A substantial number of empirical studies in the field of Early Childhood Science Education have explored science concept formation in early childhood educational settings. Most of these studies focus on the process of science concept formation during a teaching intervention or a school year period. However, less is known about how children form…

Social-emotional competence is important for children's lifelong positive developmental outcomes. The dimensionality and psychometric properties of a widely used social-emotional assessment, the Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional Second Edition (ASQ:SE-2), were investigated in this study using item response theory models. A…

This study investigates the influence of semantic maturation on early lexical development by examining the impact of contextual diversity--known to influence semantic development--on word promotion from receptive to productive vocabularies (i.e., comprehension-expression gap). Study 1 compares the vocabularies of 3685 American-English-speaking…

Caregiver-implemented intervention, commonly facilitated via coaching, is an increasingly common approach to early intervention for infants and toddlers with or at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present systematic review examines four coaching components across the literature on caregiver-implemented intervention models for children…

In order for children to understand and reason about the world in an adult-like fashion, they need to learn that conceptual categories are organized in a hierarchical fashion (e.g., a dog is also an animal). While children learn from their first-hand observation of the world, social knowledge transmission via language can also play an important…

Infants and toddlers with hearing loss (HL) are at risk for developing communicative delays that can have a substantial lasting effect. Understanding child characteristics that may be targeted in early intervention is essential to maximizing communicative outcomes in children with HL. Among the most malleable predictors of communication skills…

Valid indigenous language assessments are needed to further our understanding of how children learn language around the world. We assessed the psychometric properties and performance of two caregiver-report measures of Wolof language skill (language milestones achieved and vocabulary knowledge) for 500 children (ages 0;4 to 2;6) living in rural…

This article examines the outcomes of implementing a trauma-informed home visiting program in a refugee/immigrant-serving mental health program in Chicago, Illinois. The mental health program used the Baby TALK home visiting program model, an evidence-based relational approach to supporting pregnant mothers and families with children less than 3…

Cumulative vocabulary models for infants and toddlers were developed from models of learning that predict trajectories associated with low, average, and high vocabulary growth rates (14 to 46 months). It was hypothesized that models derived from rates of learning mirror the type of exchanges provided to infants and toddlers by parents and…

The first months after becoming a new parent are a unique and important period in human development. Despite substantial research on the many social and biological changes that occur during the first months of parenthood, little is known about changes in mothers' attachment. The present study examines developmental stability and change in…

The standard model of the role of early experience in human development assumes that children's environments in their first years of life are dominant influences on who they become as adults. The standard model favors interventions to improve children's long-term outcomes that start early in life and are intensive in time and attention from…

Educators interact with more than 4 million infants and toddlers each week in the United States and can provide positive, nurturing experiences that enhance development. Tragically, the infant-toddler workforce in the United States often lacks the support and resources necessary to support their work. These urgent needs require comprehensive…

Background: Identifying risk and protective factors for language development informs interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Maternal responsive and intrusive communicative behaviours are associated with language development. Mother-child interaction quality may influence how children use these behaviours in language…

Symbolic play is a powerful vehicle for supporting emotional development and communication. It embraces all developmental capacities. This article describes how symbols are formed and how emotional themes are symbolized whereby children reveal their understanding of the world, their feelings and relationships, and how they see themselves in the…

This resource was prepared in response to a request for information from a Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) State about which RTT-ELC States are using the Pyramid Model for Supporting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children. The State also requested information about other projects States have designed to…