This paper reports the findings of in-depth qualitative research to investigate two-year-old and three-year-old children's writing. It focuses on nine families whose children attended the same early years pre-school setting. The research developed a clear understanding of what children of this age understand about the functions and purpose of…

Great efforts focus on early detection of autism spectrum disorder, although some scientists and policy-makers have questioned early universal screening. The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the different screening tools. Several electronic databases were used to identify published studies. A Bayesian model was…

Supportive early relationships are critical to young children's development. Previous research has focused primarily on aspects of specific parenting practices that impact infants' and toddlers' development. However, additional research is needed for a more nuanced understanding of the relationships among family experiences, parenting behaviors,…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations among children's symbolic functioning at 15 months, joint attention at 24 months, expressive communication at 24 and 36 months, and executive functioning at 36 months. With the sample from rural areas in the United States collected by the Family Life Project (N = 1,008), a longitudinal data…

This project explores how children disambiguate and retain novel object-label mappings in the face of semantic similarity. Burgeoning evidence suggests that semantic structure in the developing lexicon promotes word learning in ostensive contexts, whereas other findings indicate that semantic similarity interferes with and temporarily slows…

Questions about communication mode (a.k.a. "communication options" or "communication opportunities") remain among the most controversial issues in the many fields that are concerned with the development and well-being of children (and adults) who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. In this manuscript, we argue that a large part of…

Aims: Although IDS is typically described as slower than adult-directed speech (ADS), potential impacts of slower speech on language development have not been examined. We explored whether IDS speech rates in 42 mother-infant dyads at four time periods predicted children's language outcomes at two years. Method: We correlated IDS speech rate with…

The relationship between turn taking (i.e., back-and-forth preverbal communicative exchanges) and joint attention has not been studied in interactions between children with autism and caregivers. In joint attention, a form of preverbal social communication, young children socially share attention with a partner about objects, a competency that is…

With the publication of DSM-5, many changes were introduced regarding how Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) would be diagnosed. Changes from DSM-IV-TR were controversial, with many arguing that individuals would lose their diagnosis with the new criteria. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the application of diagnostic criteria…

We examined the size, content, and use of evaluative lexis by 26 English monolingual and 20 Spanish-English bilingual 30-month-old children in interaction with their mothers. We extracted the evaluative words, defined as words referring to cognition, volition, or emotion. Controlling for overall vocabulary skills as measured by the MacArthur-Bates…

Developmental delays (DD) are missed early childhood developmental milestones in cognitive, motoric or linguistic domains. DD associated with behaviour problems may compound to impact parenting. This study investigated whether DD would moderate the relation between behaviour problems and parenting in families of toddlers. Data were drawn from an…

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…

Coordinated attention between children and their parents plays an important role in their social, language, and cognitive development. The current study used head-mounted eye-trackers to investigate the effects of children's prelingual hearing loss on how they achieve coordinated attention with their hearing parents during free-flowing object…

Research suggests peer imitation can be taught using systematic procedures and can be embedded into ongoing play contexts with preschool-age children. However, additional research is needed to test procedures that may increase levels of peer imitation with toddlers with disabilities and in generalized contexts. We used a multiple probe across…

This study tested the effectiveness of Promoting First Relationships® (PFR), a preventive intervention program aimed at fostering positive caregiver-child relationships in Native families living on a rural reservation. Participants were 162 primary caregivers (96% Native; 93% female) and their Native toddlers (10-31 months old; 50% female).…