The aim of this study was to determine the effect of sleep quality of postpartum women on perception of insufficient milk and attitude to breastfeeding. The research was designed as a cross-sectional study. It was carried out with 347 mothers in a university hospital between December 2021 and July 2022. Data was collected via a personal…

Being looked at is an important communicative signal, and attenuated responses to such direct gaze have been suggested as an early sign of autism. Using live eye tracking, we examined whether direct gaze elicits different gaze responses in infants at ages 10, 14 and 18 months with and without later autism in real-life interaction. The sample…

The development of skills related to executive function (EF) in infancy, including their emergence, underlying neural mechanisms, and interconnections to other cognitive skills, is an area of increasing research interest. Here, we report on findings from a multidimensional dataset demonstrating that infants' behavioral performance on a flexible…

Multiple domains develop simultaneously and interact throughout infancy and early childhood. Although relationships between motor and language skills have been examined cross-sectionally during the first three years of life, little is known regarding the individual factors that influence the development of these domains as well as the relationship…

Objective: The tendency to vocalize toward objects is ubiquitous among young infants. However, little is known about the range of this tendency and its contribution to language development. Therefore, this longitudinal study objective was to explore the role of three forms of vocal behavior (vocalization, babbling, and speech) directed toward…

Research in developed countries has found that paternal involvement has positive and significant effects on early childhood development (ECD). Less is known, however, about the state of paternal involvement and its influence on ECD in rural China. Using data collected in Southern China that included 1,460 children aged 6-42 months and their…

We examined the relation between maternal responsiveness and children's acquisition of mental and non-mental state vocabulary in 59 pairs of mothers and children aged 10 to 26 months as they engaged in a free-play episode. Children wore a head camera and responsiveness was defined as maternal talk that commented on the child's actions (e.g., when…

Spatial play in early childhood is associated with a variety of spatial and cognitive skills. However, these associations are often derived from studies in which different tasks are used across different age ranges, leaving open the question of how children's natural behaviors during spatial play develop from infancy into the early preschool…

This study used an ethological approach to explore the baby-caregiver dyadic exchanges (Attempted interactions, Triggers, Interactions) of nineteen infants during their first weeks in Residential Care (RC), or a Foster Family (FF) or an Infant-Mother Centre (IMC). Direct observations were conducted at feeding time. Observed behaviours were: baby…

The present study investigates the relation between language environment and language delay in 63 British-English speaking children (19 typical talkers (TT), 22 late talkers (LT), and 22 late bloomers (LB) aged 13 to 18 months. Families audio recorded daily routines and marked the new words their child produced over a period of 6 months. To…

The validity of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) System was evaluated for Dutch. 216 5-min samples (six samples per age per child) were selected from daylong recordings at 5, 10 and 14 months of age of native Dutch-speaking younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (N=6) and of typically developing children (N=6). Two…

Purpose: Differences in communication development impact long-term outcomes of children with autism. Previous research has identified factors associated with communication in children with autism, but much of the variance in communication skill remains unexplained. It has been proposed that early differences in sensory responsiveness (i.e.,…

Individual variability in infant's language processing is partly explained by environmental factors, like the quantity of parental speech input, as well as by infant-specific factors, like speech production. Here, we explore how these factors affect infant word segmentation. We used an artificial language to ensure that only statistical…

Infant and young child feeding (IYCF) is crucial for the growth, development, and survival of a child. This study aims to examine the factors associated with IYCF practices among the under-2 aged children in Bangladesh and spatial variability. A total of 2336 children aged 6-23 months were selected from the 2014 Bangladesh Demographic and Health…

Some cognitive abilities exhibit reliable gender differences, with females outperforming males in specific aspects of verbal ability, and males showing an advantage on certain spatial tasks. Among these cognitive gender differences, differences in mental rotation are the most robust, and appear to be present even in infants. A large body of animal…