The increasing prevalence of mental illness among parents always represents a stressor affecting the biopsychosocial development of a child. However, due to varying inherent resilience factors, not all children are affected to the same extent. The presence of evidence-based resilience factors is able to minimise or prevent the adverse effects…

A contemporary view of motor development considers environmental influences as critical factors in optimal growth and behavior, with the home being the primary agent. The intent of this communication is to introduce the "Affordances in the Home Environment for Motor Development Self-Report" ("AHEMD-SR") to early childhood practitioners. The…

The use of portfolio assessment is a valuable tool for teachers to use with young children to better understand how young children develop and learn. An intentional data collection and documentation system becomes a very powerful assessment tool, one that is authentic and based on children's capabilities and strengths. Children, educators,…

One of the popular misconceptions about giftedness is that the gifted label is a benefit. It is probably a fixed blessing at best and can bring unexpected problems to children, their families, and their teachers. Children who are labeled gifted often have uncertain feelings about the designation and the whole "gifted" experience, if not…

Unfairly viewed as poorly made and unwatchable, home movies actually constitute a wide variety of events and images that make them an invaluable and largely unexplored resource for scholars and researchers. The images captured in home movies--first birthdays, parades, vacations, family gatherings, etc.--were originally made by family members to…

This study is part of a larger qualitative research project which examines visual imagery created through projective art tasks undertaken by young Kuwaiti women who were resident in Kuwait during the 1990 Saddam-Hussein-led Iraqi invasion of their country. The purpose of this article is to present evidence from the study as it is evolving. This…

Increasing working memory (WM) capacity is often cited as a major influence on children's development and yet WM capacity is difficult to examine independently of long-term knowledge. A computational model of children's nonword repetition (NWR) performance is presented that independently manipulates long-term knowledge and WM capacity to determine…

This study investigated the associations between academic stress experienced by university student fathers and the behavioral and cognitive involvement these fathers had with their children. Fifty-three fathers enrolled in university classes and residing with at least one child less than 12 years of age responded to questionnaire measures of…

We present three studies exploring 2- to 4-year-olds' imitation on witnessing a model whose questionable tool use choices suggested her untrustworthiness. In Study 1, children observed the model accidentally select a physically optimal tool for a task and then intentionally reject it for one that was functionally nonaffordant. When asked to…

Mothers of children aged 2-12 years completed an exhaustive questionnaire assessing feeding and eating behaviors for both themselves and their children with autism, and typically developing siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (where available), or typically developing children with no sibling with a disability. Results indicate that…

J. Kagan (2008) urges contemporary developmentalists to (a) be cautious when attributing conceptual knowledge to infants based on looking-time performance, (b) constrain their interpretation of infant performance with multiple methodologies, and (c) reconsider the possibility that qualitative development may be the path by which perceptual infants…

Developmental exceptionalities span the range of learning abilities and encompass children with both learning disorders and learning gifts. The purpose of this article is to stimulate thinking about these exceptionalities, particularly the complexities and variations within and across people. Investigators tend to view learning disabilities or…

Parents and child care personnel in English-dominant parts of the world often express misgivings about raising children bilingually. Their concerns are based on the belief that dual language learning during the infant-toddler stage confuses children, delays their development, and perhaps even results in reduced language competence. In this…

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) diagnosis in very young children may be delayed due to doubts about validity. In this study, 77 children received a diagnostic and developmental evaluation between 16 and 35 months and also between 42 and 82 months. Diagnoses based on clinical judgment, Childhood Autism Rating Scale, and the Autism Diagnostic…

Mother-child conversations about pictures systematically differ from mother-child conversations about objects: Pictures are more likely than objects to elicit talk about kinds, whereas objects are more likely than pictures to elicit talk about individuals. The purpose of the current study is to examine whether this difference between pictures and…