Prior research showed that 5- to 13-month-old infants of chronically depressed mothers did not learn to associate a segment of infant-directed speech produced by their own mothers or an unfamiliar nondepressed mother with a smiling female face, but showed better-than-normal learning when a segment of infant-directed speech produced by an…

Play, along with curiosity, confidence, challenge, control, and communication, is one of six components of an intrinsically motivated museum experience (Perry, 1993). The potential of play in museums is centered in its ability to promote situations where a person is not only motivated to learn, but is propelled into the learning process, and finds…

Education in the Knowledge Age calls for engaging students in creative work with knowledge. A major implication for research and design in the learning sciences is that the necessary shift is not simply technological or pedagogical, but essentially epistemological (Brown, 2007). In this article, the authors view such creative work with knowledge…

In order to extend previous early years humor research into early adolescence, the authors adapted an innovative ecological research method such that at-risk adolescents could be filmed during an entire waking day in their life. Community youth advocates nominated one 15-year-old female and one 14-year-old male as doing well despite adverse…

Throughout history, society has expressed little interest in early childhood play. Still early literature authors and classical paintings portray childhood play experiences. The way play has been conceived in the past in child development, psychology and other disciplines relates to contemporary early childhood programmes. This article provides an…

Under Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child under the age of 18 has the right to engage in age-appropriate play and leisure activities. Drawing on the qualitative findings of a wider review of children's rights in Northern Ireland, this article examines the degree to which adolescents in Northern…

This study examines an activating mechanism of aggressive behaviour in young children. Many studies on attachment theories have indicated disorganised attachment as a significant risk factor for externalising problems and have explained the aetiology of disorganised attachment in terms of deficits in affect, behaviour and cognitive functions from…

This reflective paper discusses findings about differences and similarities in perspectives on play among early childhood educators in Japan, the United States, and Sweden. Analysis of survey data collected from educators in those nations yielded six themes regarding the meanings and uses of play: (1) process of learning, (2) source of…

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of variations in presentation of play materials on social behaviour of 18- to 30-month-old children. The study group included 102 children attending infant and toddler classes in 14 public childcare centres in Israel. Play materials were presented to the children either in a suggestive manner…

The Cartoneras projects aim to promote the celebration of language, culture, and creativity through a collaboration between top literary minds and cardboard collectors in Buenos Aires and Lima. They produce and publish beautiful books with hand-painted cardboard covers that speak of the wonderful literature inside. Inspired by those projects, the…

The Modified-Classroom Observation Schedule to Measure Intentional Communication (M-COSMIC) was developed as an ecologically valid measure of social-communication behaviour, delineating forms, functions, and intended partners of children's spontaneous communication acts. Forty-one children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) aged 48-73 months were…

Children are believed to construct their causal theories through talk and interaction, but with the exception of a few studies, little or nothing is known about how young children justify and build theories of the world together with same-age peers through naturally occurring interaction, Children's sensitivity to when a pair or group of…

Paralleling the works of Cambourne's Conditions of Literacy Learning ("The Reading Teacher, 54"(4), 414-429, 2001), Copple and Bredekamp's ("Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth though age." National Association for the Education of Young Children, Washington, 2009)…

In this article, the remediation of pupils' cognitive skills is studied and a practical framework for educational and remedial work at primary level is introduced. This article is based on a doctorate research that studied by means of action research the development and enhancement of the most low-grade school entrants' reasoning and cognitive…

Targeted or universal pre-K? Direct instruction or learning through play? These and other debates are heating up as more and more young children across the country gain access to pre-K programs. Now there's a single volume that spotlights today's most urgent pre-K debates, explores each one from all sides, and paves the way for sound, educated…