Like all states, Nebraska faces distinct challenges in how it allocates resources to meet the most immediate needs of its citizens while investing responsibly in long-term social and economic growth. This report presents selected indicators that describe the status of infants and toddlers in Nebraska; Often comparable data for the U.S. as a whole…

In November 2014, with broad bipartisan support, Congress reauthorized CCDBG [Child Care and Development Block Grant] (the major federal child care program) for the first time since 1996. The new law strengthens CCDBG's dual role as a major early childhood education program and a work support for low-income families. This implementation guide is…

Why is play important in the lives of children? What crucial aspects of learning are being neglected in the current near-elimination of recess time in public schools? "Playing for Keeps", co-authored by the well-known writer and educational leader Deborah Meier, and two colleagues with equally long experience in schools, explores these…

Human neonates prefer listening to speech compared to many nonspeech sounds, suggesting that humans are born with a bias for speech. However, neonates' preference may derive from properties of speech that are not unique but instead are shared with the vocalizations of other species. To test this, thirty neonates and sixteen 3-month-olds were…

Three experiments investigated whether 14- and 15-month-old infants use information for both friction and slant for prospective control of locomotion down slopes. In Experiment 1, high- and low-friction conditions were interleaved on a range of shallow and steep slopes. In Experiment 2, friction conditions were blocked. In Experiment 3, the…

Children's relationship with food in early childhood programs is often a complex topic. Families have concerns about "picky eaters" and teachers feel pressure to make sure that children eat enough while in their care. Children bring snacks that teachers describe as junk food and believe this negatively impacts children's behavior. Foods marketed…

Thanks to imaging technology used in neurobiology, people have access to useful and critical information regarding the development of the human brain. This information allows them to become much more effective in helping children in their early development. In fact, when people base their practices on the findings from medical science research,…

We review and relate two literatures on the development of attention in children: one concerning flexible attention switching and the other concerning selective attention. The first is a growing literature on preschool children's performances in an attention-switching task indicating that children become more flexible in their attentional control…

Conceptual change is often described as a causal process in which changes in an embraced system of beliefs result in a new system of beliefs. Here, it is argued that conceptual change is better understood as an intentional activity with regard to the learner, that is, what the learner is doing when trying to understand something. Children were…

Research has revealed that fetuses can learn from events in their environment. The most convincing evidence for fetal learning is habituation to vibroacoustic stimulation (VAS) in human fetuses and classical conditioning in rat fetuses. However, these two research areas have been independent of each other. There have been few attempts at classical…

Whereas young children accept words that differ by only a single phoneme as equivalent labels for novel objects, older children do not (J. F. Werker, C. J. Fennell, K. M. Corcoran, & C. L. Stager, 2002). In these experiments, 106 children were exposed to a training regime that has previously been found to facilitate children's use of phonemic…

The cross-overs between monolingual-bilingual and typically atypically developing children are a goldmine for research on language development. The four permutations of language exposure and language abilities create "natural experimental conditions" for investigating the nature of the language capacity and how this is shaped by input in typical…

Persons with autism often show strong reactions to changes in the environment, suggesting that they may detect changes more efficiently than typically developing (TD) persons. However, Fletcher-Watson et al. (Br J Psychol 97:537-554, 2006) reported no differences between adults with autism and TD adults with a change-detection task. In this study,…

President Obama announced his Early Learning Agenda during his Second Inaugural Address. This announcement has galvanized a special focus on early childhood policy and practices, for the prenatal to 5-year-old period, to improve educational outcomes for America's youth. The emergent science of early childhood development places an emphasis on…

The issue of early childhood trauma is becoming more prominent in early childhood policy discussions, driven by a growing recognition of the potentially devastating impacts of trauma and violence on infants, toddlers, and families. This article provides facts about the impacts of trauma and other adverse early experiences on child health and…