In June 2003, Congress passed the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act, which reauthorized the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which provides federal funding for state child welfare agencies. A new provision in the reauthorized CAPTA requires that states receiving CAPTA funds develop and implement "provisions and…

Interactive behavior of 90 Israeli toddlers was observed with mothers and caregivers in one-on-one free play interactions. Children were examined with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, and adults completed self-report measures. Observations were coded for both the quality of adult-child interactive behavior and for the quality of adults'…

Purpose: To evaluate whether the validity of the Receptive Vocabulary scale of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for Infants (MCDI-I; L. Fenson et al., 1991), a parent-report measure of early vocabulary, could be improved for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by removing items that are biased. Method: Logistic…

Nearly 20 years ago, before e-mails, listservs, and blogs, the author had participated in an intense discussion with a group of early childhood education and care (ECEC) program directors about the pros and cons of publicly funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K). They debated about how universal pre-K (UPK) might impact the cost of infant and toddler…

Teachers of very young children have the awesome task of providing rich information and experiences that build skills and understanding in the context of every day routines and within intentionally-designed play opportunities that capture children's interests, wonder and curiosity so they want to know more. Pennsylvania's learning standards join…

The awareness and knowledge of developmental milestones among health practitioners need to be enhanced to better enable early identification and intervention with children who have delays in development, intellectual deficit, and developmental disabilities and are residents in low-and middle-income countries. To meet this end, a simple one-page…

This study explored the effects of basic developmental care on the behaviour of very pre-term infants and parental stress at 1 and 2 years of corrected age. A randomized controlled trial was done to compare basic Developmental Care (standardized nests and incubator covers) and controls (standard care). Parents of infants born less than 32 weeks of…

Background: Grandparents are increasingly involved in the care of young children, but little is known about factors associated with this type of care, or its implications for children's behavioural development. Methods: We used information collected from 8752 families in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) on grandparent…

Part C Updates is a compilation of information on various aspects of the Early Intervention Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities (Part C) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This is the eighth volume in a series of compilations, which included two editions of Part H Updates, the former name of the program. The…

Infants can inhibit a prepotent but wrong action towards a goal in order to perform a causal means-action. It is not clear, however, whether infants can perform an arbitrary means-action while inhibiting a prepotent response. In four experiments, we explore this executive functioning in 18-24-month-old children. The working memory and inhibition…

This article is a theoretical discussion on the dimensions of learning in play and the dimensions of play in learning, using the playful interaction between children and teachers as a starting point. From an empirical study observations of two situations were chosen, one from a mealtime and one of children's play, both typical examples of playful…

There is a robust association between prenatal smoking and disruptive behavior disorders, but little is known about the emergence of such behaviors in early development. The association of prenatal smoking and hypothesized behavioral precursors to disruptive behavior in toddlers (N=93) was tested. Exposed toddlers demonstrated atypical behavioral…

The construction of developmentally appropriate and valid assessments is central to the study of attachment relationships beyond infancy. A common procedure has been that of validating new measures for older children against strange situation classifications obtained in infancy. Although reasonable, a key criterion against which to validate new…

The purpose of this study was to explore the quality of daycare by examining interactions between caregivers and young children. Across 49 Israeli daycare centers, 299 children aged 18-30 months were observed naturalistically in groups of four to eight, together with their main caregiver. Caregivers' behavior was defined in terms of mediation and…

This study examined social communication profiles from behavior samples videotaped between 18 and 24 months of age in three groups of children: 50 with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), 23 with developmental delays (DD), and 50 with typical development (TD). The ASD group scored significantly lower than the DD group on 5 social communication…