In this article, I briefly review theories about the development of theory of mind, and then examine evidence for minimalism, the idea that infants initially understand only behaviors. To this end, I consider the need for a wide variety of species to predict the behaviors of other animals and that human infants are not unique in this regard. I…

The authors examine the relationships between home play and learning--measured by reading and teaching practices at home--among low-income families, including those with mental health issues. Based on a large database from the Family Map Inventory, a screening tool for home visiting programs, the authors' findings revealed that play-related…

Head Start programs engage parents to support children's growth from birth through age 5 through services that promote early learning and development, health, and family well-being. These programs specifically seek to assist families with low incomes and families facing a variety of other adversities. To foster positive child and family outcomes,…

Background: This study reports on new contexts in which formulaic language has been used in the years since 2013 when the last synthesis was carried out. The background presents an old but still useful definition and lists themes under which research was arranged in 2013 and which continue to be used. Aims: This study has a particular emphasis on…

This study examined longitudinal associations between parental psychological distress (stress and depression) when the child was 2 to 4 years and a child's emotional and behavioural problems at ages 3 to 4, and social functioning (loneliness and social competence) at age 11 in very preterm born children. The participants were Finnish families of…

The first year of life is an essential phase for all psychological areas in child development. The key competences, vital for all development processes of the child, focus on the communication and the socio-emotional competencies, mostly because the infant is strongly dependent of the adult care environment. The quality of the primary caregiving…

We examined full-term and preterm infants' perception of frequent and infrequent phonotactic pairings involving sibilants and liquids. Infants were tested on their preference for syllables with onsets involving /s/ or /?/ followed by /l/ or /r/ using the Headturn Preference Procedure. Full-term infants preferred the frequent to the infrequent…

Infant vocal production has been studied mainly from the perspective of language development. We studied it from the perspective of singing development by analyzing a 15-month-old's imitations of songs. The infant wore a recording device that yielded a continuous, 16-hr audio recording of all the sounds produced by him and around him throughout…

Attention control (AC) is thought to play an important role in the development of inhibitory control (IC) in children, yet there are few longitudinal studies of this association. This study used a prospective parent-child adoption design (N = 361 children) to examine whether maternal warmth at child age 27 months moderated the link between AC…

Purpose: Instances of laryngeal constriction have been noted as a feature of infant vocal development. The purpose of this study was to directly evaluate the developmental occurrence of laryngeal constriction phenomena in infant crying, cooing, and babbling vocalizations. Method: The cry and noncry vocalizations of 20 healthy term-born infants…

Motor experiences and active exploration during early childhood may affect individual differences in a wide range of perceptual and cognitive abilities. In the current study, we suggest that active exploration of objects facilitates the ability to process object forms and magnitudes, which in turn impacts the development of numerosity perception.…

A fundamental question about the development of communication behavior in early life is how infants acquire adaptive communication behavior that is well-suited to their individual social environment, and how the experience of parent-child communication affects this development. The current study investigated how infants develop communication…

The present study examines the relationship between sex, infant temperament, and childhood psychophysiological reactivity via electrodermal activity (EDA). Both temperament and EDA are known to be relatively stable traits across the lifespan reflecting individual reactivity and regulation linked to suboptimal behavioral development and risk for…

This study examined the stability of three patterns of infant regulatory behavior identified in the face-to-face still-face (FFSF) paradigm at 3 and 9 months--social-positive oriented, distressed-inconsolable, and self-comfort oriented--and whether variations in infants' heart-rate were correlated with them. Although some studies have examined the…

International research, while mostly conducted in high-income countries, repeatedly states that parents of premature infants have increased needs and require additional information and varied support channels after the infant's initial discharge from hospital. However, the perceived self-reported needs of parents concerned with the caregiving of…