This article discusses the current knowledge on the developmental characteristics and contexts of care for infants and toddlers who are growing up in bilingual environments at home and in their early care settings in the united States. The authors highlight relevant findings from the work of the Center of Early Care and Education Research-Dual…

Body image research with young children has typically examined their body satisfaction and overlooked developmental theories pertaining to their emergent body-knowledge. Though existing research suggests that preschoolers do demonstrate anti-fat attitudes and weight-related stigmatisation, body dissatisfaction can be difficult to assess in…

Being able to see a talking face confers a considerable advantage for speech perception in adulthood. However, behavioural data currently suggest that children fail to make full use of these available visual speech cues until age 8 or 9. This is particularly surprising given the potential utility of multiple informational cues during language…

Maternal responsive-didactic caregiving (RDC) and infant advanced object play were investigated in a sample of 400 mothers and their 10-month-old infants during video-recorded semi-structured play interactions. Three maternal behaviours: contingent response, cognitively stimulating language and autonomy-promoting speech were coded and infant…

This is the executive summary for the report, "From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts: A Science-Based Approach to Building a More Promising Future for Young Children and Families." Early childhood is a time of great promise and rapid change, when the architecture of the developing brain is most open to the influence of…

This longitudinal study investigates the differences in cognitive and socio-emotional development and academic achievement between children educated in special education classes (N = 37) and regular classes (N = 37). The study is retrospective. The first measurement point was while children were attending play-oriented kindergarten and no decision…

Many parents find it hard to make decisions about screen time for their kids because advice comes from different directions and often conflicts. In the field of child development, there are decades of theory and research that can be very helpful as a guide for screen and digital device use with young kids. These ideas can be a resource for parents…

A simple "expression" account of the relation between executive function (EF) and children's developing theory of mind (ToM) has difficulty accounting for the generality of the changes occurring in children's mental-state understanding during the preschool years. The current study of preschool children (N = 43) showed that EF--especially…

Associations between experiencing child maltreatment and adverse developmental outcomes are widely studied, yet conclusions regarding the extent to which effects are bidirectional, and whether they are likely causal, remain elusive. This study uses the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort of 4,898 children followed from birth…

The present research explores the role of inhibitory control (IC) in young preschoolers' pretense ability using an ego depletion paradigm. In Experiment 1 (N = 56), children's pretense ability was assessed either before or after participating in conflict IC or control tasks, and in Experiment 2 (N = 36), pretense ability was measured after…

Research linking high-quality child care programs and children's cognitive development has contributed to the growing popularity of child care quality benchmarking efforts such as quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS). Consequently, there has been an increased interest in and a need for approaches to identifying thresholds, or cutpoints,…

Substantial evidence has established that individual differences in executive function (EF) in early childhood are uniquely predictive of children's academic readiness at school entry. The current study tested whether growth trajectories of EF across the early childhood period could be used to identify a subset of children who were at pronounced…

The present study examines how attending the German model project "Kindergarten of the Future in Bavaria" (KiDZ), which provided 138 children (aged 3 to 6) with traditional preschool stimulation combined with cognitive and domain-specific stimulation, is associated with children's competencies in mathematics over time to age 12 compared…

Psychological science has much to contribute to enhancing teaching and learning in the classroom. Teaching and learning, in turn, are intricately linked to social and behavioral factors of human development, including cognition, motivation, social interaction, and communication. Psychological science also contributes to effective instruction;…

Background: Cattell's "Gf-Gc" distinction is quite generally recognized. However, the developmental part of the "Gf-Gc" theory of intelligence has not gained the same recognition. Results are inconsistent, but recent discussions emphasize the importance of homogeneity of samples with regard to education and language when…