Learning in the earliest stage of life--the infancy, toddlerhood and preschool period--is relational and rapid. Child-initiated and adult-mediated conversations, playful interactions and learning through active involvement are integral to young children making sense of their environments and to their development over time. The child's experience…

The purpose of this manuscript was to describe a community-based program, Language and Play Everyday (LAPE), aimed at evaluating effective practices for enhancing parents' capacity to increase their toddlers' communication skills. LAPE was a parent education program focused on coaching parents to embed naturalistic language-enhancing…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine the concurrent validity and classification accuracy of 3 parent report measures of language development in Spanish-speaking toddlers. Method: Forty-five Spanish-speaking parents and their 2-year-old children participated. Twenty-three children had expressive language delays (ELDs) as…

Prospective questionnaire data from a longitudinal population sample on children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), developmental delay, specific language impairment, or typical development (TD), were collected at ages eight, 12 and 24 months, via the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scale Developmental Profile (CSBS)--Infant Toddler…

The present study investigated the associations of Korean mothers' attention regulation and referential speech during play with their toddlers' language and play development. The play interaction between mothers (n = 42) and their toddlers aged between 13 and 23 months was videotaped during home visits. Maternal behavior in regulating their…

In this article, the authors examined the genetic and environmental factors influencing expressive language development in a sample of 386 toddler twin pairs participating in the Wisconsin Twin Project. Expressive language was assessed using 2 measures from the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories-Short Form: Total Vocabulary and…

Background: Though the Down syndrome behavioural phenotype has been described as involving relative strengths in visuo-spatial processing and sociability, and relative weaknesses in verbal skills and motor planning, the early emergence of this phenotypic pattern of strengths and weaknesses has not yet been fully explored. Method: In this study, we…

This paper examined associations between mothers' work schedules and children's cognitive outcomes in the first 3 years of life for approximately 900 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care. Both the timing and duration of maternal nonstandard work schedules were examined. Although…

This study developed and evaluated a model of good practice linking diagnosis and intervention in young children with autism. Ten toddlers with autism underwent an intervention involving home visits, modeling, workshops and written information with parents as 'therapists' in naturally occurring situations. Within 18 months all children made…

Fifty-seven children, aged 23-28 months, were assessed using the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development, mean length of utterance, and Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI). The MCDI Expressive Language scale was found to be a valid predictor of expressive language. The MCDI Comprehension-Conceptual scale appeared to assess both…

Purpose: This qualitative study explored mothers' perceptions of their children's communication disabilities, emergent literacy development, and speech-language therapy programs. Method: Participants were 14 Mexican immigrant mothers and their children (age 17-47 months) who were receiving center-based services from an early childhood intervention…

The Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID-II) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) are frequently used across cultures in standard assessment batteries for learners between 6 and 17 years of age, respectively. Responses of American Indian students on the BSID-II and WISC-III were examined for patterns of…

An intensive early intervention program was evaluated by assessing gains made by 44 special needs children (age 2) in cognition, gross motor, fine motor, receptive language, and expressive language domains. Comparison of actual to predicted posttest scores did not reveal significant gains in any domains. In cognition, gross motor, and fine motor…