We studied the development of narrative ability yearly in a cross-sectional design from 4 to 10 years. All children were given the same props and underwent the same procedures. Children's narratives were transcribed verbatim, and then coded for number of words, propositions, episodes and indexes of narrative cohesion and structure. Verbal IQ was…

Environmental contaminants, which include several heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and other harmful chemicals, impair several domains of child development. This article describes four themes from recent research on the impact of environmental contaminants on child development. The first theme, disparities in exposure, focuses on how…

It is generally accepted that all humans have a profound need to belong and that a sense of 'belonging together' is a prerequisite for creating political communities. Many of our existing models for this 'first person plural' fail to fully account for the increased global mobility of persons which can all too often result in serial attachments at…

Pedagogical documentation within early childhood centres is a key component of pedagogy and teacher accountability. In Singapore, documentation is a requirement specified under legislative policies included in the national Pre-school Accreditation Framework, with parents often perceived as the main audience. This paper reports on a study utilising…

Families create contexts for learning to enhance and support the interests of their children, while simultaneously teaching language, morals, and culture. This research examines intergenerational family teams engaged in a long-term conservation project in their community. Participants were interviewed during and after project completion with the…

It has been debated whether the progressive emergence of theory of mind (ToM) in autistic children is compatible with a "delayed" or "different" development model, and whether and how the sequential consolidation of ToM concepts is subject to cross-cultural variations in autistic and typically developing (TD) children. To study…

With studies primarily focusing on family risk factors on adolescent maladjustment, less is known about positive family processes that facilitate adolescent positive development. This study aimed to identify different configurations of parental involvement and interparental affection during early childhood from a person-centered approach and…

Parent language input is a well-established predictor of child language development. Multisensory attention skills (MASks; intersensory matching, shifting and sustaining attention to audiovisual speech) are also known to be foundations for language development. However, due to a lack of appropriate measures, individual differences in these skills…

The author, a psychology instructor at an American university, describes the internationalization of his course in Human Growth and Development. The author argues that human development cannot be easily summarized by nature (i.e., biological and evolutionary predisposition) or nurture (i.e., learning through environment and experience).…

Research Findings: Home-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a popular form of small-group ECEC, with potential to facilitate high-quality conversations during shared book reading. To investigate how home-based early childhood educators (ECEs) take advantage of learning opportunities, educators read two storybooks with children…

Differentiation hypotheses concern changes in the structural organization of cognitive abilities that depend on the level of general intelligence (ability differentiation) or age (developmental differentiation). Part 1 of this article presents a review of the literature on ability and developmental differentiation effects in children, revealing…

Is noun dominance in early lexical acquisition a widespread or a language-specific phenomenon? Thirty Singaporean bilingual English-Mandarin learning toddlers and their mothers were observed in a mother-child play interaction. For both English and Mandarin, toddlers' speech and reported vocabulary contained more nouns than verbs across book…

The COVID-19 forced shutdown of Jewish preschools (Spring, 2020) presented an unprecedented challenge for schools, preschoolers, and their families. During the preschool years, children are vulnerable to trauma, potentially affecting later adjustment. Relationships between school offerings, preschoolers' school engagement and psychosocial outcomes…

Objectives: The importance of breastfeeding exposure and children's development of self-regulation, independently, are well established. Each of these domains also has been linked to better cognitive development and academic achievement in children. However, little is known about how breastfeeding affects development of early self-regulation…

In 2020, the Foundation for Child Development released "Getting it Right: Using Implementation Research to Improve Outcomes in Early Care and Education." The publication provides insights into the value of including implementation research in the study of early care and education (ECE) and its potential to improve programs and policies…