Joint attention is an important developmental skill. This series of studies investigated the teaching of component joint attention skills to 10 children with autism ranging in age from three to five years. The goal was to teach gaze shifting within a joint attention interaction. An additional goal was to expand some participants' community of…

Introduction: There is a substantial discrepancy between international and local prevalence rates for speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) amongst children in New Zealand. Reports of communication impairment are likely to be underestimates. Prevalence data can describe population characteristics and inform the scope and nature of…

Previous research has indicated that the backgrounds in picture books have a higher impact on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than on children with typical development (TD). Based on prior research, this study investigates the effect of picture book presentation order on the fixation outcomes of ASD. The experiment included 59…

What drives children to explore and learn when external rewards are uncertain or absent? Across three studies, we tested whether information gain itself acts as an internal reward and suffices to motivate children's actions. We measured 24-56-month-olds' persistence in a game where they had to search for an object (animal or toy), which they never…

Though there has been a marked increase in research driven by posthumanist theory and inspired by the common worlds research approach, practical approaches to conducting this type of research have not been well documented and shared within the literature. This article explores the process of navigating the planning and conducting of research that…

Managing disruptive or challenging behavior has been cited as one of the top concerns of early care and education providers. Equipping staff with feasible behavior management strategies is paramount in reducing the occurrence of challenging behaviors in the classroom and negating the need for more intrusive interventions. This article discusses…

While research consistently demonstrates that young children learn best through play and social interactions, this developmental insight is not often reflected in current classroom curricula. Through action research, I examined how a play-based kindergarten environment could impact student writing and writing engagement. This article specifically…

We explored associations among the core behavioural features and developmental/cognitive abilities of 155 autistic children, assessed between ages 13-67 months and again around 1-year later to understand predictive directionality. Bidirectional, cross-domain association was apparent, albeit with stronger direction of effect from earlier cognition…

This study examined parental romantic attachment security as a mediator of prospective associations between hostile interparental conflict and parental discipline (i.e., power-assertive, permissive, and inductive discipline) for mothers and fathers of young children. Furthermore, this study utilized a novel, automatic assessment of romantic…

Naturalistic, Developmental, and Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) are an empirically supported intervention approach for young autistic children and their families. Spanish-speaking (SS) Latinx families have been underrepresented in autism intervention research, limiting our understanding of whether NDBIs are aligned with Latinx family values and…

The preschool period is recognized as a crucial phase for fostering the social development of children. Self-regulation during the developmental period contributes to management skills in social contexts and thus helps establish positive standards of behavior for peer relationships. Effective interventions can improve self-regulation skills. The…

Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Reactivity (RSA-R) correlates both positively and negatively with externalizing behaviour in autistic individuals. These inconsistencies may result from task-based differences. This pilot study measured RSA-R in 4-to 6-year-olds, across two timepoints, using four validated tasks with matched baseline and challenge…

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations of outdoor playtime, screen time, and sleep duration with ball bouncing skills in a sample of 3- to 5-year-old children. Participants were young children (N = 11,121; 48.8% female) whose parent/guardian completed the 2022 National Survey of Children's Health. The dependent variable was one…

This study investigated the impact of language sample length on mean length of utterance (MLU) and aimed to determine the minimum number of utterances required for a reliable MLU. Conversations were collected from Mandarin-speaking, hard-of-hearing and typical-hearing children aged 16-81 months. The MLUs were calculated using sample sizes ranging…

Successful reference relies on being appropriately informative for listeners. What factors influence informativeness? For example, what factors influence the decision to refer to a ball with the less informative phrase "it," as opposed to the more informative phrase "the red ball"? The present dissertation proposes and…