Despite the long-standing debate over the assumed universality of maternal sensitivity predicting attachment security (i.e., sensitivity hypothesis), few long-term longitudinal investigations on attachment have been conducted outside the Western context. We leveraged data from a prospective 9-year longitudinal study of middle-class families (N =…

Research on the acoustic characteristics of Infant Directed Speech (IDS) in North American English indicates that it is generally higher-pitched than Adult Directed Speech (ADS) and has unique prosodic characteristics, which is commonly found across many spoken languages. However, very little research has addressed another important aspect of…

Emphasis on continuous infant sleep overnight may be driven by parental concern of risk to child mental health outcomes. The Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Wellbeing Study (MPEWS) examined whether infant sleep at 6 and 12 months postpartum predicts anxiety disorders at 2-4 years, and whether this is moderated by maternal depression, active physical…

Data from 83,423 parent reports of temperament (surgency, negative affectivity, and regulatory capacity) in infants, toddlers, and children from 341 samples gathered in 59 countries were used to investigate the relations among culture, gender, and temperament. Between-nation differences in temperament were larger than those obtained in similar…

This paper examines compassionate pedagogies in relation to an emotionally intense experience in a long day-care centre. Video observations were made of international preservice teachers undertaking an infant-toddler professional experience in Australia. The study is informed by Vygotsky's cultural-historical concept of emotional experience…

Maternal depression is a global public health concern with far-reaching impacts on child development, yet our understanding of mechanisms remains incomplete. This study examined whether parenting mediates the association between maternal depression and child outcomes. Participants included 841 rural Pakistani mother-child dyads (50% female).…

This study investigated Korean children's negative emotionality trajectories from infancy to age 4 and their learning (i.e., executive functioning), behavioral, and self-esteem outcomes in first grade. Using nationally representative data from the Panel Study on Korean Children, negative emotionality trajectories were explored to determine whether…

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is characterized by a range of register-typical characteristics. Many of those can be objectively measured, such as acoustic-prosodic and structural-linguistic modifications. Perceived vocal affect, however, is a socio-emotional IDS characteristic and is subjectively assessed. Vocal affect goes beyond acoustic-prosodic…

Emotion regulation (ER) is a source of risk and resilience for psychological development and everyday functioning. Despite extensive research on various early contextual predictors of child ER capacity, few studies have integrated them into the same study. Therefore, our longitudinal study investigated the joint and independent contributions of…

Parenting is a key factor for the development of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Therefore, early intervention programs should target parenting behaviors to improve children's developmental outcomes. The present study analyzed the effect of parental behaviors and other family factors on the cognitive and linguistic…

There is no relationship more vital than the one a child shares with their primary caregivers early in development. Yet many children worldwide are raised in settings that lack the warmth, connection, and stimulation provided by a responsive primary caregiver. In this study, we used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), a…

We investigated the continuity and stability of imitative episodes (IMEs) to shed light on the nature of early infant imitative ability. We observed and analyzed interactions of 27 mother-infant pairs as they played in their homes at one and 10 months. We coded the initiator, frequency, duration, kind, structure, and affect of IMEs. At 10 months,…

Parents commonly vocalize to infants to mitigate their distress, especially when holding them is not possible. Here we examined the relative efficacy of parents' speech and singing (familiar and unfamiliar songs) in alleviating the distress of 8- and 10-month-old infants (n = 68 per age group). Parent-infant dyads participated in 3 trials of the…

Infants attend daycare at an early age, which raises questions about children's sensitivity to the childcare environment and the role of different temperamental traits in their development in the early years. In a two-year longitudinal study with parent- and caregiver-reported data for Dutch children at the age of 1 and 2 years (120 children from…

Caregivers' sensitive responses to infant cry have long-term consequences for adaptive child development. Although mounting evidence suggests that parents who experience high emotionality to infant cry respond less sensitively to infant cry, there is a dearth of knowledge on potential mechanisms underlying individual differences in emotionality to…