Exploratory study evaluating the relationships between perinatal adversity, oxidative stress, and infant neurodevelopment across the first year of life.

Early childhood adversity increases risk for negative lifelong impacts on health and wellbeing. Identifying the risk factors and the associated biological adaptations early in life is critical to develop scalable early screening tools and interventions. Currently, there are limited, reliable early childhood adversity measures that can be deployed prospectively, at scale, to assess risk in pediatric settings.

Improving Children's Expressive Language and Auditory Comprehension Through Responsive Caregiving: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Strength-Based Video-Coaching Intervention.

Young children from low-SES backgrounds are at higher risk for delayed language development, likely due to differences in their home language environment and decreased opportunities for back and forth communicative exchange. Intervention strategies that encourage reciprocal caregiver-child interactions may effectively promote young children's language development and enhance optimal language outcomes. The Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) program is a brief strength-based video-coaching intervention designed to promote increased back and forth ("serve and return") interactions between caregivers and their children.

Maternal stress and development of infant attention to threat-related facial expressions.

Attentional biases to threat-related stimuli, such as fearful and angry facial expressions, are important to survival and emerge early in development. Infants demonstrate an attentional bias to fearful facial expressions by 5-7 months of age and an attentional bias toward anger by 3 years of age that are modulated by experiential factors. In a longitudinal study of 87 mother-infant dyads from families predominantly experiencing low income, we examined whether maternal stress and depressive symptoms were associated with trajectories of attentional biases to threat, assessed during an attention disengagement eye-tracking task when infants were 6-, 9-, and 12-month old.

Suspension and expulsion in Colorado early care and education settings: Child, program, and community-level predictors.

Expulsion presents a significant risk in Early Care and Education (ECE) settings due to its association with early disadvantage and frequency of use. A statewide survey was conducted to characterize ECE suspension and expulsion (S/E) in Colorado. Child, program, and community-level factors were examined as predictors of S/E, alongside preventative intervention supports capable of reducing S/E.