This study aimed to examine the assessment of nutritional status in early childhood and the experiences of the mothers whose children started traditional and/or baby-led complementary weaning. The study included 485 mothers who used social media, all of whom had a 6-24 month-old child receiving complementary foods. In order to collect data,…

The vocabulary size and composition of one group of full-term and three groups of low risk preterm children with different gestational ages (GA) were longitudinally compared at 10, 22 and 30 months of age. Expressive vocabulary development was assessed through the CDI. Cognitive development was also assessed at 22 months (Batelle Developmental…

This article reviews the research base on the development of prenatal attachment and profiles four programs that foster this essential prenatal relationship: CenteringPregnancy®, the Practical Resources for Effective Postpartum Parenting program (PREPP), Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP), and Moms2B.

Previous research is inconsistent as to whether a more labile (faster-changing) autonomic system confers performance advantages, or disadvantages, in infants and children. To examine this, we presented a stimulus battery consisting of mixed static and dynamic viewing materials to a cohort of 63 typical 12-month-old infants. While viewing the…

Episodic memories in early childhood are rapidly forgotten, a phenomenon that is associated with "infantile amnesia," the inability of adults to remember early-life experiences. We recently showed that early aversive contextual memory in infant rats, which is in fact rapidly forgotten, is actually not lost, as reminders presented later…

The 4 experiments reported here used the preferential looking and habituation paradigms to examine whether 5-month-olds possess a perceptual template for snakes, sharks, and rodents. It was predicted that if infants possess such a template, then they would attend preferentially to schematic images of these nonhuman animal stimuli relative to…

Executive functions (EFs) are key abilities that allow us to control our thoughts and actions. Research suggests that two EFs, inhibitory control (IC) and working memory (WM), emerge around 9 months. Little is known about IC earlier in infancy and whether basic attentional processes form the "building blocks" of emerging IC. These…

The current study investigated the intergenerational transmission of attachment in Sapporo, Japan, using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP). This is the first SSP study in Sapporo in three decades, after a study in the mid-1980s reported controversial results. The SSP distributions found in the current…

Children's speech development begins in infancy. The pattern of this development has been explored in studies over a number of years using a range of research methodology and approaches to investigation. A systematic review of the existing literature was carried out to determine the collective contribution of this literature to our understanding…

In this article, we integrate two constructionist approaches--the theory of constructed emotion and rational constructivism--to introduce several novel hypotheses for understanding emotional development. We first discuss the hypothesis that emotion categories are abstract and conceptual, whose instances share a goal-based function in a particular…

I investigated the emotional coordination (matching, synchrony, completion and attunement) between infant and paternal facial expressions of emotion in the course of paternal questions addressed to infants during their spontaneous dyadic interaction. Eleven infant-father dyads were observed during their natural interactions at home from the second…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational programs and curricula are in vogue globally and are touted as optimal solutions for developing learners' future values, skills, and knowledge. But are they appropriate for early years learners such as babies (0-2 years), infants (2-3 years), preschoolers (3-5 years), and…

Rapidly growing research on parental mind-mindedness, a tendency to treat one's young child as a psychological agent and an individual with a mind, internal mental states, and emotions, has demonstrated significant links among parents' mind-mindedness, their parenting, and multiple aspects of children's development. This prospective longitudinal…

Children with disabilities take part in child care programs across the country every day. However, existing research is lacking on how infants and toddlers with disabilities are supported in these inclusion efforts, particularly from the perspectives of child care and early intervention (EI) providers. In this article, we describe the results of a…

Advice about the age for introducing complementary food to infants varies across European countries. Little is known about the actual practice of complementary feeding (CF) in the face of different advice from health professionals within Europe, nor about the impact of different ages of onset of CF on infant food acceptance. This longitudinal…