The aim of the present study was to analyze early vocalization development, the predictive value of this development in terms of later language skills, and possible gender difference in early vocalization development in a selected cohort of 32 very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children and 35 full-term controls. The data on early vocalization…

Background: The nosology of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is at a critical point in history as the field seeks to better define dimensions of social-communication deficits and restricted/repetitive behaviors on an individual level for both clinical and neurobiological purposes. These different dimensions also suggest an increasing need for…

Although frameworks now exist for quality provision for under-threes, discourses underpinning policy remain conflicted. The split between care and education is still firmly entrenched in provision and a gap remains between rhetoric and practice. This paper explores how Early Years Professional Status, which requires practitioners to engage…

Purpose: In this study, the authors compared a multiple-domain strategy for assessing developmental age of young children with developmental disabilities who were at risk for long-term reliance on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) with a communication-based strategy composed of receptive language and communication indices that may…

Why do people perseverate, repeating prior behaviours that are no longer appropriate? Many accounts point to isolated deficits in processes such as inhibition or attention. We instead posit a fundamental difference in rule representations: flexible switchers use active representations that rely on later-developing prefrontal cortical areas and are…

The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS; Lord et al., J Autism Dev Disord, 30(3):205-223, 2000) is widely accepted as a "gold standard" diagnostic instrument, but it is of restricted utility with very young children. The purpose of the current project was to modify the ADOS for use in children under 30 months of age. A modified ADOS, the…

In most research on the early ontogeny of sympathy, young children are presented with an overtly distressed person and their responses are observed. In the current study, the authors asked whether young children could also sympathize with a person to whom something negative had happened but who was expressing no emotion at all. They showed 18- and…

The genesis for this paper lies in the problematic nature of assessment practice, as a central authorship activity, for early childhood education teachers. This paper draws on dialogic philosophy to explore this challenge based on a doctoral investigation of a very young child (White, 2009) and the strategic means by which she reveals and conceals…

The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) is the primary source of federal funding for child care subsidies for low-income working families and to improve child care quality. CCDBG provides child care assistance to children from birth to age 13. In fiscal year 2010, states received $5 billion in federal CCDBG funds. States are expected to…

This study explored the electrophysiology underlying intonational phrase processing at different stages of syntax acquisition. Developmental studies suggest that children's syntactic skills advance significantly between 2 and 3 years of age. Here, children of three age groups were tested on phrase-level prosodic processing before and after this…

A crucial task in social interaction involves understanding subjective mental states. Here we report two experiments with toddlers exploring whether they can use statistical evidence to infer the subjective nature of preferences. We found that 2-year-olds were likely to interpret another person's nonrandom sampling behavior as a cue for a…

This study investigates the utility and validity of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for use with low-income parents and their 24- to 36-month-old Spanish-English bilingual children (n = 79). Issues in the interpretation of the integrated CDI/Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (IDHC) score to index…

Children in foster care face a number of challenges that threaten their ability to form attachment relationships with foster parents and to regulate their behavior and biology. The authors describe the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) intervention, an evidence-based intervention aimed at helping foster children develop trusting…

Effective strategies to promote social-emotional development and prevent occurrence of challenging behaviors in young children is critical. The "Teaching Pyramid", a framework for supporting social-emotional development and preventing and addressing challenging behaviors, was developed for preschool children. This mixed methods study…

A multitask battery tapping nonverbal memory and language skills was used to assess 60 children at 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Analyses focused on the degree to which language, working memory, and deliberate memory skills were linked concurrently to children's Elicited Imitation task performance and whether the patterns of association varied…