This resource was prepared in response to a request for information from a Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) State about which RTT-ELC States are using the Pyramid Model for Supporting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children. The State also requested information about other projects States have designed to…

Globally, at least 200 million children younger than five years old are falling short of their potential for development and growth. There is some evidence that improvements to children's health, nutrition, and development outcomes can be made through programs that provide direct learning experiences to children and families; are targeted toward…

Early selective attention skills are a crucial building block for cognitive development, as attention orienting serves as a primary means by which infants interact with and learn from the environment. Although several studies have examined infants' attention orienting using the spatial cueing task, relatively few studies have examined…

Children who start school with strong language skills initiate a trajectory of academic success, while children with weaker skills are likely to struggle. Research has demonstrated that media and parent-child interactions, both characteristics of the home literacy environment, influence children's language skills. Using a national sample of…

Developmental screens are often used in nonstandardized conditions, such as pediatric waiting rooms, despite validation under standardized conditions. We examined the reproducibility of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), a developmental screening instrument commonly used in pediatric practices, under standardized versus nonstandardized…

Impaired affective expression, including social smiling, is common in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and may represent an early marker for ASD in their infant siblings (Sibs-ASD). Social smiling and its component behaviors (eye contact and non-social smiling) were examined at 15 months in Sibs-ASD who demonstrated later ASD…

This paper focuses on the methodology of a study that asked what factors English mothers of very young babies consider when making employment decisions and childcare choices, and sought their views on the idea of carers in day care settings "loving" their children. After a characterisation of life historical study, a four-staged process…

The goal of early autism screening is earlier treatment. We pilot-tested a 12-week, low-intensity treatment with seven symptomatic infants ages 7-15 months. Parents mastered the intervention and maintained skills after treatment ended. Four comparison groups were matched from a study of infant siblings. The treated group of infants was…

Researchers question the implications of the way in which "motherhood" is constructed in public health discourse. Current nutritional guidelines for Danish parents of young children are part of this discourse. They are shaped by an assumed symbiotic relationship between the nutritional needs of the child and the interest and focus of the…

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the participation rates and factors associated with nonparticipation among mothers living in low-income households who were invited to join a parent-education and -support research program delivered via the Internet with professional support. Methods: Four hundred and seventy-seven mothers of…

In a socially diverse sample of 206 infant-mother pairs, we investigated predictors of infants' attachment security at 15 months, with a particular emphasis on mothers' tendency to comment appropriately or in a non-attuned manner on their 8-month-olds' internal states (so-called mind-mindedness). Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed…

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 for low-income families. CCDBG provides child care assistance to children from birth to age 13. This fact sheet highlights key information about infants and toddlers…

It has been suggested that infants' performance on the false belief task can be explained by the use of behavioural rules. To test this hypothesis, 18-month-old infants were trained to learn the new rule that an object that disappeared in location A could be found in location B. Infants were then administered a false belief task based on the…

For adults, ownership is nonobvious: (a) determining ownership depends more on an object's history than on perceptual cues, and (b) ownership confers special value on an object ("endowment effect"). This study examined these concepts in preschoolers (2.0-4.4) and adults (n = 112). Participants saw toy sets in which 1 toy was designated as the…

To examine key parameters of the initial conditions in early category learning, two studies compared 5-month-olds' object categorization between tasks involving previously unseen novel objects, and between measures within tasks. Infants in Experiment 1 participated in a visual familiarization-novelty preference (VFNP) task with two-dimensional…