Previous studies have suggested that the perception of vowels and consonants changes from language-universal to language-specific between 6 and 12 months of age. This report suggests that language-specific perception emerges even earlier for lexical tones. Experiment 1 tested English-learners' perception of Cantonese tones, replicating declines in…

Is parental language mixing related to vocabulary acquisition in bilingual infants and children? Bilingual parents (who spoke English and another language; n = 181) completed the Language Mixing Scale questionnaire, a new self-report measure that assesses how frequently parents use words from two different languages in the same sentence, such as…

Purpose: The authors examined the language used by mothers from low-income and rural environments with their infants at ages 6 and 15 months to identify predictors of maternal language use at the 15-month time point. Method: Maternal language use by 82 mothers with their children was documented during book-sharing interactions within the home in a…

Findings are presented from the first randomized control trial of the effects of encouraging symbolic gesture (or "baby sign") on infant language, following 40 infants from age 8 months to 20 months. Half of the mothers were trained to model a target set of gestures to their infants. Frequent measures were taken of infant language…

This study of 164 married couples examined longitudinal links between parents' perceptions of coparenting support and undermining by spouse at 6 months postpartum and infant behaviour problems at the age of 12 months after controlling for marital quality, individual parenting, and infant temperament. Multiple methods (i.e. parent reports and…

All eligible infants and toddlers who receive early intervention services under Part C of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are entitled to service coordination. To examine the effectiveness of one state's service coordination training and its impact on knowledge and skill development, a pretest--posttest design with follow-up survey was…

Three-dimensional (3D) object completion, the ability to perceive the backs of objects seen from a single viewpoint, emerges at around 6 months of age. Yet, only relatively simple 3D objects have been used in assessing its development. This study examined infants' 3D object completion when presented with more complex stimuli. Infants…

Aim: To explore teenagers experiences of the breastfeeding promotion and support delivered by health professionals. Design: A qualitative study conducted in an English city. Methods: Pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers (n = 29) took part in semi-structured interviews and focus groups between March and July 2009. Results: Breastfeeding is…

Episodic memories for autobiographical events that happen in unique spatiotemporal contexts are central to defining who we are. Yet, before 2 years of age, children are unable to form or store episodic memories for recall later in life, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia. Here, we studied the development of allocentric spatial memory, a…

The majority of mothers in Ireland provide formula milk to their infants during the initial weeks postpartum; however, data are lacking on their formula feeding practices and support needs. This prospective Dublin-based observational study, which included 450 eligible mother-term infant pairs recruited and followed up to six months postpartum,…

A national survey by Custodero & Johnson-Green (2003) examined how parents experienced music with their infants, and found that many reported playing and singing music frequently. More than half of the parents described playing recorded music for their children daily, and parents who had played an instrument and taken music lessons themselves…

Project DULCE (Developmental understanding and legal Collaboration for everyone) integrated the Strengthening families approach to building family protective factors into routine health care visits for infants in a primary health care setting. The core collaborators--Boston medical Center pediatric primary care, the medical-legal partnership |…

We conducted a theory-driven process evaluation of a cluster randomized controlled trial comparing two types of complementary feeding (meat versus fortified cereal) on infant growth in Guatemala, Pakistan, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We examined process evaluation indicators for the entire study cohort (N = 1236) using chi-square…

Temperament atypicalities have been documented in infancy and early development in children who develop autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current study investigates whether there are differences in developmental trajectories of temperament between infants and toddlers with and without ASD. Parents of infant siblings of children with autism…

The perception and management of the risks of peer-to-peer milk sharing was explored via a written questionnaire administered to 97 peer milk donors and 41 peer milk recipients who were recruited via Facebook. All recipients' respondents were aware that there were risks associated with using peer-shared milk and took action to mitigate these…