Symbolic representation refers to the use of physical or psychological processes to represent an object in a symbolic form. The present study investigated the development of children's symbolic representation using a new measure of children's block constructions. Ninety children (44 girls) in three age groups (3-4, 4-5, and 5-6 years) were…

Health care reaches more children under age three in the United States than any other family-facing system and represents the most common entry point for developmental assessment of and services for children. In this article, Adam Schickedanz and Neal Halfon examine how well the child health care system promotes healthy child development early in…

Background and Context: Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasises the importance of language, mediation, and the transfer of skills and knowledge from the social into the cognitive plane. This perspective has influenced the development of PRIMM (Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify, Make), a structured approach to teaching programming. Objective:…

Most of the authors in this issue of "Future of Children" focus on a single strategy for helping both adults and children that could become a component of two-generation programs. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, on the other hand, look at actual programs with an explicit two-generation focus that have been tried in the…

This paper describes an exploratory evaluation of the Peers Early Education Partnership "Room to Play", an innovative and experimental "drop-in" service seeking to attract and engage "hard-to-reach" families in one of the most deprived areas of a Midlands city. Located in a shop unit of a busy community shopping…

In an effort to standardize training delivery and to individualize staff development based on observation and reflective practice, the Air Force implemented the Developmental Training Model (DTM) in its Child Development Programs. The goal of the Developmental Training Model is to enhance high quality programs through improvements in the training…

Extends the concepts of utilization deficiencies in a review of 30 years of memory-training research. Finds that over half of training conditions showed at least one type of utilization deficiency. Utilization deficiencies were more common for younger than for older children and were more likely when training involved multiple, rather than single,…

Background: Some individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience linguistic difficulties similar to those found in individuals with specific language impairment (SLI). Whether these behaviours are indicative of a common underlying genetic cause or a superficial similarity is unclear. Methods: Standardised language assessments were…

Implementing the Pyramid Model with fidelity and achieving positive outcomes for children and their families requires that administrators understand their roles in the implementation process. Every administrative decision impacts program quality and sustainability. This Policy Brief underscores the importance of facilitative administrative…

The Henry Barnard Child Care Center was established on the Rhode Island College campus to achieve the following main objectives: (a) to provide a comprehensive quality day care program for young children, (b) to serve as a model and resource for existing day care centers within the state, and (c) to provide specifically designed laboratory…

Surface similarity generally promotes reasoning by analogy and physical similarity has been shown to have a powerful positive effect on very young children's use of a scale model as a source of information about another space. The research reported here investigated 2 1/2-year-old children's performance in an object retrieval task when asked to…

This final report reviews activities and achievements of the "Let's Play!" project, an effort to apply assistive technology (AT) to promote the play skills of infants and toddlers with disabilities within their natural environments. The federally supported project was designed to assist county early intervention programs and developed,…

The Foster Parent Training Project builds on the desire of foster parents to promote the physical, mental and emotional growth of children in their care. Parents are taught to assist in reducing the impact on the children of separation. Classes deal with emotional development, sexual development, lying, emotional disturbance, the issues at each…

This report presents the theoretical context and the actual organization of training in human development and the expressive media in the Counselor Education Program and an early child-training program. Chapter 1 includes a detailed discussion of the history and current status of expressive development in education. Expressive education responds…

Project Quest offers a strong approach to the problem of developing programs aimed at educational leadership in New Jersey. The primary goal of the project is to enhance in this leadership their knowledge of child growth and development, and their feel for, and sensitivity to, appropriate modes of education for young children, as well as pervasive…