The First Year Inventory (FYI) is a parent report screening measure, aimed at identifying the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 12-month-old infants. This study aimed to investigate the utility of FYI within the Chinese community and develop a short version, encompassing both a low-risk sample and a high-risk sample comprising infants with…

Attachment studies mostly follow the Western middle-class model in theory and methods. To demonstrate that the assessment of children's caregiving context is an often neglected, but crucial prerequisite for attachment studies, we (a) conducted a literature analysis of attachment research in non-Western contexts and (b) empirically investigated the…

Reflective supervision is best practice within the infant and early childhood field. Reflective supervisors and supervisees work together to develop a shared space within which both can express their emotional response to work with very young children, caregivers, and families. Supporting professionals using reflective supervision requires a…

The component model of human parenting has been extensively used to study parents' interactions with their offspring and to examine variation across cultural contexts. The current study applies this model to nonhuman primates to investigate which forms of parenting humans share with other primates and how these interactions change over infants'…

This research study recruited 107 fathers from the United States (n = 31), Taiwan (n = 36), and Thailand (n = 37) to examine fathers' involvement in daily caregiving and engagement tasks, as well as fathers' accessibility to their infant(s) during weekdays and the weekend. Results indicated that the most influential demographic variables on father…

This collection explores key issues related to infant and toddler wellbeing, offering diverse international perspectives on how wellbeing is culturally understood. Scholars from Drawing from Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Brazil, Greece, Norway, Portugal and the UK present local conceptualizations that contribute to a broader, global…

Children acquiring Japanese differ from those acquiring English with regard to the rate at which verbs are learned (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993). One possible explanation is that Japanese caregivers use verbs in referentially transparent contexts, which facilitate the form-meaning link. We examined this hypothesis by assessing differences in verb…

Infant and toddler pedagogy has flourished as a specialized area of practice in early childhood care and education settings, yet it remains an under-researched area. There is also limited empirical research internationally that explores cultural meanings of meaningful provision for this young age group. This ethnographic study explored pedagogies…

We assessed whether the negative association between maternal postpartum depression (PPD) and infants' development of joint attention (gaze following) generalizes from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) to Majority World contexts. The study was conducted in Bhutan (N = 105, M = 278 days, 52% males) but also draws from…

Parental sensitivity and nurturance are important mechanisms for establishing biological, emotional, and social functioning in childhood. Sensitive, nurturing care is most critical during the first three years of life, when attachment relationships form and parental care shapes foundational neural and physiological systems, with lifelong…

There is a lack of feasible and psychometrically sound instruments assessing social-emotional development in young children in low- and middle-income countries. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) in two West-African…

One of the earliest challenges for infants and their parents is developing a diurnal sleep--wake cycle. Although the human biological rhythm is circadian by nature, its development varies across cultures, based in part on "zeitgebers" (German: literally "time-givers") or environmental cues. This study uses the developmental…

This paper problematizes Canadian breastfeeding policies and programs. It criticizes Canadian federal and provincial government policies and programs, which focus on a global goal of enabling all women to practise exclusive breastfeeding and do not pay enough attention to immigrant mothers' breastfeeding experience. Based on an analysis of…

Negation is a cornerstone of human language and one of the few universals found in all languages. Without negation, neither categorization nor efficient communication would be possible. Languages, however, differ remarkably in how they express negation. It is yet widely unknown how the way negation is marked influences the acquisition process of…

Indigenous lifeways, perspectives, and ways of knowing in the field of infant and early childhood mental health are underrepresented, especially given the inequitable and unjust prevalence of removal and separation of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children from their families and communities by the child welfare system in the United…