In a paradigm of simulated stranger distress designed to elicit empathic arousal, this study examined multiple elements of responding in 61 preschoolers. Disengagement from stranger distress was underscored in addition to prosocial responding. All children encountered a female adult stranger feigning stomach ache followed by an infant manikin…

Although a large body of literature recognises the impact of parent-teacher relationships on infant everyday experiences, less is known about the emotional experience and associated expectations of the adults themselves during earliest transitions. In the context of a multi-site international investigation across five countries -- Brazil, Finland,…

Mode of delivery, preterm birth, and low birth weight (LBW) are hypothesized to be associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the offspring. Using data from 343 ASD cases (2-8 years) and their age- and sex-matched typically developing controls in Jamaica we investigated these hypotheses. Our statistical analyses revealed that the parish of…

Background: Feeding methods used during infancy may impact upon eating behaviors in toddlers and influence the likelihood of developing weight issues. The aim of this study was to compare eating behaviors and food neophobia (defined as the reluctance to eat, or the avoidance of, new foods) in toddlers between three different complementary feeding…

To learn a language infants must learn to link arbitrary sounds to their meaning. While words are the clearest example of this link, they are not the only component of language; morphological regularities (e.g., the plural -s suffix in English) carry meaning as well. Comprehensive theories of language acquisition must account for how infants build…

Background: Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is on the rise in the United States. Opioid-use disorder has increased among the population of women of childbearing age. Over the past two decades, the increased rate of opioid-use disorder has caused a five-fold increase in NAS. NAS affects three out of four babies who are exposed to chronic use of…

Younger biological siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (sibs-ASD) are at a heightened risk for developing communication disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder or language impairment. Two strategies that are theoretically motivated as potentially beneficial for sibs-ASD are follow-in comments and providing input in episodes of…

Introduction: This paper provides a report of social validity and its usefulness in understanding study effects. Social validity data were drawn from a larger single-case study designed to investigate the effectiveness of the Matrix Approach in the practice of early intervention visual impairment professionals. Methods: Qualitative measures were…

In this study, we investigate the association between family environment and early childhood development among children aged 6-24 months in rural counties in China. To do this, we used cross-sectional data from a large scale survey, including 1809 child-caregiver dyads across 22 nationally designated poverty counties. We found that 53.95% of…

Mind-mindedness (MM) refers to caregivers' proclivity to treat a child as having an active and autonomous mental life. It has been shown to be a powerful predictor of many developmental outcomes and to mitigate the impact of risk conditions. However, longitudinal studies on MM reporting changes over time and individual differences among mothers…

Early Head Start is a comprehensive, two-generation federal initiative for low-income pregnant women and families who have infants and toddlers ages 3 or younger. The Head Start Program Performance Standards (HSPPS) require center-based and family child care Early Head Start programs to "provide responsive care, effective teaching, and an…

The Child Care and Early Education Research Connections collection catalogs resources that researchers, policymakers, and other professionals find and use for child care and early education research. The items outlined in this resource list examine equity in early care and education (ECE). They were published between 2016 and 2022 in the United…

This study assessed the links between infant negative affect, parental reflective functioning (RF), and toddler behavior problems in a sample of 84 women and their infants. Mothers provided self-report demographic data and completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised during a home visit when the infant was 7 months old. They also completed…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe normative aspects of wideband acoustic immittance (WAI) measures obtained from healthy White neonates. Method: In this cross-sectional study, wideband absorbance (WBA), admittance magnitude, and admittance phase were measured under ambient pressure condition in 326 ears from 203 neonates (M age…

This study investigates whether infants are sensitive to backward and forward transitional probabilities within temporal and spatial visual streams. Two groups of 8-month-old infants were familiarized with an artificial grammar of shapes, comprising backward and forward base pairs (i.e. two shapes linked by strong backward or forward transitional…