A randomized controlled trial was conducted to evaluate effects of the Joint Attention Mediated Learning (JAML) intervention. Toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) aged 16-30 months (n = 144) were randomized to intervention and community control conditions. Parents, who participated in 32 weekly home-based sessions, followed a mediated…

Naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions include an explicit focus on coaching parents to use therapy techniques in daily routines and are considered best practice for young children with autism. Unfortunately, these approaches are not widely used in community settings, possibly due to the clinical expertise and training required. This…

Both early childhood maternal language input and the quality of classroom instruction in elementary school have been shown to be important environmental supports in predicting children's literacy skill development. However, no studies have simultaneously examined these two environmental supports in relation to children's early language skills and…

A pioneer in the infant/family field in the United States, Magda Gerber was the founding director of Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), known for its unique two-generation approach to the care and education of young children. This paper offers a summary of Gerber's teachings from the late twentieth century with citations pointing to their…

Ethnographic methods are used to investigate infant--toddlers relationships in an early childhood setting. The metaphorical and emotionally based concepts of holding [Winnicott, D. W. (1960). "The theory of the parent-infant relationship." "International Journal of Psychoanalysis," 41, 585-595.] and container: contained [Bion,…

Many children, especially those from lower-income families, face considerable instability early in their lives. This may include changes in family structure, irregular family routines, frequent moves, fluctuating daycare arrangements, and noisy, crowded, or generally chaotic environments. Moreover, instability and chaos affect young children's…

Based on a cultural-historical perspective, where play is conceptualized as the creation of an imaginary situation, the study reported in this paper examines how parent-child playful interactions create shared imaginary situations for mediating scientific learning. The main focus of this paper is to reveal sign-mediated learning process through…

Toddlers with an older sibling with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and low risk (LR) toddlers with typically-developing older siblings were observed during free play with a parent and elicited pretend with an examiner at 22-months. Functional and pretend play, children's social engagement, and parent sensitivity were assessed during free play.…

One important socio-cultural medium through which young children's moral understanding is cultivated is parent/child discourse. Of particular interest to us was young children's use of basic ("thin") evaluative concepts ("good," "bad," "right" and "wrong"), which are ubiquitous in everyday…

This introduction presents a general overview of the regulations, policies, programmes and actions which currently exist in Spain within the field of positive parenting. The articles featured in this special issue showcase initiatives aimed at fostering child development through the promotion of parenting competences and family support. They are…

Infants, toddlers, and young children have unique needs when separated from their primary caregivers because of child abuse and neglect. Parents of these children often have their own histories of abuse and neglect and can benefit from assessments and interventions that bear in mind the effect caregiving histories have on present parenting. This…

Typically developing (TD) children refer to objects uniquely in gesture (e.g., point at a cat) before they produce verbal labels for these objects ("cat"). The onset of such gestures predicts the onset of similar spoken words, showing a strong positive relation between early gestures and early words. We asked whether gesture plays the…

This study aimed to test a 5-wave sequential mediation model linking maternal mind-mindedness during infancy to children's school readiness in kindergarten through a serial mediation involving child language and effortful control in toddlerhood and the preschool years. Among a sample of 204 mother-child dyads, we assessed maternal mind-mindedness…

Transactional models of analysis can examine both moment-to-moment interactions within a dyad and dyadic patterns of influence across time. This study used data from a prospective adoption study to test a transactional model of parental depressive symptoms and mutual negativity between mother and child over time, utilizing contingency analysis of…

Infants from low-socioeconomic status (SES) households hear a projected 30 million fewer words than their higher-SES peers. In a recent study, Hirsh-Pasek et al. (Psychological Science, 2015; 26: 1071) found that in a low-income sample, fluency and connectedness in exchanges between caregivers and toddlers predicted child language a year later…