The past two decades have been characterized by renewed attention to the importance of early childhood development (ECD) policies and services in the world's richest and most industrialized countries. During the same period, we have witnessed unprecedented efforts to place ECD policies on the national development planning agenda of the economically less advantaged countries of the Majority Worl...

Disabilities and Development of the University of Iowa Children's Hospital. The views expressed are the independent products of university research and do not necessarily represent the views of the Iowa Department of Human Services or The University of Iowa.

Attention to early childhood care and development through home-based programmes has grown considerably over the last ten years. The extent of that growth and the current coverage of home-based programmes cannot easily be captured statistically. Some efforts are "add-ons" to established programmes of home-visiting by health or social welfare workers; others are embedded in health education or ad...

In the first few years of life, a child's language undergoes tremendous changes. While it is a primary task for the student of language acquisition to document these changes, a mere description of child language, however accurate or insightful, cannot be regarded as adequate. A complete theory of language acquisition must also include a detailed account of how these changes take place, that is,...

We consider 3 questions regarding the effects of economic deprivation on child development. First, how are developmental outcomes in childhood affected by poverty and such poverty correlates as single parenthood, ethnicity, and maternal education? Second, what are the developmental consequences of the duration and timing of family economic deprivation? And, third, what is the comparative influe...

Challenging behaviors are a known predictor of high parenting stress in families of children with autism spectrum disorders. However, few studies have evaluated the effect of reducing challenging behaviors on parenting stress. The purpose of our study was to (a) examine the impact of reducing the frequency and severity of challenging behaviors on parenting stress and (b) compare the effects of ...

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) (http://www.iadb.org/en/inter-american-developmentbank,2837.html) is the regional, multilateral development bank for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The largest source of external development financing for the region, the IDB support efforts by LAC countries to reduce poverty and inequality with the aim of bringing about development in a sustaina...

We examined 3- to 5-year-olds' understanding of general knowledge (e.g., knowing that clocks tell time) by investigating whether (1) they recognize that their own general knowledge has changed over time (i.e., they knew less as babies than they know now), and (2) such intraindividual knowledge differences are easier/harder to understand than interindividual differences (i.e., Do preschoolers un...