Researchers, educators, professional organizations, administrators, parents, and policy makers have increased their involvement in the assessment and evaluation of early childhood education programs. This interest has developed swiftly during the last decades. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National…

Examines the relations of levels of task engagement to investigation and visual attention in data from 30-month-old children. Finds significant correlations between task and other mastery behavior. Postulates task engagement as valid assessment of mastery behavior. Suggests the motivation for young children's play is acquisition and mastery of…

Studies 12- to 24-month-olds in a series of videotaped tasks assessing single object manipulation, relational play, pretend play, distractibility and persistence. Develops eight relatively subtle measures of three aspects of individual differences in infant behavior: developmental level, attention span, and exploratory diversity. (Author/NH)

This volume explores the key developmental transitions that take place as 1- to 3-year-olds leave infancy behind and begin to develop the social and emotional knowledge, skills, and regulatory abilities of early childhood. Leading investigators examine the multiple, interacting factors that lead to socioemotional competence in this pivotal period,…

Introduces the Social Relations Model as a new approach for understanding reciprocity during parent-child and sibling play. (PCB)

The relationship between early language and cognition was studied in 20 children between 1 and 2 years of age. Four cognitive areas were tested: object permanence, means-end, play, and imitation. Results indicated that specific cognitive skills seem temporarily associated with some linguistic abilities, although attainment of skills can be…

Children's ability to produce integrated sequences of discrete behaviors was examined as a function of age and task demands for several behavioral domains. Results are discussed in terms of possible age-related constraints on combinatorial skills that operate at a general, cross-domain level during toddlerhood. (RH)

A short-term longitudinal study of the peer-related social interactions of 111 developmentally delayed toddlers and preschool children was carried out. Results suggested the existence of unusually marked deficits in peer interactions. Possible contributing factors were discussed. (Author/RH)

Social play emerged earlier than social pretend play with a similar structure; the incidence of social pretend play increased with age. Four strategies for integrating pretense into social play were isolated; among them, verbal recruitment and "join" were found to be more effective than imitation or nonverbal recruitment. (Author/RH)

This study tested the hypothesis that pretreatment level of play would predict the rate of increase in prelinguistic, intentional requesting during prelinguistic communication intervention of 8 children (ages 21 to 30 months) with developmental disabilities. A positive relation was found between amount of transitional or symbolic play at baseline…

The internal reliability and concurrent validity of the Play Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ) was compared to that of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory with 170 deaf or hard of hearing infants and toddlers. The PAQ was found to be a useful nonverbal tool that assesses symbolic play behaviors and demonstrates a parallel development with…

Development of toddlers' combinatorial skills was examined in the domains of object manipulation, symbolic play, motor imitation, language, and peer interaction. Additionally, task demands that might produce variations in age-related patterns within or between domains were examined. Data were collected in free play sessions and during structured…

Explores the relations among combinatorial capacities in language, symbolic play, blockbuilding, and nonsemantic action sequences within a sample of 18- to 24-month-old children, as well as assessing the developmental level of a selected subset of concepts. (HOD)

Observed play of 52 toddlers with a set of socially stereotyped masculine, feminine, and neutral toys in a day care setting over 14 months to (1) determine the age at which toddlers consistently exhibit sex-stereotyped toy choices in a natural setting and (2) investigate relation of parents' expectations and the children's own knowledge of gender…

Comparison of 8 toddlers and 14 preschool special needs children who participated in teacher-facilitated computer play activities and 15 similar children whose curriculum did not incorporate computer activities found statistically significant differences favoring the experimental group for amount of simple and cooperative social play and positive…