Learning to descend stairs requires motor and cognitive capacities on the part of infants and opportunities for practice and assurance of safety offered by caregivers. The American Academy of Pediatrics prescribes the age strategy to teach toddlers to safely descend stairs but without much consideration for individual differences in infants'…

This article is based on doctoral research which contributed to my understanding of early years professional development and learning grounded in Froebelian principles. Through two freestanding but related case studies in London and San Miniato, the article explores the current professional learning and development for educators working with…

Interoception refers to the processing of internal bodily states and plays a critical role in motivational processes and behaviours. Instruments for assessing its subjective components (i.e., interoceptive sensibility) during childhood are crucially needed. Thus, in this study, we adapted and evaluated the psychometric properties of the…

This study aimed to investigate the influence of Outdoor Education (OE) on different areas of development in 1-3-year-old children attending Italian nursery schools. The sample was composed of 160 children (1-3-year-old) divided into a first group (Traditional), with 76 children attending nursery schools with traditional educational activities;…

Playing is essential for the development of higher psychological functions. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that playing constitutes an essential step in children's socio-cognitive development by describing playtime as the indicator of the gradual overcoming of self-centred thinking, with a view to acquiring new social adjustment…

Purpose: Oncological diseases, especially if experienced in the first 3 years of life, expose young children to conditions of serious physical and emotional stress causing delays in their physical development, cognitive acquisitioning and issues related to their emotional and social functioning. This study examines the effects of the participation…

We studied the development of narrative ability yearly in a cross-sectional design from 4 to 10 years. All children were given the same props and underwent the same procedures. Children's narratives were transcribed verbatim, and then coded for number of words, propositions, episodes and indexes of narrative cohesion and structure. Verbal IQ was…

Individuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs) have an increased risk of language delays and impairments. However, there are only a few data relative to their language development in early childhood. The present study aimed to investigate the preverbal skills shown by a group of 8-month-old children with SCTs to assess the presence of a possible…

The goal of this intensive longitudinal study was to trace the developmental trajectories of infant pointing production, through consideration of the modality (i.e. pointing alone vs pointing-vocal coupling) and the communicative intention (i.e. imperative vs declarative). Multilevel analysis was used to model the normative trend and the…

Narratives have been extensively studied in recent decades, but studies investigating differences and similarities in the narrative features from a cross-cultural or cross-linguistic point of view are limited. This study investigated the narrative language of typically developing monolingual four- and eight-year-old Finnish, Italian and Canadian…

Recent years have witnessed increasing attention to early childhood education and care as a foundation for children's successful development in school and beyond. The great majority of children in postindustrial societies now attend preschools or daycare, making this setting a major part of their culturally constructed developmental niches.…

The first years of life lay the foundations for a child's future development and learning. Many countries have increased their financial support for provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) over the past years. More recently, the focus of debate has been shifting from expanding access to affordable ECEC to enhancing its quality. A…

Effective communication is a fundamental aspect of children's daily living, enabling interaction with adults and peers. A rich literature suggests that communicative abilities develop with age, while little is known about cross-cultural differences and similarities. This study presents a comparison of the communicative performance of Finnish (n =…

The construction of self, a fundamental process for development. Twins, as they grow together, may encounter greater difficulties in individuation process. The present study aims to investigate the construction of the image of the self and of the self with its own twin/sibling through the drawing of the human figure and to highlight any…

In a cross-society comparison, we assessed the state of mothers' knowledge of child-rearing and child development. The study included 1,077 mothers from five countries on four continents: Argentina, Belgium, Italy, South Korea, and the United States (U.S.) A criteria-referenced instrument, the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory, was used to…