for permission to photocopy articles from past issues of "Zero to Three" identified the seven articles of this collection, all published between 1985 and 1989. They deal with the care of typically developing infants and toddlers as well as with clinical practice with very young children with special health or…

The theme of the conference session reported in this booklet was the impact of community violence on infants, toddlers, their parents, and practitioners in education. The booklet contains the edited transcript of the session, which included presentations by three speakers. Clementine Barfield described the impact of urban violence on her family…

This book for parents and child care providers describes a program for home-based, early childhood education that does not use formal, disciplined instruction. The program uses the technique of "incidental teaching," which emphasizes learning activities that occur while children participate in typical daily activities, such as eating,…

This study investigated associations between infants' prelinguistic communicative behaviors at 9 months and their communication and language performance at 12 and 18 months. The inclusion of both hearing (N=19) and deaf (N=16) infants in the study allowed identification of effects related to the receptive communication modality (vision versus…

This special newsletter issue was based on a July 1994 forum for educators and trainers of infant/family practitioners. Papers in the first section present emerging conceptual frameworks and the process of helping trainees to use these frameworks. Included are the following papers: "Head Start: The Emotional Foundations of School Readiness as…

This final report describes, Project Trans/Team, a 3-year infant inservice training project designed to provide training and technical assistance to programs that serve children from birth to 3 years of age who have disabilities, are developmentally delayed, or are at risk. The project provided training to 20 programs and 282 professionals in six…

This report puts forth the position of the Ministry of Education of Alberta, Canada, with respect to the physical development of the elementary school student as the basis for his or her cognitive, emotional, social, and moral development. The report describes normal physical development during the first 10 years of life in the domains of…

This periodical issue focuses on infants and toddlers and the justice system. The main article is entitled: "Families, Infants and the Justice System," written by Robert Horowitz. It looks at the role of the justice system in family dissolution and creation, the use of courts to resolve disputes, the role of the justice system in family…

This practicum report describes development of a system of family support services for 56 parents of preschool handicapped children (ages birth to 3) in an early intervention setting. A preliminary survey was administered to determine family needs. A family support group was then developed which met monthly for fellowship, networking, work…

A case study analyzed the babbling and speech production of an infant, aged 20 to 24 months, whose family members spoke Portuguese, English, and French interchangeably. Focus was on vowel production, choice of lexicon, and the relationship between babbling and speech in the interaction of his languages. The child's utterances were recorded in…