The current study investigated infants' spontaneous object interactions during naturalistic observation in a daycare centre in Japan. The researcher visited the class for 49 days, once a week, for one year (in the morning for about 1.5 h). Infants' and caregivers' interactions during free play time were videotaped. Of particular interest in this…

Standards and competencies are critical structural supports for any professional workforce, including early childhood professionals. Workforce capacity building, career progression, and career longevity can be supported by the foundation of consistent competency expectations. Defining and embedding consistent, evidence-based competencies is a…

The current study examined how mothers' production of four types of internal state words at multiple ages across the second year in a free play context was related to their infants' acquisition of those words. Twenty-nine mother-infant dyads were videotaped for 18 minutes during free play when infants were 13 and 17 months old. Mothers' total and…

Minor neurological dysfunction (MND) has been associated with learning, cognitive, and motor problems in preterm children. This study aims to study the prevalence of MND in preterm children without cerebral palsy in the preschool period and to investigate its association with school readiness. Forty-four children born at less than 37 weeks of…

The psychological literature on the development of gestures during the first year of life has been limited. It has mainly focused on the development of pointing at around 11 months of age, considering it "the" gesture that allows triadic interactions. However, recent studies have argued for the importance of earlier ostensive gestures…

Family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) care is child care provided by family members, friends, neighbors, or babysitters, and it is often defined by what it's not. It's not licensed child care, which is provided by teachers and child care workers in child care centers or family child care homes that follow regulations set by the state regarding…

The Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities, Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), is a federal grant program that assists states in operating a comprehensive statewide program of early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities, ages birth through age 2 years, and their families. This…

Caregiver-implemented intervention, commonly facilitated via coaching, is an increasingly common approach to early intervention for infants and toddlers with or at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present systematic review examines four coaching components across the literature on caregiver-implemented intervention models for children…

Early intervention services are an important federally funded program for families with children under three years of age who may be diagnosed with or are at risk of developmental delay or disability. The program's impacts can be profound: Early intervention helps strengthen cognitive, motor, and language skills; reduces the likelihood of…

Socioeconomic disparities in children's early vocabulary skills can be traced back to disparities in gesture use at age one and are due, in part, to the quantity and quality of communication children are exposed to by parents. Further, parents' mindsets about intelligence contribute to their interactions with their children. We implemented a…

Before infants can learn words, they must identify those words in continuous speech. Yet, the speech signal lacks obvious boundary markers, which poses a potential problem for language acquisition (Swingley, "Philos Trans R Soc Lond. Series B, Biol Sci" 364(1536), 3617-3632, 2009). By the middle of the first year, infants seem to have…

Bilingualism has been observed to influence cognitive processing across the lifespan but whether bilingual environments have an effect on selective attention and attention strategies in infancy remains an unresolved question. In Study 1, infants exposed to monolingual or bilingual environments participated in an eye-tracking cueing task in which…

After deciding whether to breastfeed or formula feed, parents must determine when to introduce solid foods. We examined feeding behaviors of 131 first-time parents, applying the theory of planned behavior to our investigation. Results indicated that parents' attitudes influenced infant feeding behavior at 6 months old. Therefore, Extension…

Infants acquiring their native language are adept at discovering grammatical patterns. However, it remains unknown whether these learning abilities are limited to language, or available more generally for sequenced input. The current study is a conceptual replication of a prior language study, and was designed to ask whether infants can track…

Emotions form the foundation of infants' early social interactions and yet their role in prosocial behaviors is generally limited to situations of distress and other negative emotions. The present article argues that both positive emotions and the emotion of interest play important roles in prosocial behavior and development. First, we explore the…