In an attempt to provide a model of language intervention tailored to toddler needs, this poster session gives an overview of a playgroup program implemented by a speech-language pathologist and an early intervention specialist. The program's aim is to improve communicative abilities while maintaining the integrity of the child-caregiver…

The field of early childhood intervention, which strives to meet the needs of infants and toddlers with disabilities, has come of age, but interagency collaboration to provide family-focused multidisciplinary services remains more a goal than a reality. Issues in the development of multidisciplinary services include fragmentation of services,…

An assessment battery, measuring multiple aspects of language, was administered to 29 children between 4 and 5 years of age who had been born prematurely. The children, who weighed less than 2,500 grams at birth after less than 37 weeks of gestation, were recruited from a cohort of children originally admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit…

A study evaluated the effectiveness of a parent education program in increasing school readiness in poor and high-needs children. Participants in the Parents and Children Together program (PACT) of Binghamton, New York, receive home visits from trained and certified parent educators, beginning when a child is born and continuing until he or she is…

Discussing findings from three studies, this report focuses on questions mothers ask their children while looking at picture books and recent family photographs. In the first study, 30 mothers and their 12-, 15-, and 18-month-old children "read" a simple ABC book that had one picture for each letter in the alphabet. In the second study,…

This study used several measures to compare 40 toddlers with delays in expressive language and 40 children acquiring language normally. Findings indicated that children with small expressive vocabularies at 2 years of age are not different from their normally speaking peers in terms of hearing, history of ear infections, birth order, or pre- or…

Researchers have pointed out that the effects of generic stressors such as poverty may be mediated through other stressors in the microsystem of parent-child relationships or personal characteristics of family members. Specific, potential mediating stressors were sought in this study involving 191 low income Moslem families who had immigrated from…

This document reviews a number of recent studies written in French that investigate the nature of communication between 2-year-old infants and others. The review includes three parts. The first part focuses on studies aiming to constitute a behavioral catalog of the child. Characteristically, these studies offer a posteriori interpretations of…

Does early child care hinder or enhance infants' and toddlers' social and cognitive development? This longitudinal study investigated whether: (1) child care is related to qualities of mother-child interaction and the child's cognitive and language development in the first 3 years of life; (2) the child care environment interacts with the home…

This document is a transcript of a workshop intended to inform conference participants about the experiences of two schools, both members of the League of Schools Reaching Out, which sponsored the workshop. First, the director of the early education program for the Ferguson Florissant (Missouri) school district spoke about her program, which is…

This study examined parenting styles reported by middle-class families of 105 preschoolers between 3 and 5 years of age who had experienced varying amounts of full-time infant child care. Children had experienced one of the following conditions: (1) full-time nonparental care beginning before 9 months of age; (2) full-time nonparental care…

Self-regulation is a major developmental accomplishment that begins in infancy and continues throughout childhood. This study focused on early socialization of self-regulation, and examined whether there was a common core of self-regulation in young children cutting across contexts and age, and whether the same maternal behaviors operate similarly…

This two-part investigation attempted to formulate culturally sensitive definitions of desirable and undesirable attachment behavior. Participants were 3 sociocultural groups of 16 mothers each: middle-class Anglo mothers, lower-class Anglo mothers, and lower-class Puerto Rican mothers living on the U.S. mainland. All mothers had at least 1 child…

The families of 10 children enrolled in a class for 2-year-olds at the Mills College Children's School participated in a study of parent attitudes about separation and parental behaviors that minimized separation anxiety and facilitated a smooth transition from home to school environments. The sample included nine mothers who were married and…

Part of a larger, longitudinal study conducted from 1974 through 1979 investigating differences in the mother-child relationship among Japanese, Thais, and Filipinos, this paper reports findings on the Filipino sub-sample. Findings concern the socioemotional behavior of Filipino children, expectations of their mothers, extent of children's…