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Descriptors:
Brain Hemisphere Functions; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; Child Behavior; Brain; Neurology; Inhibition; Executive Function; Infants; Check Lists; Short Term Memory; Diagnostic Tests; Correlation; Young Children; Cognitive Processes; Emotional Response; Planning; Age Differences; Predictor Variables; Foreign Countries

Abstract:
Background: Neuroimaging findings have provided evidence for a relation between variations in brain structures and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, longitudinal neuroimaging studies are typically confined to children who have already been diagnosed with ADHD. In a population-based study, we aimed to characterize the prospective association between brain structures measured during infancy and executive function and attention deficit/hyperactivity problems assessed at preschool age. Methods: In the Generation R Study, the corpus callosum length, the gangliothalamic ovoid diameter (encompassing the basal ganglia and thalamus), and the ventricular volume were measured in 784 6-week-old children using cranial postnatal ultrasounds. Parents rated executive functioning at 4 years using the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version in five dimensions: inhibition, shifting, emotional control, working memory, and planning/organizing. Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problems were assessed at ages 3 and 5 years using the Child Behavior Checklist. Results: A smaller corpus callosum length during infancy was associated with greater deficits in executive functioning at 4 years. This was accounted for by higher problem scores on inhibition and emotional control. The corpus callosum length during infancy did not predict Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problem at 3 and 5 years, when controlling for the confounders. We did not find any relation between gangliothalamic ovoid diameter and executive function or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problem. Conclusions: Variations in brain structures detectible in infants predicted subtle impairments in inhibition and emotional control. However, in this population-based study, we could not demonstrate that early structural brain variations precede symptoms of ADHD. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Rating Scales; Parent Child Relationship; Foreign Countries; Infants; Fathers; Predictor Variables; Behavior Problems; Parent Role; Mother Attitudes; At Risk Persons; Prevention; Intervention

Abstract:
Background: Factors related to parents and parenting capacities are important predictors of the development of behavioural problems in children. Recently, there has been an increasing research focus in this field on the earliest years of life, however, relatively few studies have addressed the role of fathers, despite this appearing to be particularly pertinent to child behavioural development. This study aimed to examine whether father-infant interactions at age 3 months independently predicted child behavioural problems at 1 year of age. Method: A sample of 192 families was recruited from two maternity units in the United Kingdom. Father-infant interactions were assessed in the family home and coded using the Global Rating Scales. Child behaviour problems were assessed by maternal report. Hierarchical and logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between father-infant interaction and the development of behavioural problems. Results: Disengaged and remote interactions between fathers and their infants were found to predict externalising behavioural problems at the age of 1 year. The children of the most disengaged fathers had an increased risk of developing early externalising behavioural problems [disengaged (nonintrusive) interactions--adjusted Odds Ratio 5.33 (95% Confidence Interval; 1.39, 20.40): remote interactions adj. OR 3.32 (0.92, 12.05)] Conclusions: Disengaged interactions of fathers with their infants, as early as the third month of life, predict early behavioural problems in children. These interactions may be critical factors to address, from a very early age in the child's life, and offer a potential opportunity for preventive intervention. (Contains 5 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Information Needs; Public Health; Guidelines; Foreign Countries; Nutrition; Infants; Mothers; Decision Making; Information Sources; Parent Attitudes; Health Behavior

Abstract:
The majority of mothers in Ireland provide formula milk to their infants during the initial weeks postpartum; however, data are lacking on their formula feeding practices and support needs. This prospective Dublin-based observational study, which included 450 eligible mother-term infant pairs recruited and followed up to six months postpartum, aimed to advance our understanding of maternal formula feeding practices, their reasons for deciding to formula feed, sources of feeding information and perceived support needs; insights into infant formula milk consumption patterns in relation to current feeding guidelines are also provided. In summary, the vast majority of infants at six weeks were provided with formula milk (n =368; 81.8%). Positive maternal perceptions of formula feeding were among the most frequently reported reasons underlying mothers' decisions to formula feed (e.g. convenience, 17.3%). Potential public health concerns over the large formula milk volumes consumed by infants (mean 205 ml/kg/day) relative to infant feeding guidelines (150 ml/kg/day) were raised from this study. Some mothers continue to add solid foods to infant bottle feeds at six weeks (3.8%) and six months (6%), a non-recommended feeding practice posing a choking risk for infants. Crucially, this study highlights the need to provide greater support and information to mothers who decide to formula feed postpartum, including practical information on sterilisation and formula reconstitution. While breastfeeding promotion and research continues to be a public health priority in Ireland, addressing the support and information needs of mothers who formula feed, an under-represented and understudied population in the literature, also needs to be considered to ensure optimal health and safety for their infants. (Contains 5 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Content Analysis; Early Intervention; Mothers; Infants; Parent Child Relationship; Interaction; Interviews; Parent Attitudes; Program Effectiveness; Mental Disorders; Knowledge Level; Emotional Development; Child Rearing; Foreign Countries; At Risk Persons

Abstract:
Studies focusing on mothers' own reports of their experience with intervention programmes are rare, so very little has been known about their evaluations of the programmes and what they have learned. The aim of the present study was to use interviews to evaluate these aspects of an intervention programme. The interviews were designed to capture the mothers' memories and thoughts about their experiences and to learn about the knowledge they acquired in a short-term intervention programme. Forty-six mothers identified as being at psychosocial risk were interviewed. The interview materials were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Two categories were identified: emotional context, and knowledge. The material assigned to the second category was further divided into three sub-categories. The study results point to the equal importance of actual knowledge and to the emotional dimension. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Sleep; Infants; Infant Mortality; Mothers; Correlation; Questionnaires; Parenting Styles; Interviews; Foreign Countries

Abstract:
This study aimed to assess possible association between swaddling and sleep behaviour in two-month-old infants. It comprised 198 apparently healthy infants from the community setting selected by chance (86 boys, 112 girls), aged two months, who were singletons born in St Petersburg in 2007. The mothers were asked to complete the questionnaires addressing infant, maternal, and demographic major characteristics with particular emphasis on maternal swaddling practice and infant sleep routine. As part of the interview, the mothers were asked to describe possible sleep disturbances in infants in five major sleep domains: bedtime problems, excessive daytime sleepiness, awakenings, regularity and duration of sleep and snoring. Of 198 infants, 120 babies (60.6%) were never swaddled at night-time, 35 (17.7%) were swaddled occasionally and 43 (21.7%) were swaddled regularly. No significant associations were found between regular swaddling and infant-parent(s) room and bed sharing, type of mattress used and preferred position in which the infant was habitually put to sleep. There was no association between swaddling and habitual position in which the baby was usually found awake and maternal reports on infant sleep disturbances. In conclusion, no convincing evidence was found on any beneficial effect of swaddling in terms of modifying baby's night-time sleep behaviour and sleep routine that might have been potentially protective against sudden infant death syndrome. (Contains 3 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Evidence; Associative Learning; Cognitive Mapping; Infants; Eye Movements; Vocabulary Development; Statistical Analysis; Language Acquisition

Abstract:
We report three eyetracking experiments that examine the learning procedure used by adults as they pair novel words and visually presented referents over a sequence of referentially ambiguous trials. Successful learning under such conditions has been argued to be the product of a learning procedure in which participants provisionally pair each novel word with several possible referents and use a statistical-associative learning mechanism to gradually converge on a single mapping across learning instances [e.g., Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2007). Rapid word learning under uncertainty via cross-situational statistics. "Psychological Science, 18"(5), 414-420]. We argue here that successful learning in this setting is instead the product of a one-trial procedure in which a single hypothesized word-referent pairing is retained across learning instances, abandoned only if the subsequent instance fails to confirm the pairing--more a "fast mapping" procedure than a gradual statistical one. We provide experimental evidence for this "propose-but-verify" learning procedure via three experiments in which adult participants attempted to learn the meanings of nonce words cross-situationally under varying degrees of referential uncertainty. The findings, using both explicit (referent selection) and implicit (eye movement) measures, show that even in these artificial learning contexts, which are far simpler than those encountered by a language learner in a natural environment, participants do not retain multiple meaning hypotheses across learning instances. As we discuss, these findings challenge "gradualist" accounts of word learning and are consistent with the known rapid course of vocabulary learning in a first language. (Contains 5 tables and 12 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Memory; Toddlers; Rewards; Cues; Spatial Ability; Infants; Task Analysis; Visual Discrimination; Brain Hemisphere Functions; Cognitive Processes; Recall (Psychology)

Abstract:
Episodic memories for autobiographical events that happen in unique spatiotemporal contexts are central to defining who we are. Yet, before 2 years of age, children are unable to form or store episodic memories for recall later in life, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia. Here, we studied the development of allocentric spatial memory, a fundamental component of episodic memory, in two versions of a real-world memory task requiring 18 month- to 5-year-old children to search for rewards hidden beneath cups distributed in an open-field arena. Whereas children 25-42-months-old were not capable of discriminating three reward locations among 18 possible locations in absence of local cues marking these locations, children older than 43 months found the reward locations reliably. These results support previous findings suggesting that allocentric spatial memory, if present, is only rudimentary in children under 3.5 years of age. However, when tested with only one reward location among four possible locations, children 25-39-months-old found the reward reliably in absence of local cues, whereas 18-23-month-olds did not. Our findings thus show that the ability to form a basic allocentric representation of the environment is present by 2 years of age, and its emergence coincides temporally with the offset of infantile amnesia. However, the ability of children to distinguish and remember closely related spatial locations improves from 2 to 3.5 years of age, a developmental period marked by persistent deficits in long-term episodic memory known as childhood amnesia. These findings support the hypothesis that the differential maturation of distinct hippocampal circuits contributes to the emergence of specific memory processes during early childhood. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Infants; Observational Learning; Novelty (Stimulus Dimension); Hypothesis Testing; Toys; Goal Orientation; Infant Behavior; Cognitive Development

Abstract:
Our aim was to investigate why 16-month-old infants fail to master a novel tool-use action via observational learning. We hypothesized that 16-month-olds' difficulties may be due to not understanding the goal of the observed action. To test this hypothesis, we investigated whether showing infants an explicit demonstration of the goal of the action before demonstrating the action would improve observational learning compared with a classic demonstration of the target action. We examined 16-month-old infants who observed a tool-use action consisting of grasping a rake-like tool to retrieve an out-of-reach toy, under five conditions. Only when infants were shown the goal of the action before demonstration did they show some success. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Cognitive Processes; Prediction; Preschool Children; Infants; Cognitive Development; Attribution Theory; Age Differences; Task Analysis; Developmental Stages; Cues

Abstract:
Research on early physical reasoning has shown surprising discontinuities in developmental trajectories. Infants possess some skills that seem to disappear and then re-emerge in childhood. It has been suggested that prediction skills required in search tasks might cause these discontinuities (Keen, 2003). We tested 3.5- to 5-year-olds' understanding of collision events using a forced-choice paradigm with reduced prediction demands. Although the group as a whole performed at chance level, when the preschoolers were subdivided into three age groups, the oldest group performed above chance level. These findings suggest that it is unlikely to be prediction skills that affect young preschoolers' performance on physical reasoning tasks. The findings lend support to a task-demand hypothesis, which proposes that discontinuities in developmental trajectories can be explained by differences in the extent to which cognitive processes are required by the different tasks. (Contains 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Evidence; Teacher Education; Educational Research; Young Children; Early Childhood Education; Colleges; Higher Education; Disabilities; Infants; Toddlers; Mathematics; Mathematics Education; Research

Abstract:
It is essential that a solid research base be established to provide a foundation that will enable the field of early childhood teacher education to examine whether, for whom, and in what ways teacher education matters. The purpose of this article is to review several important domains in early childhood teacher education to illustrate the characteristics, key features, and significant gaps in current research, and to identify the kinds of research that are most needed to enhance the impact of early childhood teacher education. We conclude by identifying five crosscutting research priorities and describing what is needed to create a supportive environment that produces--and implements--early childhood teacher education research. (Contains 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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