In Experiment 1, 24-month-old toddlers were taught a new word (“whisk”) through the labeling of a picture of a whisk. After repeated pairings of the word and picture, participants were shown the picture and a real whisk and asked to indicate the whisk. They took the word to refer to the real object rather than to the picture. Experiment 2 established that children are not biased to select any n...

The expression of posttraumatic stress symptoms during group therapy, and how this might differ from the expression of those symptoms in the home, was studied in a group of preschoolers following exposure to severe intimate partner violence (IPV). The sample included 55 mother-child intent-to-treat dyads. Reports of posttraumatic symptoms were collected from mothers and child therapists and wer...

To investigate the developmental emergence of the ability to perceive the multisensory coherence of native and non-native audiovisual fluent speech, we tested 4-, 8-10, and 12-14 month-old English-learning infants. Infants first viewed two identical female faces articulating two different monologues in silence and then in the presence of an audible monologue that matched the visible articulatio...

The current study examined relations between child characteristics and father responsibility and maternal gatekeeping (mothers’ attempts to either limit or encourage fathers’ parenting) and father responsibility across the infant’s first year using self-report and observational data from 64 two-parent families. Results showed that child gender and temperament interacted in relation to father re...

There is wide disagreement over when children begin to show deductive reasoning skills that adults use daily. Preschoolers have previously demonstrated deductive reasoning skills (Dias & Harris, 1988, 1990; Hawkins, Pea, Glick, & Scribner, 1984; Richards & Sanderson, 1999) through verbally presented hypothetical syllogisms. The present study employed a habituation paradigm with 18-, 22-, and 26...

Maternal depression has been consistently linked to the development of child problem behavior, particularly in early childhood. Despite this link, interventions typically address either adult depression, or child behavior, as separate foci. The current study examines the possibility that an intervention can address both maternal depression and child behavior problems in unison, using a sample o...

From birth, infants can learn associations between the location of static visual objects and the sounds they emit, but there is limited evidence regarding their sensitivity to the dynamic equivalent when a sound-emitting object moves. In four experiments, we investigated 2to 8-month-olds’ ability to process this form of spatial co-location. Whereas there was no evidence of spontaneous sensitivi...

Infantile colic is a commonly encountered, benign self-limited condition which causes much distress to the caregivers. The etio-pathogenesis is inconclusive and myriad theories abound. Gut hormones, gut probiota, lactose malabsorption, food hypersensitivity and psychosocial factors have been implicated. The diagnosis is mainly clinical and treatment includes antispasmodics, probiotics, food mod...

An ability to perceive tactile and visual stimuli in a common spatial frame of reference is a crucial ingredient in forming a representation of one’s own body and the interface between bodily and external space. In this study we investigated young infants’ abilities to perceive co-location between tactile and visual stimuli presented on the hands. We examined infants’ visual preferences for spa...

Sleep loss is experienced universally, and significantly impacts cognition and emotion in adults. However, little to no research has investigated this relationship in the preschoolaged years. This is an essential time period in which executive function and emotion regulation undergo extensive development. As sleep patterns also mature in children during this time, pronounced effects of sleep on...