Play is part of childhood. Play is also part of development. Theoretical frameworks serve to provide scientific research-based support for grounded educational design and practice of play spaces is both educationally sound and developmentally appropriate. This project piloted a matrix tool in a case study to assess play spaces at an early…

How do young children decide which events can happen within fictional stories (extension) and learn new information from these stories (export)? In two studies, we investigate these two issues as well as the influence of story genre (realistic or fantastical) on these processes. Preschoolers (N = 192) heard either a realistic or fantastical story…

When we watch movies, we consider the characters' mental states in order to understand and predict the narrative. Recent work in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) uses movie-viewing paradigms to measure functional responses in brain regions recruited for such mental state reasoning (the theory of mind ["ToM"] network). Here,…

This article draws on a study of infant participation in research, and work in philosophical-empirical inquiry, to illuminate some of the inexhaustible entanglements constituting the "collective" relational landscape of educational research of particular encounters, which have been called "moments of wonder." Working with…

Background: The development of prosocial behavior is a significant aspect of children's social well-being. From the perspective of positive psychology, subjective well-being (SWB) "in school" is likely a particularly relevant construct in elementary school-aged children's prosocial development. Research on the relation between SWB in…

Novel causal systems pose a problem of variable choice: How can a reasoner decide which variable is causally relevant? Which variable in the system should a learner manipulate to try to produce a desired, yet unfamiliar, casual outcome? In much causal reasoning research, participants learn how a particular set of preselected variables produce a…

Toddlers' understanding of object rotation was investigated using a multimethod approach. Participants were 44 toddlers between 22 and 38 months of age. In an eye-tracking task, they observed a shape that rotated and disappeared briefly behind an occluder. In an object-fitting task, they rotated wooden blocks and fit them through apertures.…

The impacts of high-quality early childhood education on children's health and development are legion and far-reaching. Historically, efforts to improve quality have targeted the social and curricular aspects of early childhood programs. The physical setting of schools has received less attention, despite the vast body of research over the past…

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) during childhood is a risk factor for poor emotional-behavioral functioning. Despite this, many children show resilience in the face of IPV exposure. The current study aimed to identify characteristics associated with positive emotional-behavioral outcomes in 4-year-old children exposed to IPV in early…

While the importance of secure relationships between children and caregivers has been well established in the literature as an essential feature of healthy child development, the influence of animal-human relationships on healthy development and attachment is also beginning to gain attention. A burgeoning literature supports the developmental and…

Inconsistent findings regarding sex differences in cognition have been found in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study evaluated sex differences in cognitive-developmental functioning in a large clinical sample of young children diagnosed with ASD. The sample included children 18-68 months of age who received the Mullen Scales of…

Gratitude is a human strength that is beneficial for psychosocial adjustment and academic adjustment. This study aimed to examine the (a) heterogeneity and gender differences in the developmental trajectories of gratitude to obtain a more nuanced understanding of the development of gratitude in children, and (b) relations between these…

The purpose of this study was to describe the daily activities of Canadian children outside of school. Participants were parents of N = 189 children (90 boys, 99 girls) in grades 1 to 3. The What Your Child Did Today parental telephone interview protocol was developed as a daily log of both the type and social context of children's activities.…

This brief describes the working paper, "Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body: Early Childhood Development and Lifelong Health Are Deeply Intertwined." The working paper examines examines how developing biological systems in the body interact with each other and adapt to the contexts in which a child is developing--for better or…

The family is the axis of the initial formation of the individual in the early stage of his life. The attachment and affective ties that are established through the interactions between its members and the experiences that are shared, promote meaningful learning. Through this research, the perception families have about exposing their children to…