During word learning moments, toddlers experience labels and objects in particular environments. Do toddlers learn words better when the physical environment creates contrasts between objects with different labels? Thirty-six 21- to 24-month-olds (92% White, 22 female, data collected 8/21-4/22) learned novel words for novel objects presented using…

Science concept formation has a long history in early childhood educational research. Most of the studies in the field focus on the way children form science concepts as preschoolers. However, less is known about the nature of science concept formation for children under 3 years of age. This study explores how early childhood teachers create the…

Infants experience language in rich multisensory environments. For example, they may first be exposed to the word applesauce while touching, tasting, smelling, and seeing applesauce. In three experiments using different methods we asked whether the number of distinct senses linked with the semantic features of objects would impact word recognition…

Aim: This systematic review aims to summarize evidence on correlates of fundamental motor skills in typically developing children aged 0-4 years. Methods: A literature search (PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, and SPORTDiscus) was performed from 2000 till 23 May 2022. Inclusion criteria was cross-sectional and prospective studies examining associations…

Little is known about language development after late-to-moderate premature birth, the most significant part of prematurity worldwide. We examined minimal-pair word-learning skills in 18 eighteen-month-old healthy full-term (mean gestational age [GA] at birth = 39.6 weeks; 7 males; 100% Caucasian) and 18 healthy late-to-moderate preterm infants…

This paper reports on a combined research-development project conducted in collaboration between researchers and preschool teachers in three Swedish preschools. The aim is to investigate how ongoing preschool activities may become the starting point for mathematics teaching in which toddlers are given the opportunity to distinguish necessary…

Knowing how children become oriented to imaginary play can help educators in centres better support development. But how this begins in the first years of life is not well understood. How toddlers transform through their imagination concrete objects (such as play accessories, figurines, and books) to become props in play (placeholders and pivots)…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine parent-reported ratings of temperament in toddlers with and without prelingual hearing loss. Method: The parent-completed Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ) was used to assess temperament in toddlers aged 18-36 months. Three dimensions of temperament were examined: surgency, negative…

Psycholinguistic research on children's early language environments has revealed many potential challenges for language acquisition. One is that in many cases, referents of linguistic expressions are hard to identify without prior knowledge of the language. Likewise, the speech signal itself varies substantially in clarity, with some productions…

Picturebooks can play an important function in the development of language by promoting language acquisition and enriching the overall language development of the child. Reading picturebooks to children builds a number of developmental domains and fosters significant learning outcomes for future achievements. In this study, children's ability to…

While gender differences in mathematical competencies favoring boys are well researched for school and late Kindergarten age, much less is known about their earlier development. Using data from the NEPS Newborn Cohort study, this paper focuses on 4 year-old children and the effects of the numerical and literacy stimulation during mother-child…

Mature social evaluations privilege agents' intentions over the outcomes of their actions, but young children often privilege outcomes over intentions in verbal tasks probing their social evaluations. In three experiments (N = 118), we probed the development of intention-based social evaluation and mental state reasoning using nonverbal methods…

Parents play an important role in socializing children's emotion understanding. Previous research shows that parents emphasize different aspects of emotion contexts depending on the discrete emotion. However, there is limited research on how parents and children discuss self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment, guilt, and shame, and what…

Discovering the meaning of novel communicative cues is challenging and amounts to navigating an unbounded hypothesis space. Several theories posit that this problem can be simplified by relying on positive expectations about the cognitive utility of communicated information. These theories imply that learners should assume that novel communicative…

STEM is not just about learning four discrete subject-specific content areas (McClure et al., 2017), but also an approach of higher order thinking (i.e., the ability to think critically, logically, and creatively, and solve problems; Baharin et al., 2018). In this article, the authors use STEM learning to describe children's learning about STEM,…