Purpose: To examine how interaction contributes to phonological acquisition in bilingual children in order to determine what constitutes typical development of bilingual speech sound inventories. Method: Twenty-four children, ages 3-4, were included: eight bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children, eight monolingual Spanish speakers, and eight…

Teaching sign language--to deaf or other children with special needs or to hearing children with hard-of-hearing family members--is not new. Teaching sign language to typically developing children has become increasingly popular since the publication of "Baby Signs"[R] (Goodwyn & Acredolo, 1996), now in its third edition. Attention to signing with…

Findings on the relation of maternal verbal teaching strategies to children's effortful control (EC; i.e., self-regulation) are limited in quantity and somewhat inconsistent. In this study, children's EC was assessed at 18, 30, and 42 months (ns = 255, 229, and 209, respectively) with adults' reports and a behavioral measure. Mothers' verbal…

This qualitative study builds on the previous body of emergent literacy research by investigating the use of storybook reading with parents during morning transition times through observation on fifteen toddlers (2- to 3-years old), their parents, and teachers in a university preschool classroom. The focus of this study is to investigate whether…

Aim: To investigate the relationship between motor ability and early social development in a cohort of preschool children with cerebral palsy (CP). Design: Population-based cohort study. Methods: Participants were 122 children with CP assessed at 18, 24 and 30 months, corrected age (ca). Motor ability was measured by the Gross Motor Function…

This paper reports the results of a longitudinal case study examining the acquisition of the English voice system by a three-year-old native speaker of Dutch. The study aims to examine whether the child develops two different phonetic systems or uses just one system for both languages, and compares the early L2 acquisition process with L1,…

Secure mother-child attachment has been found to be an important factor in the healthy emotional development of children and has been shown to have effects on child, adolescent, and adult behavior. Previous research has primarily focused on attachment in children who are typically developing. However, little research has been conducted in…

The study proposes an analysis of the processes through which the material and symbolic features of the setting and the activities of the educators interact to determine the children's experience in an early educational centre. This analysis is of particular interest with regard to both educational practice and understanding developmental…

This study examined the association between fathers' and mothers' risk factors and paternal engagement 1 and 3 years postbirth. Distinguishing between new and persistent risk factors, we tested whether cumulative risk has unique effects on couples where one or both parents are adolescents at birth. Results indicated that although fathers' and…

In previous studies of phonological sensitivity, toddlers have failed to differentiate mispronunciations of varying severity. We provide evidence of more sophisticated phonological knowledge. Nineteen-month-olds were presented with displays consisting of one familiar and one unfamiliar object. In Experiment 1, names of familiar objects were…

In their first few years, almost all children learn at least one language, though not equally well. Differences in the quantity, quality, sources, and variety of language inputs and conversation opportunities have a long-lasting effect. This article provides an overview of early language development and explains how talking with babies promotes…

A basic problem of daily life is determining who owns what. One way that people may solve this problem is by relying on a "first possession" heuristic, according to which the first person who possesses an object is its owner, even if others subsequently possess the object. We investigated preschoolers' use of this heuristic in five experiments. In…

Throughout 2009, ZERO TO THREE worked to keep individuals informed of important and innovative policy developments happening throughout the country. This past year included many historic ups and downs--new and energetic faces arrived in the White House, Congress, and state governments ready to move this nation forward, and this nation entered an…

Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) is the primary source of federal funding for child care subsidies for low-income working families and to improve child care quality. CCDBG provides child care assistance to children from birth to age 13. In fiscal year 2010, states received a total of $5 billion in federal CCDBG funds. States are…

The image of a carer "minding" babies and toddlers has been transformed with the professionalisation of care in early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This occurred with the introduction of the national early childhood curriculum, "Te Wha-riki", in 1996 (Ministry of Education, 1996). Another…