Few, if any, reliable and valid screening tools exist to identify language delay in young Spanish-English speaking dual-language learners (DLLs). The early communication indicator (ECI) is a brief, naturalistic measure of expressive communication development designed to inform intervention decision-making and progress monitoring for infants and…

Public libraries are a national reading service, supporting reading and literacy throughout life. As a free local resource, they are particularly powerful in supporting the development of literacy and reading skills in disadvantaged communities. Libraries have a unique and powerful role to play in raising literacy skills, vital for individuals and…

In Portugal, professional preparation for working with infants and toddlers is often characterized as insufficient and/or inadequate in light of the specific professionalism required for working with very young children. This study is situated in initial professional education (IPE) and, in particular, on practicum experiences within an early…

In order for children to understand and reason about the world in an adult-like fashion, they need to learn that conceptual categories are organized in a hierarchical fashion (e.g., a dog is also an animal). While children learn from their first-hand observation of the world, social knowledge transmission via language can also play an important…

Since social and emotional development in early childhood is so significant for success later in life and the foundation of the capacity for learning, it is essential for caregivers to build these capacities in young children through everyday moments (Russell, Lee, Spieker, & Oxford, 2016; Turculet & Tulbure, 2014). Caregivers who provide…

The validity of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) System was evaluated for Dutch. 216 5-min samples (six samples per age per child) were selected from daylong recordings at 5, 10 and 14 months of age of native Dutch-speaking younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (N=6) and of typically developing children (N=6). Two…

The World Health Organization identified the promotion of "Nurturing Care Environments" as a global health priority. Responsive caregiving, 1 of 5 domains describing nurturing care, is critical for healthy child development. Relatively little research has evaluated population-level interventions aimed to increase responsive caregiving…

Atypical motor development has frequently been reported in infants at elevated likelihood for autism spectrum disorder. However, no previous study has used detailed motion capture technology to compare infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder and infant siblings with no familial history of autism spectrum disorder. We investigated…

Infants attune to their native language during the first two years of life, as attested by decreases in the processing of nonnative phonological sounds and reductions in the range of possible sounds accepted as labels for native words. The present study shows that French-learning infants aged 1;8 can learn new words in an unfamiliar language,…

Using data from a large longitudinal sample (N = 1,292) of children and their caregivers in predominantly low-income, nonurban communities, we investigated longitudinal relations between attuned caregiving in infancy, joint attention in toddlerhood, and executive functions in early childhood. The results from path analysis demonstrated that…

Infants in an orphanage who live in an underprivileged environment show delayed gross motor development; however longitudinal investigations of gross motor development in orphaned infants are limited. This study aimed to assess the variability of gross motor development of orphaned infants using a longitudinal observation. The gross motor…

Families with early concerns about infant symptoms of ASD have limited access to experienced professionals for screening and guidance. Telehealth has been used to reduce access disparities in other pediatric populations and has shown promise in parent-implemented interventions for ASD. We investigated the feasibility of a novel level-2 telehealth…

When and how do infants learn color words? It is generally supposed that color words are learned late and with a great deal of difficulty. By examining infant language surveys in British English and 11 other languages, this study shows that color word learning occurs earlier than has been previously suggested and that the order of acquisition of…

Fourteen-month-old infants are unable to link minimal pair nonsense words with novel objects (Stager & Werker, 1997). Might an adult's productions in a word learning context support minimal pair word-object association in these infants? We recorded a mother interacting with her 24-month-old son, and with her 5-month-old son, producing nonsense…

This dissertation is composed of two manuscripts that study the early development of infants at an elevated likelihood of an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis (EL-ASD). In the first manuscript, the language profiles (i.e., receptive dominant, expressive dominant, balanced) and the predictors of the language profiles are examined in infants at…