Three hypotheses have been posited as competing explanations for the comorbidity or co-occurrence of language difficulties and behavioural problems among children: (1) language difficulties confer risk for behaviour problems, (2) behaviour problems confer risk for language difficulties, and (3) shared risk factors account for their co-occurrence.…

This essay reviews recent research about infant attachment, then discusses the implications of this research as they relate to the following specific manifestations of children's spirituality: faith, wonder, relational consciousness, flow (as in a sense of wholeness or unity), and compassion, in the light of other research on children's…

Recent epidemiological evidence suggests that even in the midst of the "terrible twos," frequent/severe oppositional-defiant behaviors (ODBs) are not common among toddlers and hence may be indicative of a significant opposition-defiance problem. The main objective of this study was to obtain a maximum likelihood estimate of the…

Preschool children (N = 104) read a book that described and illustrated color camouflage in animals (frogs and lizards). Children were then asked to indicate and explain which of 2 novel animals would be more likely to fall prey to a predatory bird. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-olds were tested with pictures depicting animals in camouflage and…

The teaching of imitation skills is often the first step in interventions for young learners with intellectual disabilities. The main goal of this study was to determine the smallest detectable difference (SDD) at 95% confidence of the Preschool Imitation and Praxis Scale (PIPS) in preschoolers with intellectual disabilities. Two raters…

Numerous studies conducted in both the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic fields have established that the parents' socio-economic status (SES) influences several aspects of children's language production. Moreover, a number of psycholinguistic studies strongly suggest that these differences are due in part to differences in the nature and the…

This study investigates vocal imitation of prosodic contour in ongoing spontaneous interaction with 10- to 13-week-old infants. Audio recordings from naturalistic interactions between 20 mothers and infants were analyzed using a vocalization coding system that extracted the pitch and duration of individual vocalizations. Using these data, the…

In April 2011, the Committee on the Rights of the Child issued the General Comment No. 13 on the right of the child to freedom from all forms of violence. Its Article 19 declares that "protective measures should, as appropriate, include effective procedures for the establishment of social programs to provide necessary support for the child and for…

The present study investigated pubertal development in girls with maltreatment histories (N=100), assessed at 4 time points over 2 years, beginning in the spring of their final year of elementary school. This sample is unique in that participants were subject to an unusual level of environmental risk early in life and resided in foster care at the…

With an increasing number of young children participating in preschool education, this study determined whether peer effects are present in this earliest sector of schooling. Specifically, this work examined whether peer effects were influential to preschoolers' growth in language skills over an academic year and whether peer effects manifest…

This volume is the first of a two-part special issue detailing state of the art practice in medical issues around child sexual abuse. The six articles in this issue explore methods for medical history evaluation, the rationale for when sexual examinations should take place, specific hymenal findings that suggest a child has been sexually abused,…

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is understood to be a disorder that predominantly affects phonology, morphosyntax and/or lexical semantics. There is little conclusive evidence on whether children with SLI are challenged with regard to Gricean pragmatic maxims and on whether children with SLI are competent with the logical meaning of quantifying…

In three experiments, we investigated the role of automatic and controlled inhibitory retrieval processes in true and false memory development in children and adults. Experiment 1 incorporated a directed forgetting task to examine controlled retrieval inhibition. Experiments 2 and 3 used a part-set cue and retrieval practice task to examine…

The theory of emotional intelligence has elicited great interest both in the academic and the nonacademic world. Therapists, educators, and parents want to know what they can do to help children develop their emotional intelligence. However, most of the research in this field has investigated adults' emotional intelligence. This study reviews the…

The family-centered medical home describes an approach to providing comprehensive primary care. Research advances in developmental neuroscience, genetics, and epigenetics offer a framework for understanding the dynamic process of brain development. It is this process that sets the life-course trajectory for an individual; in turn, a child's…