This study examined the effects of maternal and children's resources on school readiness, literacy achievements, and reading motivation in children. The participants included children (N = 180) (124 girls; 56 boys) from 19 kindergartens, their mothers, and their kindergarten teachers. Mothers reported on their working hours, interaction quality,…

Forest learning has been encouraged globally in recent years as it regularly provides opportunities to interact with nature and one's own abilities. The contributions of forest and traditional kindergarten and home environment to children's ecological cognition and how ecological cognition relates to executive function (EF) is understudied.…

This study examined parental playfulness as a mediator of the association between mothers' emotional difficulties (anxiety, depression) and their children's psychosocial adjustment (externalizing, internalizing, and prosocial behaviours). We also examined the associations between parental playfulness and mothers' supportive / unsupportive…

Infants and toddlers spend a substantial amount of their time in out-of-home care, and are thus being tended to not only by their mothers but also by their caregivers. It is therefore of considerable importance to study the effects of caregiver-infant compared to mother-infant interactions. To address this issue, first, various variables of…

Professional literature has indicated the detrimental effect of postpartum depression (PPD) and impaired mother's bond with baby (MBB) on infants throughout their development. The present study aimed to examine whether the associations between caregiving dispositions and both postpartum depression (PPD) and mothers' perception of their bond with…

Repetition is a salient strategy used by human and non-human cohorts for learning and controlling behavior. It this research project, a case study was conducted to explore deliberate voluntary repetition in younger cohorts during their spontaneous solitary play with single or multiple objects. Two main types of repetition -- blocked and random --…

Children's emotional adjustment during stressogenic events is highly dependent on their parents' emotional state. The present study explored young children's emotional adjustment during the COVID19 outbreak as it relates to their exposure to stress, and their parents' emotion regulation and playfulness. A sample of 351 Israeli parents of children…

We examined an intervention in kindergarten using an e-book for vocabulary enrichment. In programme (a), the children read the e-book with a dictionary and the teacher's support. In programme (b), the children read the e-book with the dictionary independently. In programme (c), the children read the e-book without a dictionary (control). The…

Parental playfulness describes a parent's ability to act in a spontaneous, amusing, flexible and creative manner in different parent-child situations. This study examined the hypothesis that parental playfulness promotes children's emotional skills and thus should be related to improved emotion regulation and lower anxiety. A sample of 137 parents…

No study thus far has investigated music engagement in the home among sectors of society, that because of cultural and/or ethno-religious characteristics, have a drastically different lifestyle and home environment than typically ordinary conventional local residents, who represent the more hegemonic popular Western liberal-minded secular culture.…

This paper is based on a study about managers of daycare centres in Israel, which provide early childhood education (ECE) for the ages of birth to three years old. It focused on the daycare managers' professional and female identities. On the background of the relatively low educational standards in the centres, the study strives to make the…

The current study's objective was to examine the link between cognitive stimulation at home and children's task persistence. A sample of 60 children and parents with equal numbers selected from low- and high-income families were recruited to gather information about the level of cognitive stimulation in their home by using a checklist-like tool…

A questionnaire given to 221 mothers for gathering information about residential area and family size and three aspects in children's play habits: frequency, location, and choice of playmate. The results showed that there was a general tendency to play indoors rather than outdoors, regardless of residential area (urban vs. rural). Family size and…

Caregivers' sensitive responses to infant cry have long-term consequences for adaptive child development. Although mounting evidence suggests that parents who experience high emotionality to infant cry respond less sensitively to infant cry, there is a dearth of knowledge on potential mechanisms underlying individual differences in emotionality to…

This research addresses caregivers and infants in the infant class in the day-care centre. It focuses on an intervention programme with the goal of getting to know the attitudes of caregivers and examining their influence on infants. In the programme, the caregivers will be given the possibility of sharing with peers and of learning contemporary…