Bilinguals need to learn two words for most concepts. These words are called translation equivalents, and those that also sound similar (e.g., banana-"banane") are called cognates. Research has consistently shown that children and adults process and name cognates more easily than non-cognates. The present study explored if there is such…

Recent expansions of child tax, food assistance and health insurance programs have made American families' need for a robust social safety net highly evident, while researchers and policymakers continue to debate the best way to support families via the welfare state. How much do children -- and which children -- benefit from social spending?…

Although there is robust evidence of the benefits of attachment-based parenting interventions, limited research has examined their impact on dyadic mutuality and toddler behavior problems. Given the central question in prevention research of what works for whom, and the documented relation of maternal psychological risk to parenting and…

We Learn Together is a 20-week, low-cost infant/toddler school-readiness intervention developed to provide instructional content and supportive tools for teachers to be more explicit and intentional in interactions with children to support early development. Short-term effects were established in a previously published real-world effectiveness…

This empirical tracking case study explores the content and quality of an infant's home musical environment and family member-infant musical interactions. To this end, this study tracked and analyzed audio recordings of an infant girl's family life between the ages of seven and thirteen months and follow-up interviews with her parents. The…

Newborns are able to neurally discriminate between speech and nonspeech right after birth. To date it remains unknown whether this early speech discrimination and the underlying neural language network is associated with later language development. Preterm-born children are an interesting cohort to investigate this relationship, as previous…

Although it is widely known that caregivers advocate for their school-aged children with disabilities, little is understood about how caregivers who have infants and toddlers with delays or disabilities advocate for their young children. The birth-to-three period may be the beginning of some parents' advocacy efforts and it is possible their…

Play is pivotal in supporting young children's holistic development. The COVID-19 crisis further highlighted the importance of play in supporting children's well-being and in providing a sense of normalcy. Guided by the phenomenographic method, this study aimed to examine Korean in-service infant-toddler teachers' experiences in fostering play in…

Using communities of practice as a theoretical framework, the present study explored seven infant and toddler teachers' professional learning in the context of weekly co-planning meetings with preservice teachers in four classrooms over one semester. Data sources included semi-structured interviews, observations, video-recordings, documents, and…

This study investigates the factors influencing quality in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Spain focusing on the 0-3 age group. The research draws on data collected using the ITERS-3 (Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale, 3rd edition) instrument from 62 centers across Spain. Using nonparametric statistical analysis, particularly…

Maternal mind-mindedness, which examines mothers' representational capacity to treat their children as individuals with their own minds, has traditionally been operationalized by coding mothers' mental state comments to or about their children. Mind-mindedness has been studied predominantly in Western cultures, where it predicts children's…

Purpose: Autism and fragile X syndrome (FXS) are both associated with pragmatic communication difficulties, but the pattern of strengths and weaknesses varies. Early pragmatic communication skills include using communication for different functions, such as behavior regulation or establishing/maintaining joint attention. This study examines…

Sleep-related infant deaths are one of the top causes of infant mortality in the United States. A few behavior analytic studies have examined behavioral skills training to teach adults to arrange safe infant sleeping environments. These studies were conducted in an analogue environment, and no data were collected outside the training setting. The…

Play of younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (siblings; n = 44), very preterm children (preterms; n = 44), and children at typical likelihood for ASD (n = 36) was observed at 24 months. Children with ASD and atypical development engaged less in spontaneous (pre-)symbolic play than typically developing children. Total…

The development of independent sitting changes everyday opportunities for learning and has cascading effects on cognitive and language development. Prior to independent sitting, infants experience the sitting position with physical support from caregivers. Why does supported sitting not provide the same input for learning that is experienced in…