Screening and assessment play a critical role in the lives of young children and their families. The results of these procedures can paint enduring portraits of the strengths and vulnerabilities of both children and families. This article explores the challenges of cultural dynamics and family issues relative to six areas of assessment: the target of assessment, the setting, the methods, the personnel, the uses, and, finally, the fusion of assessment with intervention. While the authors' examination of these challenges does not eliminate the problems inherent in the screening and assessment with infants and young children, it can, perhaps, raise issues and stimulate ideas that can help us to enter the homes and worlds of diverse families and their children in ways that are both respectful and responsive.

This article explores how teachers can foster an environment that facilitates social problem solving when toddlers experience conflict, emotional dysregulation, and aggression. This article examines differences in child development and self-regulation outcomes when teachers engage in problem solving for toddlers and problem solving with toddlers. It also reviews teacher practices aimed at preventing problems. The article suggests a paradigm shift from perceiving social challenges as toddler problems to viewing such situations as problem solving opportunities. The article concludes by applying these principles to an actual classroom dispute among toddlers.

Thirty-two non-anemic children were assessed clinically, biochemically and anthropometrically at six months, one year and two years of age to investigate the relationship of iron status to mental and motor development. Using dietary history and dietary record instruments, dietary iron was estimated and compared to the National Food Consumption Survey (1985) and the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for corresponding age groups. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development (which assess mental and motor development) and the Caldwell Home Inventory (which evaluates the environmental stimuli) were performed and correlated with blood iron parameters, anthropometric measurements and dietary nutrient intakes. Nutrient intakes of these children were similar to those reported in the NFCS (1985) for one- and two-year-olds. Iron intake decreased from 13.2 mg iron daily (88% RDA) at six months to 10.3 mg iron daily (68% RDA) and 7.4 mg iron daily (49% RDA) at two years of age. The correlation between iron intake and development was not statistically significant at any age. Stepwise, multiple regression was employed to investigate the extent to which variation in mental and motor development was explained by dietary variables, blood iron parameters and anthropometric measurements. Hematocrit was the only variable that significantly explained variation in mental development at all three ages. The findings of this study were different from earlier studies in that there was no statistical correlation between iron status and mental development; but, it did confirm the conclusion of more recent experiments that iron status has little effect on infants' and toddlers' development. The finding that infants and toddlers consuming less than the RDA for iron do not display iron deficiency symptoms and were not developmentally delayed or compromised should be comforting to parents who are concerned about iron intake during this critical period of infants' brain growth.

Research suggests that the linguistic environment of the expressive language delayed child is different from that of his peers. Does this difference actually exist and if so, what are its characteristics? The purpose of this study was to describe the linguistic characteristics of mothers' input to children with normal language acquisition and those of mothers of expressively delayed toddlers; and to identify any differences between these groups. Though considerable research exists in this area, few studies have dealt specifically with large groups of expressively delayed toddlers.

No description available.

Contemporary cognitive psychology and neuroscience contend that learning across development is a dynamic process; that learning is flexible, adaptive, and context-dependent. Moreover, particular learning demands, capacities, and sensitivities to external (i.e., social, environmental, etc.) and internal (i.e., biological) influences change over the course of development, depending on specific developmental niches, or periods of unique specialization. Given these theoretical contexts, this dissertation examines developmental niche-relevant influences on learning at three different stages of development, such as social modulators (i.e., parental proximity, and caregiving-related early adversity) and neural mechanisms (i.e., neural dynamic network flexibility). Studies 1 and 2 consider the parent-child attachment relationship and tested associations between parental proximity and classical conditioning reward learning in toddlers utilizing a within-subject study design. Findings suggest parental proximity and presence had a significant effect on reward learning outcomes. However, effects varied as a function of age and order of the parental presence versus absence manipulation. Study 3 investigates the relationship between caregiving-related early adversity (crEA) in school-age children and implicit motor sequence learning (MSL), a form of basic learning. There was no difference in MSL between crEA-exposed and age-matched, non-crEA-exposed, comparison children. However, group differences in executive functioning (EF) were present. Findings illuminate the selective impact of early stress on higher-order functioning (i.e., EF), but not on possible underlying lower-level processes (i.e., basic learning). Lastly, Study 4 employed a novel approach to quantify brain network changes over the course of learning, dynamic network flexibility (DNF), to examine associations with learning on a probabilistic reinforcement learning task in a sample of adolescents who perform better on the task compared to adults. This study provides evidence that average whole brain DNF, and DNF of the striatum in particular, is associated with reinforcement learning in adolescents, as was previously found in adults. However, DNF did not explain better learning outcomes observed in the adolescent sample. Each study separately contributes to the growing knowledge of social and neural associations with learning abilities that are not exclusive to, but important for study-specific developmental niches. Taken together, this dissertation provides evidence in support of a dynamic systems theory of cognition and asserts that learning and behavior during development is a dynamic process that is dependent on social input, adaptive to early experiences, and is supported by flexible neural network architecture.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of positive adult-to-child physical interactions and negative toddler behaviors in the classroom. Twenty-one licensed childcare centers participated in this study. One center was used to field-test the researcher-created tally instruments. The 20 centers remaining were observed to identify the number of positive adult-to-child physical interactions. They were then ranked from the classroom having the highest amount of adult-to-child interactions to that having the lowest. Three classrooms were then randomly selected from both the top and bottom thirds, providing six classrooms for the final study. Negative toddler behaviors were then observed in each of the six classrooms. No significant relationship was found between the amount of positive adult-to-child interactions and the amount of negative toddler behaviors. Results included the identification of high positive adult-to-child interactions occurring in the manipulative and the gross motor areas and involved touching and holding.

No description available.

This study examined 100 Arab-American families of children attending a weekly Sunday school in the Southeastern region of the US on their views about infants, toddlers or preschoolers’ touchscreen device usage patterns. Over 80 percent of the respondents have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree. Surveys were completed for 51 boys and 49 girls. Like studies on children of other ethnic groups living in the United States of America show, Arab infants, toddlers and preschoolers’ mobile touchscreen device usage patterns do not conform to the 2016 American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines which suggested no touchscreen device usage for children below 2 years and 1-hour daily usage for children between 2-5 yesrs. However, Arab-American parents hold different views on the use of mobile touchscreens with young children when compared to studies from other parents living in the United States. Also, Arab American parents are less concerned about their infant, toddlers and preschools’ children damage to touchscreen devices. Thus, further studies are required to delineate why Arab American parents’ views on touchscreen devices differ to their young children reported usage habit.

No description available.