Mother-child play of maltreating and nonmaltreating families was analyzed when infants were 12 months old (Time 1), and 2 years old (Time 2), as a context to examine children's developing cognitive and social skills. At Time 1, infants from abusing families demonstrated less independent and more imitative behavior during play than did infants from…

This study investigated whether mothers of children assessed as having gifted/high IQ at 5 years were more likely to scaffold their children in analogical and metacognitive thinking during the infant/toddler period than mothers of children with more typical IQs. The researcher videotaped 21 children in monthly play sessions with their mothers,…

Adults appreciate that an abstract visual representation can be understood through inferring the artist's intention. Many investigators have argued that this capacity is a late-emerging developmental accomplishment, a claim supported by findings that preschool children ignore explicit statements about intent when naming pictures. Using a…

This article is an excerpt from the opening plenary address at "ZERO TO THREE's" National Training Institute in Orlando, Florida, on November 29, 2007. Dr. Lieberman uses the example of a 2-year-old and her mother whom she treated more than 20 years ago to illustrate what has changed in our understanding and treatment of infancy and early…

From a surprisingly young age, children are capable of a level of sophisticated social understanding and interaction for which they are rarely given credit. Indeed, beginning as early as 9 months, children are gaining the skills needed to become active members of the unique culture and society into which they are born. This article explores the…

English and German children aged 2 years 4 months and 4 years heard both novel and familiar verbs in sentences whose form was grammatical, but which mismatched the event they were watching (e.g., "The frog is pushing the lion", when the lion was actually the "agent" or "doer" of the pushing). These verbs were then elicited in new sentences. All…

The overarching goal of the present study was to trace the development of mirror self-recognition (MSR), as an index of toddlers' sense of themselves and others as autonomous intentional agents, in different sociocultural environments. A total of 276 toddlers participated in the present study. Toddlers were either 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21 months…

Several research groups have previously constructed short forms of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) for different languages. We consider the specific aim of constructing such a short form to be used for language screening in a specific age group. We present a novel strategy for the construction, which is applicable…

This study examined the social-emotional content and the quality of social interactions depicted in a sample of 58 DVDs marketed towards infants and toddlers. Infant-directed videos rarely used social interactions between caregiver and child or between peers to present content. Even when videos explicitly targeted social-emotional content,…

A total of 271 early childhood professionals completed pre- and post training knowledge assessments in True-False only (TF) or True-False with "unsure" option formats (TFU). In Study 1, only TFU format was used. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to TF or TFU formats. Responses which were initially "unsure" were…

This study examined the bidirectional relationship between parenting and boys' externalizing behaviors in a four-wave longitudinal study of toddlers. Participants were 104 intact two-parent families with toddler sons. When their sons were 17, 23, 29, and 35 months of age, mothers and fathers reported on a broad range of parenting dimensions…

This study examined the temperamental characteristics of 18 toddlers with visual impairments as reported by their Anglo and Latino (Mexican American) parents. Differences in the parents' ratings of the children's temperament were related to the children's level of visual functioning and development. No differences were related to the children's…

The present longitudinal study examines the role of caregiver speech in language development, especially syntactic development, using 47 parent-child pairs of diverse SES background from 14 to 46 months. We assess the diversity (variety) of words and syntactic structures produced by caregivers and children. We use lagged correlations to examine…

Background: The Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) is a screening instrument with established validity against the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) in children aged 4 years and older. Indices of diagnostic accuracy have been shown to be strong in school-aged samples; however, relatively little is known about the performance of the…

Research suggests that exposure to books and other resources about people who look like them, and stories that reflect their world, may contribute to an infant and toddler of color's developing appreciation of self. The purpose of this study was to examine children's board books published between 2003 and 2008 to determine the representation of…