Create an outdoor learning program for young children. Transform outdoor spaces into learning environments where children can enjoy a full range of activities as they spend quality time in nature. This book is filled with guidance to help you plan, design, and create an outdoor learning program that is a rich, thoughtfully equipped, natural…

How is number-concept acquisition related to overall language development? Experiments 1 and 2 measured number-word knowledge and general vocabulary in a total of 59 children, ages 30-60 months. A strong correlation was found between number-word knowledge and vocabulary, independent of the child's age, contrary to previous results (D. Ansari et…

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are commonly characterized by deficits in the social and communication domains. However, up to 80 percent of this population also have poor motor skills. Individuals with an ASD experience difficulties in motor planning, imitation, and postural stability. A better understanding of these deficits and of strategies…

Spatial scaling is an integral aspect of many spatial tasks that involve symbol-to-referent correspondences (e.g., map reading, drawing). In this study, we asked 3-6-year-olds and adults to locate objects in a two-dimensional spatial layout using information from a second spatial representation (map). We examined how scaling factor and reference…

Contemporary thinking challenges the view that giftedness and high IQ are synonymous. Contemporary thinking also challenges the view that being gifted is something real. A number of authorities in the gifted field advocate a paradigm shift; moving away from emphasizing categorical definitions of giftedness and adopting a talent development…

Hobson (Autism and the development of mind. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hove, UK "1993") has proposed that the cognitive and linguistic disabilities that characterise autism result from abnormalities in inter-subjective engagement during infancy, which in turn results in impaired reflective self-awareness. The aim of the present study was to test Hobson's…

We used opposing figural aftereffects to investigate whether there are at least partially separable representations of upright and inverted faces in patients who missed early visual experience because of bilateral congenital cataracts (mean age at test 19.5 years). Visually normal adults and 10-year-olds were tested for comparison. Adults showed…

The elicited-response false belief task has traditionally been considered as reliably indicating that children acquire an understanding of false belief around 4 years of age. However, recent investigations using spontaneous-response tasks suggest that false belief understanding emerges much earlier. This leads to a developmental paradox: if young…

The author reflects on the history of the Circle of Courage model in creating resilient children in a world where virtually all young people can be considered to be at risk. The author stresses that those people in the Reclaiming Youth movement are in the business of humanizing youth work and childcare. They continue to call adults back to the…

When communicating with their interlocutors, adults have a robust preference to order previously mentioned ("old") referents in the discourse before mentioning referents that have not yet been introduced in the discourse ("new"). But in an experimental study investigating phrasal conjuncts, 3- to 5-year-olds acquiring German…

One of the findings from the ZERO TO THREE "Parenting Infants and Toddlers Today" (Hart Research Associates, 2009) parent survey was that while the majority of parents understood ways of promoting their child's development, their understanding of the milestones related to social and emotional development was less consistent. This is an important…

School readiness is associated with children's subsequent school based-outcomes. School readiness covers skills, behaviors, and attitudes related to whole child development. It is a multidimensional issue regarding readiness in children, and for parents and schools. Therefore, the issue concerns parents, teachers, and researchers. In the present…

Being able to form and maintain intimate relationships is an essential part of development and the early loss of a parent may negatively affect this ability. This study investigates the association between parental loss before the age of 18 years and the formation and dissolution of marriage and cohabitation relationships in adulthood, in relation…

This study examined differences in visual attention as a function of label learning from 6 to 9 months of age. Before and after 3 months of parent-directed storybook training with computer-generated novel objects, event-related potentials and visual fixations were recorded while infants viewed trained and untrained images (n = 23). Relative to a…

Increasingly, "children of incarcerated parents" is becoming the label to describe a growing number of children with a history of parental incarceration. However, while these children and families frequently experience a variety of challenges, the web of interacting influences they face is complex. This variation makes it difficult to…