Maternal immune activity has been linked to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We examined maternal occupational exposure to asthma-causing agents during pregnancy in relation to ASD risk. Our sample included 463 ASD cases and 710 general population controls from the Study to Explore Early Development whose mothers reported at least one…

Children from low-income families are more likely than those from higher income families to have poor social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes. One approach that has helped parents and their young children is home visiting, which provides information, resources, and support to expectant parents and families with young…

Prosody plays a variety of roles in infants' communicative development, aiding in attention modulation, speech segmentation, and syntax acquisition. This study investigates the extent to which parents also spontaneously modulate prosodic aspects of infant directed speech in ways that distinguish semantic aspects of language. Fourteen mothers of…

Does an increase in a welfare mother's education improve her young child's academic performance or behavior? Positive correlations between mothers' educational attainment and children's well being, particularly children's cognitive development and academic outcomes, are among the most replicated results from developmental studies. Yet,…