We know from science that how we think, learn, communicate, concentrate, problem-solve, and relate to others when we get to school and later in our lives depends in large part on the experiences we have and the skills we develop during the earliest days, months, and years. For this reason, ZERO TO THREE strongly urges states to emphasize the…

This study is about the role of elicited verbal imitation in toddler word learning. Forty-eight toddlers were taught eight nonwords linked to referents. During training, they were asked to imitate the nonwords. Naming of the referents was tested at three intervals (one minute later [uncued], five minutes, and 1-7 days later [cued]) and recognition…

Background: Nonverbal communication deficits are characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and have been reported in some later-born siblings of children with ASD (heightened-risk (HR) children). However, little work has investigated gesture as a function of language ability, which varies greatly in this population. Aims: This longitudinal…

To obtain information on the safety and efficacy of the gluten-free/casein-free (GFCF) diet, we placed 14 children with autism, age 3-5 years, on the diet for 4-6 weeks and then conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled challenge study for 12 weeks while continuing the diet, with a 12-week follow-up. Dietary challenges were delivered via weekly…

Infant-toddler teachers are often the first people outside of families to interact with infants on a daily basis. Through these interactions teachers can promote infant mental health, prevent problems, screen and identify infants experiencing difficulties, make referrals, and work as members of interdisciplinary intervention teams. However,…

Today's pluralistic society is characterized by families from many linguistic and cultural backgrounds, including families with infants and toddlers who are deaf or hard of hearing (d/Dhh). Taking a multicultural perspective, the author examines family-centered early intervention (FCEI) and the transition to school services for children who are…

Personal names are more than just a sound or word. From the earliest stages of development, names are closely connected to a child's attachment figures and sense of identity. Like words of magic, young children first use names to beckon the parent to them. Experiences with others provide the necessary backdrop for young children to infuse names…

Time is central to any understanding of the world. In adults, estimation errors grow linearly with the length of the interval, much faster than would be expected of a clock-like mechanism. Here we present the first direct demonstration that this is also true in human infants. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we examined 4-, 6-, 10-, and…

The purpose of this study was to examine if sequential presentation with feeder modeling would lead to an increase in bites accepted of new foods compared to sequential presentation without feeder modeling in a typically developing 4-year-old boy with food selectivity. The participant's acceptance of novel foods increased both in the modeling and…

Following the proposal that consonants are more involved than vowels in coding the lexicon (Nespor, Peña & Mehler, 2003), an early lexical consonant bias was found from age 1;2 in French but an equal sensitivity to consonants and vowels from 1;0 to 2;0 in English. As different tasks were used in French and English, we sought to clarify this…

This study examined the longitudinal relations of mother-child affect exchanges at 18?months with children's mastery motivation at 39?months. Observation and questionnaire data were collected from mother-child dyads when children were 18?months; 43 mothers again rated their children's mastery motivation at 39?months. Results suggested…

Children are able to distinguish between regular events that can occur in everyday reality and magical events that are ordinarily impossible. How do children respond to a person who brings about magical as compared with ordinary outcomes? In two studies, we tested children's acceptance of informants' claims when the informants had produced either…

Infants' ability to mentally track the orientation of an object during a hidden rotation was investigated (N = 28 in each experiment). A toy on a turntable was fully covered and then rotated 90°. When revealed, the toy had turned with the turntable (probable event), remained at its starting orientation (improbable event in Experiment 1), or…

In this article the authors describe how Montessori teachers create environments that assist and support toddlers. For all Montessori children, especially toddlers, giving them opportunities to perceive and experience the world through their own unaided efforts is the central premise of their prepared environments. The caretakers prepare the…

In an earlier investigation, the authors assessed the reliability of the ADI-R when multiple clinicians evaluated a single case, here a female 3 year old toddler suspected of having an autism spectrum disorder (Cicchetti et al. in "J Autism Dev Disord" 38:764-770, 2008). Applying the clinical criteria of Cicchetti and Sparrow ("Am J…