The COVID-19 pandemic has had serious effects on children in early childhood as well as on all age groups. Detecting and examining these effects with various studies is vitally important. Hence, current research aims to examine the relationship between digital play addiction tendencies and psychological well-being levels of 5- to 6-year-old…

The present study aimed to investigate whether preschoolers can recognise the emotions conveyed in panels of the Asterix comic series. The sample consisted of 40 pre-school children (22 boys and 18 girls), aged 52-72 months. They were presented with 8 panels, which in pairs conveyed the emotions of happiness, sadness, fear and anger. Adult raters…

Early literacy skills are essential for children's academic development. This research used a comprehensive approach that included observations, assessments, and interviews with children and educators from various kindergartens, which involved 1040 children and 99 teachers from 71 early childhood institutions. The comparison of difficulties in…

Developmental difference is a common characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with unclear sex differences. The current study included 610 children with ASD, aged between 2 and 7 years, with completed language profiles. We used a nonparametric item response theory model called Mokken scale analysis to examine the order of acquisition of…

Today, digital media technologies are ubiquitous and mundane, making the relationship between digital and analog messy and porous. This postdigital condition prompts new analyses of how young children's local encounters with digital media technologies unfold, and how their relationships with digital media technologies carry on after they leave…

Identification procedures for autism spectrum disorders in paediatric settings include screening and routine clinical surveillance. Screening tools are perceived as challenging, and a preference for direct observation has been reported in Ecuadorian paediatric settings. Augmentative observational procedures could prompt the application of…

The goals of this study were to investigate (a) the dyadic relations of mothers' and children's perceptions of children's anxiety symptoms across development, (b) whether maternal perceptions of children's anxiety serve as a mediator of the association between maternal anxiety and child anxiety, and (c) whether sensitive/structured parenting…

Chronic absenteeism in early childhood is associated with numerous adverse outcomes throughout childhood and adolescence. Interventions are needed to prevent chronic absenteeism and support child development in early education. The present study investigated the effect of Primary Project, a school-based prevention program, on average school…

Education researchers and practitioners have been exploring for years the key factors impacting children's academic engagement. Still, relatively little is known about the role of children's social cognition in their academic engagement. Accordingly, the current study focuses on the potential indirect associations between young children's social…

Background: Home-visiting programs are an often-used intervention for supporting the well-being of families with young children, and there is long-standing interest among researchers in ensuring the effectiveness of this practice. Especially, retention and attrition play important roles in achieving desired outcomes of the intervention. Objective:…

During a classroom-based study that featured wordless and almost wordless picturebooks, instruction and adult mediation communicated to Kindergarten children that elements of visual art, design, and layout are fundamental to meaning-making when transacting with this format of literature. The illustration techniques described by Ray (2010) were…

The Three-Tier Video Modeling intervention model was derived from the theory of Response to Intervention. This pilot study aimed to demonstrate the application of the Three-Tier Video Modeling model with a top-down approach in teaching physical activity to a 4-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder and his typically developing peers. The study…

This study investigates the levels of social language and vocabulary characteristics of three- to six-year-old children with autism in Vietnam. The research is based on analysis of the developmental assessment reports of 151 children with autism, and 42 parents' reports on their children's vocabulary (recorded using the Child Word Inventory form).…

Background: In typically developing (TD) children, gesture emerges around 9 months of age, allowing children to communicate prior to speech. Due to the important role gesture plays in the early communication of autistic and TD children, various tasks have been used to assess gesture ability. However, few data exist on whether and how tasks…

This study examines whether children acquiring Tseltal (Mayan) demonstrate a noun bias -- an overrepresentation of nouns in their early vocabularies. Nouns, specifically concrete and animate nouns, are argued to universally predominate in children's early vocabularies because their referents are naturally available as bounded concepts to which…