What does play have to do with it? A concrete and digital spatial intervention with 3-year-olds predicts spatial and math learning.

Spatial skills like block building and puzzle making are associated with later growth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning. How these early spatial experiences-both in concrete and digital platforms-boost children's spatial skills remains a mystery. This study examined how children with low- and high-parental education use corrective feedback in a series of spatial assembly tasks.

A new screener predicts Toddlers' language development from age 2-3: The QUILS:TOD.

Language interventions may yield greater benefits for younger children than their older counterparts, making it critical to evaluate children's language skills as early as possible. Yet, assessing young children's language presents many challenges, such as limited attention spans, low expressive language, and hesitancy to speak with an unfamiliar examiner. To address these challenges, the Quick Interactive Language Screener for Toddlers (QUILS:TOD; for children 24- to 36-months of age) was developed as a quick, tablet-based language screener capable of assessing children's vocabulary, syntax, and word learning skills.

From behavioral synchrony to language and beyond.

Decades of research on joint attention, coordinated joint engagement, and social contingency identify caregiver-child interaction in infancy as a foundation for language. These patterns of early behavioral synchrony contribute to the structure and connectivity of the brain in the temporoparietal regions typically associated with language skills. Thus, children attune to their communication partner and subsequently build cognitive skills directly relating to comprehension and production of language, literacy skills, and beyond.

For preschoolers, word knowledge falls on a continuum: A novel framework for capturing the incremental process of word learning.

In gaining word knowledge, children's semantic representations are initially imprecise before becoming gradually refined. We developed and tested a framework for a digital receptive vocabulary assessment that captured varied levels of representation as children learn words. At pre-test and post-test, children selected one of four images to match a word's meaning: a correct target, a conceptually-related foil, a thematically-related foil, and a phonologically-similar foil.

Evidence-based meets community-centred: A new approach to creating informal learning opportunities for children.

Informal learning spaces present ripe opportunities to supplement formal learning experiences. In this paper, we offer a new approach to creating enriching learning activities for public spaces that reflects evidence-based practices rooted in developmental psychology and uses community-centring practices from participatory research approaches. We first argue that extant theory and research supports the use of guided play pedagogy to foster learning.

Curious? The relationship between curiosity and creativity is likely NOT novelty.

The target article tackles an important and complicated issue of the underlying links between curiosity and creativity. Although thought-provoking, the target article overlooks contemporary theories and research on these constructs. Consequently, the proposed model is inconsistent with prior research in the developmental and educational fields and would benefit from better specification and clarity around key constructs and processes.

Building language learning: Relations between infant attention and social contingency in the first year of life.

In Western societies, social contingency, or prompt and meaningful back-and-forth exchanges between infant and caregiver, is a powerful feature of the early language environment. Research suggests that infants with better attentional skills engage in more social contingency during interactions with adults and, in turn, social contingency supports infant attention. This reciprocity is theorized to build infant language skills as the adult capitalizes on and extends the infant's attention during socially contingent interactions.

The unanticipated side effects of an attachment intervention: Parents ask higher quality questions.

Research suggests foster children are at risk for poor language skills. One intervention, attachment and biobehavioral catch-up (ABC), was shown to successfully improve not only young foster children's attachment to their parents, but also their receptive vocabulary skills (Bernard et al., 2017; Raby et al.

Comparing apples to manzanas and oranges to naranjas: A new measure of English-Spanish vocabulary for dual language learners.

The valid assessment of vocabulary development in dual-language-learning infants is critical to developmental science. We developed the Dual Language Learners English-Spanish (DLL-ES) Inventories to measure vocabularies of U.S.

A hop, skip and a jump towards evaluating social interaction and learning through play at a child and adolescent inpatient treatment program.

Background: The number of inpatient mental health facilities for children and adolescents in the United States is growing rapidly. While undergoing inpatient treatment, children and adolescents can benefit from innovative play opportunities designed to foster social interaction and learning.

Methods: The Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) initiative is a group of projects designed to transform everyday spaces into opportunities for playful learning.

Investigating the contributions of active, playful learning to student interest and educational outcomes.

A growing body of evidence from the science of learning demonstrates the educational effectiveness of active, playful learning. Connections are emerging between this pedagogy and the broad set of skills that it promotes in learners, but potential mechanisms behind these relations remain unexplored. This paper offers a commentary based on the science of learning and interest development literature, suggesting that interest may mediate the relation between active, playful learning and student outcomes.

Assessing the language of 2 year-olds: From theory to practice.

Early screening for language problems is a priority given the importance of language for success in school and interpersonal relationships. The paucity of reliable behavioral instruments for this age group prompted the development of a new touchscreen language screener for 2-year-olds that relies on language comprehension. Developmental literature guided selection of age-appropriate markers of language disorder risk that are culturally and dialectally neutral and could be reliably assessed.

Cascades in language acquisition: Re-thinking the linear model of development.

The first 5 years of life are characterized by incredible growth across domains of child development. Drawing from over 50 years of seminal research, this chapter contextualizes recent advances in language sciences through the lens of developmental cascades to explore complexities and connections in acquisition. Converging evidence-both classic and contemporary-points to the many ways in which advances in one learning system can pose significant and lasting impacts on the advances in other learning systems.

Ecological contexts associated with early childhood curiosity: Neighborhood safety, home and parenting quality, and socioeconomic status.

Introduction: Curiosity is an important social-emotional process underlying early learning. Our previous work found a positive association between higher curiosity and higher academic achievement at kindergarten, with a greater magnitude of benefit for children with socioeconomic disadvantage. Because characteristics of the early caregiving and physical environment impact the processes that underlie early learning, we sought to examine early environmental experiences associated with early childhood curiosity, in hopes of identifying modifiable contexts that may promote its expression.

Reinventing the public square and early educational settings through culturally informed, community co-design: Playful Learning Landscapes.

What if the environment could be transformed in culturally-responsive and inclusive ways to foster high-quality interactions and spark conversations that drive learning? In this article, we describe a new initiative accomplishing this, called Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL). PLL is an evidence-based initiative that blends findings from the science of learning with community-based participatory research to transform physical public spaces and educational settings into playful learning hubs. Here, we describe our model for conducting this research, which is mindful of three key components: community input, children learn best, and children need to learn to be successful in the 21st century economy.

Sensitivity to visual cues within motion events in monolingual and bilingual infants.

It is well known that infants undergo developmental change in how they respond to language-relevant visual contrasts. For example, when viewing motion events, infants' sensitivities to background information ("ground-path cues," e.g.

Classification accuracy of the Quick Interactive Language Screener for preschool children with and without developmental language disorder.

Introduction: This research examined the classification accuracy of the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS) for identifying preschool-aged children (3;0 to 6;9) with developmental language disorder (DLD). We present data from two independent samples that varied in prevalence and diagnostic reference standard.

Methods: Study 1 included a clinical sample of children (54 with DLD; 13 without) who completed the QUILS and a standardized assessment of expressive grammar (Syntax subtest from the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Norm Referenced; Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool 2nd Edition; or Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-3 rd Edition).

Contingent conversations build more than language: How communicative interactions in toddlerhood relate to preschool executive function skills.

High-quality communicative interactions between caregivers and children provide a foundation for children's social and cognitive skills. Although most studies examining these types of interactions focus on child language outcomes, this paper takes another tack. It examines whether communicative, dyadic interactions might also relate to child executive function (EF) skills and whether child language might mediate this relation.

Keep the Ball Rolling: Sustained Multiturn Conversational Episodes Are Associated With Child Language Ability.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between interaction quality and child language ability. We focused on one promising interaction quality indicator-the rate of multiturn conversational episodes. We also explored whether the relationship between rate of single conversational turns and language ability changed when the child's nonverbal behaviors were considered in addition to verbal conversational turns.

Leslie Rescorla (1945-2020).

Memorializes Leslie Rescorla (1945-2020). Rescorla, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Class of 1897 Professor of Science Emeritus at Bryn Mawr College, passed away in Havertown, PA on October 12, 2020. Rescorla, who was born in Washington, DC on August 15, 1945, came to Bryn Mawr in 1985; where she taught in the Psychology Department and directed the College's Phebe Anna Thorne School and, until 2018, its Child study Institute.

Psychometric Assessment of Pilot Language and Communication Items on the 2018 and 2019 National Survey of Children's Health.

Objective: Until recently, normative data on language and communication development among children in the United States have not been available to inform critical efforts to promote language development and prevent impairments. This study represents the first psychometric assessment of nationally representative data derived from a National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) pilot measure of language and communication development among children ages 1 to 5 years.

Methods: We analyzed 14,573 parent responses to language and communication items on the 2018 and 2019 NSCH to evaluate whether the newly added 11 items represent a single latent trait for language and communication development and to determine normative age of success on each item.

What's in a distraction? The effect of parental cell phone use on parents' and children's question-asking.

Although questions fuel children's learning, adult may preoccupy parents, affecting the frequency of questions parents and children ask and answer. We ask whether parental cell phone use will lead to a decrease in the number of questions children and parents ask one another while playing with a novel toy. Fifty-seven parent-child dyads ( = 48.

Daily television exposure, parent conversation during shared television viewing and socioeconomic status: Associations with curiosity at kindergarten.

Objective: To examine the main and interactive effects of the amount of daily television exposure and frequency of parent conversation during shared television viewing on parent ratings of curiosity at kindergarten, and to test for moderation by socioeconomic status (SES).

Study Design: Sample included 5100 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. Hours of daily television exposure and frequency of parent screen-time conversation were assessed from a parent interview at preschool, and the outcome of early childhood curiosity was derived from a child behavior questionnaire at kindergarten.

Translating cognitive science in the public square.

Public space interventions offer one example of how to translate cognitive science into the public square. Here, we detail several successful projects and the six principles of learning that underlie them that support caregiver-child engagement, interaction, and the use of content area-specific language. Policy and community implications are also discussed.