Toddlers' sleep difficulties have mainly been investigated from the mother's point of view, despite the fact that paternal implication seems to influence young children's sleep quality. This qualitative study aims to better understand how fathers experience toddlers' sleep difficulties by examining their sleep-related cognitions and strategies…

Pretend play is important for children's development. However, recent research indicates that, as preschool children age and get more proficient at pretend play, they prefer real objects. We examined whether toddlers prefer real objects when they are younger as well as when they are older and more proficient in pretend play situations. Forty-three…

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder which is represented by a variety of deficits in all linguistic domains including phonology. Previous research, mainly conducted in the English language, has documented phonological deficits in early childhood in Down syndrome. Given the paucity of research in the area of phonology in the Greek language, the aim…

To efficiently learn new words, children use constraints such as mutual exclusivity (ME) to narrow the search for potential referents. The current study investigated the use of ME in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) peers matched on nonverbal cognition. Thirty-two toddlers with ASD and 26 NT toddlers participated…

Research shows that high quality programs can support positive outcomes for all children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Little research has examined the perspectives of directors working with infants and toddlers in families who are experiencing low socio-economic status (SES) in early childhood settings. This qualitative…

The present study observed 86 three-year-old children (M = 43.7, SD = 6.4) from 15 Swiss childcare groups, to investigate multiple individual and contextual contributions to toddlers' positive engagement with peers. The children's individual characteristics (age, sex and social skills) and childcare-related predictors (emotional and behavioural…

Outdoor play is a crucial in supporting child development, resiliency, social skills, creative thinking, adaptability, family growth, and family engagement. Unfortunately, children are spending less time outside because of technology, parent fears, and other factors. Parents who have a child with a disability have even more challenges when it…

There is a well-documented link between bilingual language development and the relative amounts of exposure to each language. Less is known about the role of quality indicators of caregiver-child interactions in bilingual homes, including caregiver input diversity, warmth and sensitivity. This longitudinal study examines the relation between…

The development of children's future-oriented cognition has become a popular research topic in the past two decades. Much of this research focuses on the preschool and middle childhood years, but very little is known about the future-oriented cognitive abilities of toddlers and young preschoolers. The present study investigated the emergence of…

Males are more likely to be diagnosed with autism than females, and at earlier ages, yet few studies examine sex differences in screening. This study explored sex differences in psychometric properties, recommended cutoff scores, and overall scores of the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised, with Follow-Up. Participants were 28,088…

Young children from a very early age not only prefer those who help others but also those who engage in altruistic helping. This study aims to test how children assess helping when the goal of the helping behavior is immoral. We argue that younger children consider only the helping versus hindering behavior, but older children distinguish their…

Purpose: Late talkers (LTs) are a group of children who exhibit delays in language development without a known cause. Although a hallmark of LTs is a reduced expressive vocabulary, little is known about LTs' processing of semantic relations among words in their emerging vocabularies. This study uses an eye-tracking task to compare 2-year-old LTs'…

Sensory over-responsivity in the vestibular domain (aka gravitational insecurity) has been frequently identified in the literature. However, little has been written about the effectiveness of interventions, especially in toddlers with these idiopathic challenges (e.g. without a diagnosis of autism). The objective of this pilot study was to test…

The Japanese pedagogical strategy of mimamoru (watch and protect) has been identified by cross-culture researchers as an implicit component of early childhood education in Japan. However, little is known about the types of advice given by experts to parents regarding mimamoru. Accordingly, this study examined expert advice related to the mimamoru…

Addressing factors that make it more likely for families to attrite from early intervention trials will allow researchers to ensure that families reap the full benefits of participation. This study was an analysis of 78 children (Mage = 18.38 months, SD = 5.78) at risk for autism participating in a university-based randomized controlled trial of…