This article is excerpted from a chapter in "Finding Hope in Despair: Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health" (edited by Marian Birch, published 2008 by ZERO TO THREE). Therapeutic intervention with children and families is not always successful, but the professional literature does not often address treatment failures. To address this need,…

We compared the cognitive and language development at 4, 14, 24, 36, 54 months, and 7 years of siblings of children with autism (SIBS-A) to that of siblings of children with typical development (SIBS-TD) using growth curve analyses. At 7 years, 40% of the SIBS-A, compared to 16% of SIBS-TD, were identified with cognitive, language and/or academic…

Crying behavior and mother-infant interactions during episodes of crying were coded using the Cry Observation Codes and then compared for 48 mother-infant dyads of children with autism, children with developmental delays, and typically developing children. At 1 year of age, children who would later be diagnosed with autism showed a different…

The marked delay in acquisition of fine motor skills in trisomic-21/Down's syndrome children is undeniable. In this study, we began with an affirmation that the cause of this deficit could be found in a different environment for which early intervention is essential. A sample of 30 Down's syndrome children was used to study at different ages: six…

The purpose of this study is to compare Mexican American adolescent mothers with and without childhood sexual abuse (CSA) histories to examine the influence of CSA on dissociation, selection of infant feeding method, and intimate parenting anxiety. Participants are 78 English-speaking adolescents between 15 and 19 years of age and recruited from…

Here we report evidence from a new eye-tracking measure of relational memory that suggests that 9-month-old infants can encode memories in terms of the relations among items, a function putatively subserved by the hippocampus. Infants learned about the association between faces that were superimposed on unique scenic backgrounds. During test…

Aim: To describe the socio economic achievement of individuals born very preterm (VPT) at the age of 27 to 29 years. Method: Demographic and social data were extracted from national registers for all individuals born between 1974 and 1976 in Denmark (n = 208 656). Of these, 203 283 individuals were alive in 2006. We compared VPT individuals…

Challenging behaviors are common and persistent in persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Best practices dictate that symptoms of ASD and these co-occurring problems be identified and then treated at the earliest possible age. Having said this, there has been a dearth of available assessment methods to make sure identifications in infants…

The availability of educational programming aimed at infants and toddlers is increasing, yet the effect of video on language acquisition remains unclear. Three studies of 96 children aged 30-42 months investigated their ability to learn verbs from video. Study 1 asked whether children could learn verbs from video when supported by live social…

How infants learn new words is a fundamental puzzle in language acquisition. To guide their word learning, infants exploit systematic word-learning heuristics that allow them to link new words to likely referents. By 17 months, infants show a tendency to associate a novel noun with a novel object rather than a familiar one, a heuristic known as…

The efficacy of the paraprofessional-delivered Family Spirit home-visiting intervention for young American Indian mothers on maternal knowledge and infant behavior outcomes is supported. Participating mothers showed greater knowledge gains compared to non-participating mothers.

In this excerpt from the book "From Lullabies to Literature: Stories in the Lives of Infants and Toddlers," the authors offer dos and don'ts for sharing story experiences with very young children. They include tips such as keeping groups intimate, showing pleasure and enthusiasm, being expressive, and using props. The authors suggest story…

University training clinics offer state-of-the-art treatment opportunities for clients, particularly for underserved and underinsured client populations. Little has been published regarding the implementation of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in settings such as a university training clinic, which may face challenges in utilizing such a…

The aim of this longitudinal study was to obtain information on the early lexical development and its predictive value to language skills in very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory was used to collect data of the early receptive and expressive lexicon of the 32 VLBW children. This information was…

This longitudinal study on Finnish families was conducted to identify developmental differences in family-level communication among mothers, fathers, and their infants during the second half of the infant's first year, and associations with infants' later language and communicative skills. We examined coregulated communication of parent-infant…