Little is known about language development after late-to-moderate premature birth, the most significant part of prematurity worldwide. We examined minimal-pair word-learning skills in 18 eighteen-month-old healthy full-term (mean gestational age [GA] at birth = 39.6 weeks; 7 males; 100% Caucasian) and 18 healthy late-to-moderate preterm infants…

This paper reports on a combined research-development project conducted in collaboration between researchers and preschool teachers in three Swedish preschools. The aim is to investigate how ongoing preschool activities may become the starting point for mathematics teaching in which toddlers are given the opportunity to distinguish necessary…

Knowing how children become oriented to imaginary play can help educators in centres better support development. But how this begins in the first years of life is not well understood. How toddlers transform through their imagination concrete objects (such as play accessories, figurines, and books) to become props in play (placeholders and pivots)…

This study presents data on the effectiveness of participatory training, called 'Improvement Groups', voluntarily adopted in four nurseries in Northern Italy to prevent episodes of violence by staff toward children. The interventions provided for the representation of problematic cases, experienced by participants, relating to factors of work…

The home environment is a significant factor that greatly influences the motor development of children. This study aims to examine the cultural adaptation validity and reliability of the Affordances in the Home Environment for Motor Development (AHEMD-SR) for Turkish children aged 18--42 months. The study included 103 Turkish children (mean age =…

Children actively and selectively transmit information to others based on the type of information and the context during learning. Four- to 7-year-old children preferentially transmit generalizable information in teaching-like contexts. Although 2-year-old children are able to distinguish between generalizable and non-generalizable information, it…

Purpose: The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) technology uses automated speech processing (ASP) algorithms to estimate counts such as total adult words and child vocalizations, which helps understand children's early language environment. This ASP has been validated in North American English and other languages in predominantly monolingual…

There has been a major international focus on the education and care of toddlers. To date, empirical studies on adults' interactions in play with toddlers have focussed on the proximity of teachers, teachers' affective responses, and joint attention between adults and children in play. However, less attention has been given to the role of two…

Screening for autism in childhood has been advocated as a part of standard care. Challenges exist with screening implementation and performance of screening tools in clinical practice. This study aimed to examine the validity and feasibility of using the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised with Follow-Up (M-CHAT-R/F) for screening…

Musical communication between adults and children is a widely studied phenomenon in the field of music education and psychology. In the research carried out to date, a variety of methodological designs have been used, based mainly on the perceptions of adults, to investigate the different aspects of these musical interactions. Thus, there is…

Autistic people are often portrayed as lacking empathy. Yet they are not indifferent to others' feelings. To advance our understanding of the early development of empathy in autistic children, this longitudinal study followed the development of four empathy abilities: emotion contagion, attention to others, emotion acknowledgment, and prosocial…

During infancy and toddlerhood, parents show large individual differences in the extent to which they are able to tailor their parenting behaviors to their children's swiftly changing developmental needs. The first aim of our study was, therefore, to distinguish parenting profiles at three time points during infancy and toddlerhood (i.e., 5, 10,…

Multi-accent environments offer rich but inconsistent language input, as words are produced differently across accents. The current study examined, in two experiments, whether multi-accent variability affects infants' ability to LEARN WORDS and whether toddlers' prior experience with accents modulates learning. In Experiment 1,…

Research Findings: Social constructivist theories have proposed that caregivers' perceptions of children as morally responsible agents are an important factor in children's moral development. However, there is substantial variance in caregivers' ascriptions of moral agency to young children. The present study examined caregiver social conformity…

This article focuses on child participation in early childhood education (ECE). The theoretical basis for this study is a relational approach that highlights the significance of spatiality and materiality. Drawing from these theoretical perspectives, child participation is understood as a space that children actively do in various combinations of…