Creating an environment suitable for language acquisition through shared reading significantly contributes to improving a child's language development and parent-child relationship. Reading in an interactive way, such as dialogic reading, is favorable. Nevertheless, dialogic reading is designed for children above the age of two and shared reading…

Mind-mindedness (MM), the parent's propensity to treat their young child as an individual with a mind of their own, has repeatedly been found to be positively associated with subsequent child development outcomes. In the current Swedish study, the first aim was to investigate the main features of MM in this cultural context and the second aim was…

Emotion regulation (ER) is a source of risk and resilience for psychological development and everyday functioning. Despite extensive research on various early contextual predictors of child ER capacity, few studies have integrated them into the same study. Therefore, our longitudinal study investigated the joint and independent contributions of…

Being connected to other people at the level of inner and unobservable mental states is one of the most essential aspects of a meaningful life, including psychological well-being and successful cooperation. The foundation for this kind of connectedness is our theory of mind (ToM), that is the ability to understand our own and others' inner…

Very early precursors of disrupted social behaviours are significant to understanding the possibility of mitigating or changing behaviours through interventions. Spontaneous play situations between infant and parent in two groups of infants aged 8.5-9 months were observed. First, a large number of videos were analysed to develop an observational…

We discuss oral history interviews with academics who laid the foundation of research and pedagogies in daycare for under three-year-olds in Europe and North and South America since the 1970s. Their work is clearly embedded in the social-political context of their country: the left-wing programmes for disadvantaged families in the U.S.A.;…

Studies focusing on mothers' own reports of their experience with intervention programmes are rare, so very little has been known about their evaluations of the programmes and what they have learned. The aim of the present study was to use interviews to evaluate these aspects of an intervention programme. The interviews were designed to capture…

Reports a study of interactions of middle-class parents from 27 Swedish families, designated as shared child care or traditional families, with their first-born infants, aged 8 to 12 months. Suggests that differential involvement in child care has significant effects on fathers' behavior. (DR)

A total of 38 first-born kibbutz-reared infants and their parents were observed at infants' eighth and sixteenth months. Mothers were found more likely to vocalize, laugh, display affection, hold, and engage in caretaking than fathers were. Infants displayed no preference for either parent, and daughters approached parents more often than did…

Analyses of the interaction of 45 Swedish infants with their mothers and fathers revealed that degree of paternal involvement had no effect on preferences displayed on measures of attachment and affiliative behaviors. At both eight and 16 months, infants showed clear preferences for their mothers over their fathers. (Author/RH)

Two studies, labeled A and B, were conducted (1) to investigate relationships between early infant and mother behaviors over situations and over time, (2) to explore relationships between maternal experiences and behavior, (3) to compare infant-mother pairs with and without interaction problems, and (4) to compare infant-mother pairs in which…

Compares the behavior of mothers to their own infants at three- to four- and nine- to 10-months of age in five of the societies described in previous chapters: Gusii of Kenya, Yucatec Mayan of Mexico, Italian, Swedish, and suburban Bostonian. Reveals differences between agrarian and urban-industrial societies, as well as culture-specific patterns…

Examined the feelings of mothers when temporarily leaving their infants--who were perceived to cry excessively--to other caretakers. Found through interviews that the mothers were anxious when separated from the infant, had an intensive perception of the infant's crying, and had difficulty sharing responsibility for the infant. (EV)

To further explore findings indicating that parental gender is a much more important predictor of caretaker behavior style than is involvement in parental role, 45 Swedish couples were observed at home interacting with their 16-month-old infants. Findings suggest that gender differences in parental behavior are much less amenable to social…

A cross-national comparison of infant behavior in the Strange Situation was designed to determine whether preseparation episodes made any difference in attachment classifications and whether infant behavior before separation from mother was the same in different countries. Infants in different countries made similar primary appraisals of the…