The number of children who are adopted from foreign orphanages is on the rise in the U.S. Children who are reared in orphanages face a host of challenges to their healthy development and to their ability to form close, satisfying attachments with their new parents. The authors describe a group intervention used by the Yale International …

Youth work is a field that has moved from a sole focus on the treatment of youth problems to their prevention, and more recently, the promotion of normal, healthy development. Concurrent with this trend to a more comprehensive approach to youth services (one that serves a continuum from promotion to prevention to short- and long-term treatment)…

Several years ago intermediaries in Boston were challenged to build a continuum of training around a shared set of competencies for those who work with young people ages five to twenty-two during the out-of-school-time hours. After receiving a few small planning grants, local intermediaries teamed up with large youth-serving organizations to…

David Packard, chairman of the board of trustees of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and an engineer by training and profession, was personally steeped in scientific method and committed to the belief that public resources should be invested in programs on the basis of evidence. He extended this standard to the foundation's investments and…

Inagaki and Hatano (2002) have argued that young children initially understand biological phenomena in terms of vitalism, a mode of construal in which "life" or "life-force" is the central causal-explanatory concept. This study investigated the development of vitalistic reasoning in young children's concepts of life, the human body and death.…

In the United States about one million teenagers become pregnant each year and, of these, almost one-half will give birth and become mothers. Maternal factors that have been linked with better overall outcomes for adolescent mothers include social and family support, completion of high school, and limiting subsequent childbearing during…

Behavioral data establish a dramatic change in infants' phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months of age. Foreign-language phonetic discrimination significantly declines with increasing age. Using a longitudinal design, we examined the electrophysiological responses of 7- and 11-month-old American infants to native and non-native consonant…

In adults, three phenomena are taken to demonstrate an experience effect on face recognition: an inversion effect, a non-native face effect (so-called "other-race" effect) and their interaction. It is crucial for our understanding of the developmental perception mechanisms of object processing to discover when these effects are present in…

Parenting education programs have traditionally consisted of teaching skills and providing information about child development, but have not focused on parents' own development as individuals and as parents. The Reflective Dialogue Parent Education Design (RDPED) described in this article helps parents increase their self-awareness and their…

Studies in the area of developmental psychology--especially those carried out in the past thirty years--show that preschool quality, both at the structural and process levels, in combination with the quality of the family environment influences various areas of children's development and learning. The goal of this study is to determine the effect…

There are many dimensions of play and play's significance for children's development and learning is often emphasized, but how do preschool teachers see children's use of computers in preschool? A qualitative study was done with 13 Swedish preschool teachers that had experience working with computers in preschool. The overall aim of this study was…

Research on French and European American mothers' childrearing practices, and potential effects of these differences on children's behavioral development, is scarce. This study compared 33 French and 39 European American 20-month-old children and their mothers on exploratory, symbolic, and social play and interaction. French children engaged in…

A university child development/early childhood education professor renews her relationship with young children and with current public school teaching by spending 5 weeks in kindergarten. This article describes some highlights of her experience: the children's daily journal writing, an in-class and take-home math activity, and teaching the…

Providing children with a variety of play materials at different levels of challenge and in a variety of interest areas responds to children's individual differences and needs in the classroom. In this book excerpt, the author lists materials for play in the categories social and fantasy; exploration and mastery; music, art, and movement; and…

A portfolio assessment is an individual collection of daily drawings, photographs, writings samples, audiotapes, video recordings, and other materials that provide visual and/or auditory documentation of a child's strengths. In this article, the authors present steps on how to complete a portfolio assessment. These are: (1) Identify type of…