"Working Well with Babies" describes the comprehensive competencies (including the knowledge, dispositions, and skills) that educators of infants and toddlers must have to provide optimal support for infants and toddlers. Designed as a learning resource for both in-service and pre-service infant/toddler practitioners, this text details…

This brief summarizes the working paper, "Understanding Motivation: Building the Brain Architecture That Supports Learning, Health, and Community Participation. Working Paper 14," which explains the science behind motivation--the "wanting" system and the "liking" system--as well as how those systems develop, and how…

Many children with developmental delays need early intervention services but do not receive them. Developmental screening provides the impetus for identification of delays and service referrals but is not used consistently across all early childhood education settings. We used an implementation science framework to examine attitudes and engagement…

The empirical link between children's cognitive ability and parental risk attitudes has been understudied. Specifically, an individual's educational outcome may reflect the decisions made on their behalf by parents, reflecting their risk attitudes. This paper aims to fill gaps in the existing literature by investigating whether parental risk…

Interest in two-generation approaches to improve the developmental outcomes of children and their caregivers and the economic well-being of families has increased amid persistent child and family poverty worldwide. Grounded in a dual developmental science perspective and the theory of linked lives, these approaches maximize developmental potential…

Self-regulation is a critical emergent developmental competency that lays the foundation for children's later psychosocial health and academic achievement. Recent work indicates that physical activity and energetic play opportunities support children's self-regulation in the early childhood classroom. Many early childhood programs offer…

This study explores vocal development as an early marker of autism, focusing on canonical babbling rate and onset, typically established by 7 months. Previous reports suggested delayed or reduced canonical babbling in infants later diagnosed with autism, but the story may be complicated. We present a prospective study on 44 infants later diagnosed…

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of dietary factors on developmental trajectories in young autistic children. Methods: A gluten-free and casein-free diets, as well as six types of food (meat and eggs, vegetables, uncooked vegetables, sweets, bread, and "white soft bread that never molds") were…

Quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) is important for young children's holistic healthy development. As ECCE scales, contextually relevant and feasible measurement is needed to inform policy and programs on strengths and areas for improvement. However, few measures have been designed for use across diverse contexts. Drawing on…

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic syndrome. As with all rare syndromes, obtaining adequately powered sample sizes is a challenge. Here we present legacy data from seven UK labs, enabling the characterisation of cross-sectional and longitudinal developmental trajectories of verbal and non-verbal development in the largest sample of…

Context: Adoption can provide a lifetime of benefits for children. Some adoptions however, experience severe challenges resulting in disruption, with children leaving home prematurely. Method: This qualitative study in Northern Ireland used interviews with parents from thirteen families whose adoptions had disrupted, to explore their perspective…

The literature has yet to review the differential effects of Natural Environment Teaching (NET) and Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) on adaptive skills. A sample of 142 children diagnosed with ASD between the ages of 16 and 35 months received either DTT, NET, or both interventions (NET+ DTT). The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (BSID)…

Introduction: Self-care skills are integral to how children manage their daily lives without help. Without good motor skills, the children have difficulty achieving independence in self-care. Objectives: This study aimed to explore the understanding on teaching of motor skills related to self-care skills, factors inhibit teaching self-care and…

Parenting and children's temperament are important influences on language development. However, temperament may reflect prior parenting, and parenting effects may reflect genes common to parents and children. In 561 U.S. adoptees (57% male) and their birth and rearing parents (70% and 92% White, 13% and 4% African American, and 7% and 2% Latinx,…

Young children in many parts of the world are spending more time in formal education and care settings. As children have the right to be heard on matters that affect them, their views about the early childhood environments they inhabit, need to be included in the process of placemaking. Early childhood environments have the potential to shape a…