This dissertation focused on the learning and interactional characteristics of LA 4 prekindergarten children who have remained in the first quartile at the end of the school year on the Developmental Skills Checklist. Their data were examined using a qualitative research deign. This design used progress reports, artifacts, child observation and…

To look closely at definitions of competency for those who specialize in infant mental health (IMH), the authors conducted a careful examination of interviews with IMH home visitors. The interview responses were categorized and then compared with interviews with the families who were served by the same IMH home visitors and with competency…

Smoking during pregnancy is a persistent public health problem that has been linked to later adverse outcomes. The neonatal period--the first month of life--carries substantial developmental change in regulatory skills and is the period when tobacco metabolites are cleared physiologically. Studies to date mostly have used cross-sectional designs…

Distress emotions in very young children are manifest in vocal, facial, and bodily cues. Moreover, children with different developmental conditions (i.e. autistic disorder, AD; developmental delay, DD; typically developing, TD) appear to manifest their distress emotions via different channels. To decompose channel of emotional distress display by…

The purpose of this study was to analyze possible gender-related differences in the prevalence of dyslexia. A cross-national comparison of Spain and Guatemala was conducted. Both countries speak the same language but have a different standard of living and educational level. A second purpose of this study was to analyze the cognitive profile of…

The aim of the study was to prospectively assess the differences in participation and sensory modulation between late preterm infants (LPI) and term babies, and to predict it by LPI characteristics. The study population includes 124 late preterm infants at gestational age between 34 and 35 6/7 weeks who were born at the same medical center. The…

Attentional biases for negative stimuli have been observed in school-age and adolescent children of depressed mothers and may reflect a vulnerability to depression. The direction of these biases and whether they can be identified in early childhood remains unclear. The current study examined attentional biases in 5-7-year-old children of depressed…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the development of symptomatology and academic growth of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) attending a special needs education school in the Netherlands as well as to explore the relationship between academic achievement and symptom reduction of those children. To this end a three-year follow…

Language delay is a common developmental difficulty. Research indicates that it is influenced by environmental factors, particularly social deprivation, but that a parent's interaction protects children's language development against these factors. It is hypothesized that by supporting parents' interaction, language development may be facilitated.…

The typical development (TD) of social cognition could be rooted in the implicit notion that others are like the self. Although many studies show their impairment of social orienting, such a primary notion in children with autistic disorder (AD) has not been known. The present paper examined the responses of children with AD to stimuli such as…

There is concern from government in each of the sample sites over the role fathers play in supporting their children through school. Fathers have become a more "visible parent" and a focus for policy-makers in education. Family literacy programmes are used in this article as an example of an educational programme where fathers are often…

This study explores reciprocal relations between children's attachment representations and their cognitive ability. Previous literature has mainly focused on the prediction of cognitive abilities from attachment, rarely on the reverse prediction. This was explored in the current research. Attachment representations were assessed with the…

Purpose: This investigation describes emergent literacy skills, print motivation, and home literacy environments in a linguistically diverse group of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Method: Emergent literacy skills were directly assessed in 41 children between the ages of 4 and 8 years. Parent report was solicited to provide…

Background: Phonological representations are important for speech and literacy development. Mispronunciation detection tasks have been proposed as an appropriate measure of phonological representations for children with speech disorder. There has been limited analysis, however, of the developmental complexity of task stimuli. Further, the tasks…

Two studies compared children's attention to sample composition--whether a sample provides a diverse representation of a category of interest--during teacher-led and learner-driven learning contexts. In Study 1 (n = 48), 5-year-olds attended to sample composition to make inferences about biological properties only when samples were presented by a…