Objective: The onset of autism is usually conceptualized as occurring in one of two patterns, early onset or regressive. This study examined the number and shape of trajectories of symptom onset evident in coded home movies of children with autism and examined their correspondence with parent report of onset. Method: Four social-communicative…

In this article the author describes challenges associated with integrating physiological measures of stress into developmental research, especially in the domains of memory and cognition. An initial critical challenge concerns how to define stress, which can refer to one or a series of events, a response, the consequence of that response, an…

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine population-specific developmental milestones for independence in self-care, mobility, and social cognitive skills in children with achondroplasia, the most common skeletal dysplasia. Methods: Population-based recruitment from October 2008 to October 2010 identified 44 Australian children with…

This study examined reciprocal relationships between adolescents' perceptions of parental nurturance and two types of adolescent aggressive behaviors (indirect and direct aggression) using a transactional model. Three waves of longitudinal data were drawn from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. The sample included…

Executive functioning skills develop rapidly during early childhood. Recent research has focused on specifying this development, particularly predictors of executive functioning skills. Here we focus on sustained attention as a predictor of inhibitory control, one key executive functioning component. Although sustained attention and inhibitory…

The purpose of the current study was to examine further the relationship between counterfactual thinking and false belief (FB) as examined by Guajardo and Turley-Ames ("Cognitive Development, 19" (2004) 53-80). More specifically, the current research examined the importance of working memory and inhibitory control in understanding the relationship…

Past research has focused on pretend play in infants with autism because it is considered an early manifestation of symbolic or imaginative thinking. Contradictory research findings have challenged the meta-representational model. The intent of this paper is to propose that pretend play is the behavioral manifestation of developing imaginative…

Objective: Child protection, as primarily applied toward narrow corrective intervention, has been judged to be inadequate in dealing with the wide variety of forms and levels of physical, psychological and sexual violence to which children are subjected throughout the world. Concern about this state of affairs has grown as a part of a global…

In this study, the authors assessed children's ability to use information overheard in other people's conversations to judge the reality status of a novel entity. Three- to 9-year-old children (N = 101) watched video clips in which two adults conversed casually about a novel being. Videos contained statements that explicitly denied, explicitly…

Research connecting children's understanding of mental states to their peer relations at school remains scarce. Previous work by the authors demonstrated that children's understanding of mental states in the context of a faux pas--a social blunder involving unintentional insult--is associated with concurrent peer rejection. The present report…

This article revisits radical playgrounds of the past to offer a productive dialogue with recent debates on how child environments can foster citizenship and community. Joan Littlewood's playground projects are familiar examples of theatre techniques being applied to develop children's sense of belonging in a city. This essay considers the less…

No evidence had been provided so far of newborns' capacity to give a matching response to 2D stimuli. We report evidence from 18 newborns who were presented with three types of stimuli on a 2D screen. The stimuli were video-recorded displays of tongue protrusion shown by: (a) a human face, (b) a human tongue from a disembodied mouth, and (c) an…

It is not known whether reproductive factors early in the mother's life influence risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We assessed maternal age at menarche, menstrual cycle characteristics during adolescence, oral contraceptive use prior to first birth, body shape, and body mass index (BMI) in association with ASD using binomial regression in…

Susan Isaacs made a significant impression on the world of early childhood education during the first half of the twentieth century. She ranks alongside Froebel and Dewey, as one of the pioneers of child-centred education. As Jody Hall has written, "the life, work and legacy of Isaacs serve as a witness to the value of the curiosity of children."…

This article, using the National Child Development Study, estimates the causal relationship between parents' schooling and children's cognitive and non-cognitive development using the 1947 compulsory schooling legislation in Great Britain. The least squares estimates suggest strong correlations between parental education and these developmental…