Perspective taking and cognitive flexibility are important abilities for navigating our everyday lives. In this longitudinal study with 108 children (61 girls, mostly White), we investigated the developmental relation between Level 1 perspective taking at 27 months of age and Level 2 perspective taking at 52 months of age as well as relations to…

In the field of educational robotics, it is important to understand the processes trough which child-robot interactions are established during play activities. In terms of socio-material characteristics, robots can vary widely, from more mechanical robots to more anthropomorphic ones. Research has shown that the degree of anthropomorphization of…

Can at-scale, government-implemented parent training programs improve parenting practices and child development outcomes? This article presents evidence on the effects of a low-cost, group-based early childhood education program that provided parent training and direct child stimulation in rural communities, evaluated in six Mexican states.…

Toddlerhood is a period of intensive and rapid socio-emotional development. The effects of different types of childcare settings on child development have been widely studied, but the results have often been contradictory. The aim of this study was to compare social competence and socio-emotional problems in two-year-old children (n = 1104; girls…

Maternal substance use and unpredictable maternal sensory signals may affect child development, but no studies have examined them together. We explored the unpredictability, frequency and duration of maternal sensory signals in 52 Caucasian mother-child dyads, 27 with and 25 without maternal substance use. We also examined the association between…

Research Findings: This study investigated the sequential mediating effects of parental material investment (MI) and time investment (TI) upon the correlation between family socioeconomic status (SES) and toddlers' development (TD). Data derived from a 2016 data set, including a sample of 1,316 toddlers based in 117 villages across 22 counties…

Children comprehend iconic gestures relatively later than deictic gestures. Previous research with English-learning children indicated that they could comprehend iconic gestures at 26 months, a pattern whose extension to other languages is not yet known. The present study examined Turkish-learning children's iconic gesture comprehension and its…

Longitudinal research on language abilities and social functioning in young children suggests that gains in one domain affect gains in the other. However, few studies have examined inter-relations of language and social functioning jointly among young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Pre-verbal toddlers with ASD are a group…

The objective of this study was to evaluate the motor, cognitive and language development of babies living in two institutional contexts. Seventy babies participated in the study: 35 from prisons and 35 from shelters. Thirty-five mothers of hospitalized babies and 10 caregivers of hospitalized babies also participated in this study. The…

This paper follows an earlier report of young children's object play activities investigated in a cross-sectional sample of 289 typically developing children. Thirty-minute videotaped observations were taken of children at 8, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, and 60 months of age in their homes. Forty-nine percent were boys. Children were identified…

Research has shown the importance of responsive caregiving for fostering positive development early in life; however, tools measuring these interactions are often impractical for larger scale intervention trials and in settings with resource constraints. The present study provides reliability and validity evidence from Sindh, Pakistan for a tool…

Research suggests that elements of the family environment may have significant associations with cognitive and language development outcomes. Less is known, however, about the family environment in peri-urban China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0-3 years are as high as 51% and 54%, respectively. Using data collected…

Purpose: This mixed-methods study examined how differences in parental time, knowledge, and economic constraints, as well as community socioeconomic contexts, may contribute to differences in home language environment and child language ability outcomes between peri-urban and rural households in China. Method: We conducted an explanatory…

Memory decision-making in 26- to 32-month-olds was investigated using visual-paired comparison paradigms, requiring toddlers to select familiar stimuli (Active condition) or view familiar and novel stimuli (Passive condition). In Experiment 1 (N = 108, 54.6% female, 62% White; replication N = 98), toddlers with higher accuracy in the Active…

Recently, several studies have suggested that metacognition emerges early in infancy and toddlerhood. However, to date, the developmental trajectory of these early metacognitive monitoring and control processes and their influence on children's later memory functioning remains poorly understood. The aim of this study was to longitudinally document…