The present study examined patterns of number-related utterances and actions directed to 9-month-old infants by their parents. An ethnically and economically diverse sample of 86 families participated in structured play sessions conducted separately with the mothers and fathers of each infant. Data were coded for eight math talk categories, and…

Children comprehend iconic gestures relatively later than deictic gestures. Previous research with English-learning children indicated that they could comprehend iconic gestures at 26 months, a pattern whose extension to other languages is not yet known. The present study examined Turkish-learning children's iconic gesture comprehension and its…

The notion of "professional" is built on a concept of traditionally male professions and patriarchal social orders. ECEC (early childhood education and care), however, is a female-dominated field characterised by its unique caring practice. This study investigated how a group of Australian early childhood preservice teachers presented…

In this extensively revised edition, Martha Ann Bell and her contributors synthesize the newest research on how cognitive and emotional processes influence each other in child development. Historically, research in child development has treated cognitive processes as separate and distinct from social-emotional processes. However, many of the…

The current study investigated whether vocabulary relates to phonetic categorization at neural level in early childhood. Electroencephalogram (EEG) responses were collected from 53 Dutch 20-month-old children in a passive oddball paradigm, in which they were presented with two nonwords "giep" [[voiced velar fricative]ip] and…

Parental input is considered a key predictor of language achievement during the first years of life, yet relatively few studies have assessed its effects on longer-term outcomes. We assess the effects of parental quantity of speech, use of parentese (the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech), and turn-taking in infancy, on…

Young children today are exposed to masks on a regular basis. However, there is limited empirical evidence on how masks may affect word learning. The study explored the effect of masks on infants' abilities to fast-map and generalize new words. Seventy-two Chinese infants (43 males, M[subscript age] = 18.26 months) were taught two novel…

We investigate whether child-directed speech (CDS) contains a higher proportion of canonical pronunciations compared to adult-directed speech (ADS), focusing on Korean noun stem-final obstruent variation. In a word-teaching task, we observed that mothers use a higher rate of canonical pronunciation when addressing infants than when addressing…

This study used an ethological approach to explore the behavioural adaptation of nineteen infants during their first six weeks in Residential Care (RC), or a Foster Family (FF) or an Infant-Mother Centre (IMC). Direct observations were conducted once a week at bath time. Observed behaviours were: sleep-wake states, visual exploration, motor…

Learning to walk allows infants to travel faster and farther and explore more of their environments. In turn, walking may have a cascading effect on infants' communication and subsequent responses from caregivers. We tested for an "inflection point"--a dramatic shift in the developmental progression--in infant communication and caregiver…

Purpose: Developmental functional modules (DFMs) are biological modules that are defined by their structural (morphological), functional, or developmental elements, and, in some cases, all three of these. This review article considers the hypothesis that vocal development in the first year of life can be understood in large part with respect to…

There is evidence showing that both maturational and environmental factors can impact on later language development. On the one hand, preterm birth has been found to increase the risk of deficits in the preschool and school years. Preterm children show poorer auditory discrimination, reading difficulties, poor vocabulary, less complex expressive…

The aim of this review is to identify the behavioural soothing interventions (BSIs) used for reducing infant crying and to determine their effect. Studies had to describe an experimental study addressing infant crying and BSIs in the first six months after birth. Searches were performed in Web of Science, Pubmed, Science Direct, EBSCOhost,…

Infants are born highly sensitive to the natural patterns found in languages. They use their perceptual sensitivity to acquire detailed information about the structure of languages in their environment. To date, most studies of infant perception and early language acquisition have investigated spoken/auditory languages and hearing infants (e.g.…

Consonants and vowels differentially contribute to lexical acquisition. From 8 months on, infants' preferential reliance on consonants has been shown to predict their lexical outcome. Here, the predictive value of German-learning infants' (n = 58, 29 girls, 29 boys) trajectories of consonant and vowel perception, indicated by the…