This report presents findings supporting the hypothesis of a clinically relevant subtype of childhood speech sound disorder, provisionally titled speech delay--developmental psychosocial involvement (SD-DPI). Conversational speech samples from 29 children who met inclusionary criteria for SD-DPI were selected from a case record archive at a…

Many early childhood professionals recommend the use of learning centers in classrooms for young children (Kostelnik, Soderman, & Whiren, 2004). Centers provide children with opportunities for making choices, working with others, being involved in hands-on activities, and becoming fully engaged in learning. In contrast, traditional classroom…

In this year's Distinguished Educator department, we feature six educators whose research has focused on the role of early literacy in early childhood education. Each of the six addresses a vitally important aspect of early childhood literacy teaching and learning. Sections include: "Working with Families as Partners in Early Literacy," by Dorothy…

A cross-sectional study of developmental differences and similarities in the levels and correlates of life satisfaction was conducted with 716 South Korean students in elementary, middle and high school. With age, global and domain-specific life satisfaction (with family, school, living environment and self) decreased; satisfaction with friends…

Discusses trends in early childhood education rooted in much older traditions, such as the project approach and Reggio Emilia approach, as well as the history of Head Start, and other changes in early childhood programs and services. Considers the need for practitioners to understand the theoretical and ideological foundations of pedagogical…

Recent research using theory-of-mind tasks has rekindled interest in the possibility that social interaction makes a significant contribution to cognitive development. It is proposed here that this contribution may be most pronounced with phenomena that, like belief or affective states, are internal and abstract. A more modest contribution is…

Four studies examined 3- and 4-year-olds' ability to judge accurately whether they acted intentionally. Children self-initiated action to attain an outcome, or their arm was moved by the experimenter to create an outcome. In Experiment 3, children in both age groups accurately claimed they were agents of self-guided action but not of passive…

Interest in U-shaped development has itself undergone a U-shaped progression. Twenty-five years ago, interest in U-shaped development was high. This interest was evident at a 1978 conference in Tel Aviv on "U-shaped Behavioral Growth" that resulted in the publication of a book of the same title 4 years later (Strauss, 1982). The breadth…

Using nonword repetition tasks as an experimental approach with both adults and children has become quite common in the past 10 to 15 years for studying lexical learning and phonological processing (e.g., Bailey & Hahn, 2001; Gathercole, Frankish, Pickering & Peaker, 1998; Munson, Edwards, & Beckman, 2005; Storkel, 2001; Vitevich & Luce, 2005). In…

The infant-toddler years are incredibly important in producing a nation of readers. Every family can, in culturally appropriate ways, help infants and toddlers learn to read the world. Every caregiver can, in culturally appropriate ways, help infants and toddlers grow in language and literacy. The authors argue that early childhood programs must…

For infants and toddlers, education and care are "two sides of the same coin." The author briefly reviews current research on the importance of relationships to cognitive development and early language and literacy. Instructional strategies that are most appropriate to the early years include "intentionality" and "scaffolding." Intentionality…

This paper describes the application of correspondence analysis to transcripts gathered from focussed interviews about teaching and learning held with a small sample of child-care students, medical students and the students' teachers. Seven dimensions emerged from the analysis, suggesting that the knowledge that underlies students' learning…

Both clinical and laboratory studies demonstrate that seizures early in life can result in permanent behavioral abnormalities and enhance epileptogenicity. Understanding the critical periods of vulnerability of the developing nervous system to seizure-induced changes may provide insights into parallel or divergent processes in the development of…

Lennox-Gastaut (L-G) syndrome is an intractable generalized epilepsy of childhood onset, associated with spike waves at a slow rate and paroxysmal fast activity. These epileptiform discharge patterns are thought to reflect excessive neocortical excitability and arise from neuronal and synaptic features peculiar to the immature central nervous…

Studies on human patients and animal models of disease have shown that disruptions in prenatal and early postnatal brain development are a root cause of mental retardation. Since proper brain development is achieved by a strict spatiotemporal control of neurogenesis, cell migration, and patterning of synapses, abnormalities in one or more of these…