Due to the high rates of preterm births, it is essential to examine the developmental risk factors and monitor development. The aim of our cross-sectional study is to examine the cognitive, language and motor development of LBW (<2500 g) children (N = 438) regarding sociodemographic risk factors. We measured the 2-year development with the…

Late language emergence (LLE) may result from genetic and environmental factors. Little is known about environmental factors in LLE in South Africa. The study describes the nature of differences in language functioning between toddlers with LLE and without LLE, and which factors were associated with LLE in a middle-income area in South Africa.…

Children develop fastest in their earliest years, and the skills and abilities they develop in those years lay the foundation for their future success. Similarly, early adverse experiences can contribute to poor social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes both in early childhood and later life. Children who grow up in families…

Parent-implemented interventions (PIIs) hold promise for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families. Yet, reports of parent and family perceptions regarding PIIs are limited. The present study's purpose was to gain parent perceptions regarding the helpful and challenging intervention components and contextual factors in…

The number of multilingual families in Norway has increased during the last decades, but there are no official statistics concerning the linguistic situation in Norway today. Immigrants account for 15% of the population. In addition, there are mixed-language families where one of the parents does not have Norwegian as his/her mother tongue. Most…

Within a language, there is considerable variation in the pronunciations of words owing to social factors like age, gender, nationality, and race. In the present study, we investigate whether toddlers link social and linguistic variation during word learning. In Experiment 1, 24- to 26-month-old toddlers were exposed to two talkers whose front…

Developing early reading skills is important for long-term academic success. Too often, however, young children do not have the foundations of literacy they need. One-third of Tennessee students read on grade level (Tennessee Department of Education, 2021), and in the state's capital city of Nashville, three out of four 3rd graders are not reading…

This study examines the extent to which iron deficiency in infancy contributes to adverse neurocognitive and educational outcomes in young adulthood directly and indirectly, through its influence on verbal cognition and attention problems in childhood. Young adults (N = 1,000, M age = 21.3 years, 52% female; of Spanish or indigenous descent) from…

This article critically interrogates the model of language that underpins early years policy and pedagogy. Our arguments emerge from an ethnographic study involving 2-year-olds attending a day care centre that had begun to hold a substantial proportion of its sessions outdoors. The resultant shift in pedagogy coincided with changes in the…

Health disparities in ASD detection affect children's access to subsequent interventions. We examined potential disparities in implementation of a multi-stage ASD screening and diagnostic evaluation protocol in Part C Early Intervention with 4943 children ages 14-36 months (mean 22.0 months; 62.9% boys, 73.3% children of color, 34.9%…

Purpose: Few caregiver-implemented naturalistic language interventions (NLIs) are available for Spanish-speaking Latinos who have young children under 3 years with language delays, and there is a scarcity of studies that provide information about intervention development or social validity of interventions for this group. This study introduces…

This article examined the associations between family processes and children's development among mothers and their children participating in early intervention (EI) services. Data from mothers and their infants and toddlers (n = 100) participating in EI were analyzed using regression methods to test the predictive power of maternal depressive…

Purpose: Few caregiver-implemented naturalistic language interventions (NLIs) are available for Spanish-speaking Latinos who have young children under 3 years with language delays, and there is a scarcity of studies that provide information about intervention development or social validity of interventions for this group. This study introduces…

Developing strong language and communication skills in the first years of life provides young children with a foundation for a number of positive outcomes, including school readiness, early literacy skills, and self-regulation. High quality language supports in early childhood education programs are key to this development. Part of providing these…

This article critically examines how the policy of funded nursery places for 'disadvantaged' two-year-olds in England opens up economic and political spaces in readiness for increased governance. The government introduced funded nursery places in September 2013, which aimed to promote disadvantaged children's educational outcomes, narrow the…