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BACKGROUND: Previous research has suggests that cooperative learning methods and the development of fundamental motor skills support children's cognitive development, and further studies covering various aspects are recommended. In this study, as an alternative to traditional physical education classes including fundamental motor skill activities, we investigated the impact of cooperative learning methods incorporating these skills on children's visual-motor integration and selective attention. METHODS: A total of 60 boy children in the 10-11 age range were included in the study. Groups; classical method (10.95 ± 0.58age), and cooperative learning group (10.91 ± 0.42age). The study spanned a total of 24 physical education class hours. While the classical method group continued to attend physical education lessons with an FMS-based prepared program for 8 weeks, cooperative learning group participated in an FMS-based program prepared according to the cooperative learning method (40min/3days/8weeks).At the beginning and end of the study, children underwent the Bender-Gestalt test and the d2 test of attention. RESULTS: Within-group pre-post test comparisons revealed improvement in visual-motor integration and selective attention for both the classical method and cooperative learning groups. In between-group post-test comparisons, the cooperative learning group demonstrated greater improvement in visual-motor integration and selective attention parameters compared to the classical method. CONCLUSION: The results support increasing the inclusion of fundamental motor skill activities in physical education classes and advocating for the use of cooperative learning methods in these classes. Enhancements in visual-motor integration and selective attention may contribute to children forming quality relationships, enjoying activities, learning stress management, and developing as a group.

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Human Milk is the best option for infant feeding; and for this reason, it should be promoted, protected, and supported. HM is an individual-specific-dynamic biofluid, characterized by an extreme variability in its composition. A wealth of literature has investigated how HM is related to healthy development. An association between HM composition, including nutrients and growth-related hormones as well as other bioactive components, and short-term and long-term infant outcomes could support this statement; however, the evidence is limited. In fact, HM composition is difficult to examine as it is dynamic and changes within a single feed, diurnally, according to stage of lactation and between and within populations. The aim of this review is summarizing only the innovative knowledge on the association between HM composition and long-term outcomes: infant growth and neurodevelopment. In this specific contest, macronutrients and historical biological component with well recognized effect were excluded (i.e. LCPUFA, DHA, iodine). Revised articles have been found in MEDLINE using breast milk-related outcomes, neurodevelopment, infant growth, breast milk-related biological factors, biomarkers, biological active components, and constituents as keywords. Moreover, we focus our search on the latest research results.

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BACKGROUND: The recent Maternal Immune Activation (MIA) theory suggests maternal systemic inflammation may serve as a mediator in associations between prenatal maternal adversities and neurodevelopmental diseases in offspring. Given the co-exposure to multiple adversities may be experienced by pregnant person, it is unclear whether a quantitative index can be developed to characterize the inflammation related exposure level, and whether this index is associated with neurodevelopmental delays in offspring. METHODS: Based on Jiangsu Birth Cohort (JBC), a total of 3051 infants were included in the analysis. Inflammation related Prenatal Adversity Index (IPAI) was constructed using maternal data. Neurodevelopmental outcomes were assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, third edition, screening test in one year. Multivariate linear regression and Poisson regression model were performed to analyze the associations between IPAI and neurodevelopment in offspring. RESULTS: Compared with "low IPAI" group, offspring with "high IPAI" have lower scores of cognition, receptive communication, expressive communication, and fine motor. The adjusted ß were - 0.23 (95%CI: -0.42, -0.04), -0.47 (95%CI: -0.66, -0.28), -0.30 (95%CI: -0.49, -0.11), and - 0.20 (95%CI: -0.33, -0.06). Additionally, the elevated risk for noncompetent development of cognition and receptive communication among "high IPAI" group was observed. The relative risk [RR] and 95% confidence interval [CI] were 1.35 (1.01, 1.69) and 1.37 (1.09, 1.72). CONCLUSIONS: Our results revealed a significant association between higher IPAI and lower scores across cognition, receptive communication, expressive communication, and fine motor domains, and an increased risk of noncompetent development in the cognition and receptive communication domains.

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El objetivo fue examinar, desde una aproximación multi-informante, las medidas del Síndrome de Desconexión Cognitiva (SDC) de padres/madres e hijos/as y su relación con síntomas internalizantes y externalizantes. 279 niños/as (9-13 años), y sus padres/madres completaron las evaluaciones sobre SDC, la inatención del trastorno por déficit de atención e hiperactividad (TDAH) y otras medidas internalizadas y externalizadas. Los ítems de las tres medidas de SDC convergieron razonablemente bien en el factor SDC. Se aportaron pruebas discriminantes de la validez de las relaciones entre las puntuaciones de las pruebas y las medidas de los tres constructos diferentes (SDC, soledad y preferencia por la soledad). La asociación más estrecha estuvo entre la evaluación parental de las medidas de SDC con ansiedad y depresión, y entre inatención con hiperactividad/impulsividad y trastorno negativista desafiante. Se observó capacidad predictiva de la medida de SDC sobre la soledad y preferencia por estar solo autoinformadas. Se encontró una posible asociación entre la medida del SDC evaluado por padres/madres y sexo y edad de los niños. En conclusión, los datos apoyan la inclusión de medidas autoinformadas en la evaluación del SDC. Las medidas del SDC en niños se vinculan con medidas internalizantes y, la inatención con las externalizantes.(AU)

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Early number skills represent critical milestones in children's cognitive development and are shaped over years of interacting with quantities and numerals in various contexts. Several connectionist computational models have attempted to emulate how certain number concepts may be learned, represented, and processed in the brain. However, these models mainly used highly simplified inputs and focused on limited tasks. We expand on previous work in two directions: First, we train a model end-to-end on video demonstrations in a synthetic environment with multimodal visual and language inputs. Second, we use a more holistic dataset of 35 tasks, covering enumeration, set comparisons, symbolic digits, and seriation. The order in which the model acquires tasks reflects input length and variability, and the resulting trajectories mostly fit with findings from educational psychology. The trained model also displays symbolic and non-symbolic size and distance effects. Using techniques from interpretability research, we investigate how our attention-based model integrates cross-modal representations and binds them into context-specific associative networks to solve different tasks. We compare models trained with and without symbolic inputs and find that the purely non-symbolic model employs more processing-intensive strategies to determine set size.

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Recent theories of socio-moral development assume that humans evolved a capacity to evaluate others' social actions in different kinds of interactions. Prior infant studies found both reaching and visual preferences for the prosocial over the antisocial agents. However, whether the attribution of either positive or negative valence to agents' actions involved in an aggressive chasing interaction can be inferred by both reaching behaviors and visual attention deployment (i.e., disengagement of visual attention) is still an open question. Here we presented 7-month-old infants (N = 92) with events displaying an aggressive chasing interaction. By using preferential reaching and an attentional task (i.e., overlap paradigm), we assessed whether and how infants evaluate aggressive chasing interactions. The results demonstrated that young infants prefer to reach the victim over the aggressor, but neither agent affects visual attention. Moreover, such reaching preferences emerged only when dynamic cues and emotional face-like features were congruent with agents' social roles. Overall, these findings suggested that infants' evaluations of aggressive interactions are based on infants' sensitivity to some kinematic cues that characterized agents' actions and, especially, to the congruency between such motions and the face-like emotional expressions of the agents.

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BACKGROUND: There are few studies that approach the subject of breastfeeding related to the development of motor skills. The study aimed to verify if there are differences in the global and fine motor skills, considering the variables gender and type of breastfeeding, in children from 18 to 44 months. METHODS: We developed a quantitative correctional typology, being a cross-sectional study with a sample of 128 children of both genders. The instruments used in the study were the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-2, and to assess the profile of the children a questionnaire was delivered to the parents. To test the normality of the sample, we applied the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test and the Shapiro-Wilk Test. The Mann-Whitney U-Test was used for independent samples, also calculating the effect size. RESULTS: The boys obtained higher mean values in all motor skills, except for the fine motor skills and fine motricity, and in these, the girls obtainied the higher mean values. With respect to the inferential analysis, concerning the variable gender, there are statistically significant differences (P<0.00) in the variables: locomotor skills, object handling skills, global motricity and global motor quotient (P=0.017) the boys exhibiting the higher values, which means the better performances. We also verify that children who were not breastfed with breast milk, through feeding bottle with replacement milk, obtained higher mean values in all motor skills when compared to the ones who were breastfed with breast milk, and there is a statistically significant difference in the variable fine manipulation skills (P=0.024). CONCLUSIONS: Male children obtained better results in all motor skills, except for fine motricity, comparing with female children. Regarding breastfeeding, the children who were not breastfed with breast milk, show better results, mainly in Fine manipulation skills, which may be due to the previous need to handle the bottle on early age.

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This chapter provides the most comprehensive review of risk and resilience models for child development thus far, synthesizing these interdisciplinary frameworks for ease of use in research and practice. This review specifically focuses on process models with broader conceptualizations of risk and resilience that have effects across multiple developmental domains. Risk and resilience models alike agree that alleviating risk factors is beneficial for children's development, including risks ranging from proximal issues with households (e.g., instability) and caregivers (e.g., insecure attachment, abuse) to relatively distal influences like structural racism and socioeconomic status. Resilience models further add that children who experience risks are not inherently doomed to poorer outcomes, but can draw upon positive factors in development to combat negative effects from risk, which cannot always be avoided. Major positive factors include loving relationships, educational resources, and cultural assets. Risk and resilience are highly multidisciplinary fields that have contributed much to our understanding of human development, with ample room for continued growth. Understanding of risk and resilience processes, especially during sensitive developmental periods like early childhood, provides valuable insight for prevention and intervention research and practices. Risk and resilience models share an interest in deciphering the developmental processes that hinder and help children across domains so that kids can live their best lives, resulting in a better off society for all.

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The last 40 years have been marked by a growing appreciation of organized afterschool activities as a developmental context, with evidence that these activities are linked to academic, social, and behavioral outcomes at least in the short term. In this chapter, we focus on research that builds on these earlier advances to extend afterschool research in two areas that are critical to the future of this field. First, we feature research that examines organized activities longitudinally from kindergarten through the end of high school, enabling us to study organized activities in relation to academic, social-emotional, behavioral, and health outcomes in both the short-run and long-run, including into adulthood. We then turn to a second advance: research focused on organized activities that serve minoritized children and adolescents. These studies identify the barriers minoritized youth often face and how activities can be designed to support their positive development, including efforts to provide culturally responsive programming. Promising directions for future research are presented in a third section.

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Decades of research have informed about ways in which infants and young children learn through action in connection with their sensory system. However, this research has not strongly addressed the issues of cultural diversity or taken into account everyday cultural experiences of young learners across different communities. Diversifying the scholarship of early learning calls for paradigm shifts, extending beyond the analysis at the individual level to make close connections with real-world experience while placing culture front and center. On the other hand, cultural research that specifies diversity in caregiver guidance and scaffolding, while providing insights into young learners' cultural experiences, has been conducted separately from the research of action-based cross-modal learning. Taking everyday activities as contexts for learning, in this chapter, we summarize seminal work on cross-modal learning by infants and young children that connects action and perception, review empirical evidence of cultural variations in caregiver guidance for early action-based learning, and make recommendations of research approaches for advancing the scientific understanding about cultural ways of learning across diverse communities.

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According to the Relational Developmental Systems perspective, the development of individual differences in spatial thinking (e.g., mental rotation, spatial reorientation, and spatial language) are attributed to various psychological (e.g., children's cognitive strategies), biological (e.g., structure and function of hippocampus), and cultural systems (e.g., caregiver spatial language input). Yet, measuring the development of individual differences in spatial thinking in young children, as well as the psychological, biological, and cultural systems that influence the development of these abilities, presents unique challenges. The current paper outlines ways to harness available technology including eye-tracking, eye-blink conditioning, MRI, Zoom, and LENA technology, to study the development of individual differences in young children's spatial thinking. The technologies discussed offer ways to examine children's spatial thinking development from different levels of analyses (i.e., psychological, biological, cultural), thereby allowing us to advance the study of developmental theory. We conclude with a discussion of the use of artificial intelligence.

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We outline two accounts by which executive function (EF) supports children's moral reasoning: an emergence and an expression account. The emergence account postulates that EF supports the development of moral concepts because it relates to how children navigate their early social environments and how well they can internalize moral messages. The expression account postulates that EF supports children's in-the-moment moral reasoning for complex moral situations. We present data from two studies with preschool children to assess each account. In support of the emergence account, EF longitudinally and positively predicted moral reasoning, but only for children who have experienced moderate forms of peer conflict. In support of the expression account, EF was only correlated with judgments that required the coordination of multiple pieces of information (i.e., retaliation and criterion judgments). We conclude that EF is an important cognitive mechanism of moral development and discuss various implications of these findings for both moral development and EF theory.

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Negation-triggered inferences are universal across human languages. Hearing "This is not X" should logically lead to the inference that all elements other than X constitute possible alternatives. However, not all logically possible alternatives are equally accessible in the real world. To qualify as a plausible alternative, it must share with the negated element as many similarities as possible, and the most plausible one is often from the same taxonomic category as the negated element. The current article reports on two experiments that investigated the development of preschool children's ability to infer plausible alternatives triggered by negation. Experiment 1 showed that in a context where children were required to determine the most plausible alternative to the negated element, the 4- and 5-year-olds, but not the 3-year-olds, exhibited a robust preference for the taxonomic associates. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds considered all the complement set members as equally possible alternatives in a context where they were not explicitly required to evaluate the plausibility of different candidates. Taken together, our findings reveal interesting developmental continuity in preschool children's ability to make inferences about plausible alternatives triggered by negation. We discuss the potential semantic and pragmatic factors that contribute to children's emerging awareness of typical alternatives triggered by negative expressions.

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Insecure-attached adults are more likely to lie. However, it is unknown whether infant-parent attachment quality relates to lie-telling in early childhood. As in adults, lie-telling in early childhood might be related to attachment insecurity. However, a competing hypothesis might be plausible; lie-telling might be related to attachment security given that lie-telling in early childhood is considered an advancement in social-cognitive development. The current study is the first to investigate the link between insecure/secure and disorganized/non-disorganized attachment and lie-telling behavior in early childhood. Because lie-telling is studied in the context of cheating behavior, the association between cheating and attachment is additionally explored. A total of 560 Dutch children (287 girls) from a longitudinal cohort study (Generation R) were included in the analyses. Attachment quality with primary caregiver (secure/insecure and disorganized/non-disorganized attachment) was assessed at 14 months of age in the Strange Situation Procedure, and cheating and lie-telling were observed in games administered at 4 years of age. The results demonstrated no relationship of attachment (in)security and (dis)organization with cheating and lie-telling. Results are interpreted in light of evidence that lie-telling in early childhood is part of normative development. Limitations are discussed, including the time lag between assessments, the fact that lie-telling was measured toward a researcher instead of a caregiver, and the conceptualization of attachment in infancy versus adulthood. Attachment quality does not affect early normative lie-telling, but how and when it may affect later lying in children remains to be explored.

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INTRODUCTION: This study focuses on 'learning prerequisites', cognitive and non-cognitive skills crucial for school success, often measured in preschoolers. Executive Functions (EF), like inhibition and cognitive flexibility, are vital among these prerequisites. While EF's role in early literacy and numeracy is acknowledged, some components are often overlooked. OBJECTIVE: The study aims to longitudinally explore the link between EF, assessed at the beginning of the preschool year and the learning prerequites, measured at the end of the same preschool year. METHOD AND RESULTS: Evaluating 70 preschoolers (62.30 months, SD 4.55), results showed that certain EF measures predicted performance in literacy and numeracy tasks. Specifically, response inhibition predicted rhyme and syllable recognition, series completion, and cognitive flexibility predicted rhyme recognition. Moreover, EF, particularly response inhibition, correlated with overall metaphonology and pre-math abilities. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest the importance of integrating EF enhancement in early educational interventions, aiding in selecting and optimizing EF skills crucial for later academic success.

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Cognitive and social-emotional development in the first three years of life is associated with later skills. However, little is known about the paths of developmental delays in both cognitive and social-emotional skills before age 3 or to what extent these paths predict later developmental outcomes. The aim of this study is to examine the associations between the different paths of developmental delays in both cognitive and social-emotional skills of children before age 3 and the levels of development of the children when they are preschool age. Using a longitudinal data collected at three time points from 1245 children and their caregivers in rural China, we identified four different paths of developmental delays in cognitive and social-emotional before age 3 and examined how these paths are associated with different levels of developmental outcomes at preschool age. We used a non-parametric standardization approach and an ordinary least squares model to perform our analyses. Findings show that rates of developmental delays in either cognitive or social-emotional domain or both domains are high at all different time points, ranging from 20% to 55% for cognitive delays and 42% to 61% for social-emotional delays. Over half of children experienced deteriorating levels of either cognitive or social-emotional development before age 3. A large share of children was found to be persistently delayed in either domain. Only a small share of children raised their levels of development in either domain before age 3. In addition, we identified certain socioeconomic status of the family that are associated with never or deteriorating path of child developmental delays. More importantly, we revealed that different paths of developmental delays before age 3 have predictive power on different levels of developmental outcomes at preschool age. Our results suggest that actions are needed at the earliest times to improve child development when children are still infants or toddlers.

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This study explored the interplay of executive functions (EFs), social interactions, and theory of mind (ToM) in middle childhood. The first aim was to examine how specific EFs-shifting, inhibition, and working memory (WM)-predict social-perceptual and social-cognitive ToM. The second aim was to explore the potential mediating role of social interactions in the EF-ToM relationship. A total of 98 children aged 8 to 11 years completed three computerized EF tasks (task switching, flanker, and running span) and two ToM tasks (Strange Stories and Reading the Mind in the Eyes). The quality and quantity of social interactions were self-reported by using questionnaires. First, multiple regression analyses with age-adjusted scores examined how specific EFs predict ToM scores. The regression model was significant for social-cognitive ToM, but not for social-perceptual ToM. WM accuracy was the only significant, positive predictor for performance on the Strange Stories task. Second, mediation analyses assessed whether social interactions mediate this EF-ToM relationship. There were no significant mediation effects of the quality and quantity of social interactions on the relationship between WM and social-cognitive ToM. In conclusion, EFs play a significant role in explaining social-cognitive ToM variability in middle childhood. WM is relevant for understanding others' mental states, in contrast to shifting and inhibition that lacked predictive value. The results also suggest different cognitive processes associated with social-perceptual versus social-cognitive ToM in this developmental stage.

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OBJECTIVES: This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the benefits and harms of vestibular stimulation compared to standard care or non-vestibular stimulation for physical and neurological development in preterm infants. To assess whether the effects of vestibular stimulation differ according to gestational age at birth; the type, frequency, and duration of the intervention; and settings, such as the country where the study is conducted.

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Learning in the everyday environment often requires the flexible integration of relevant multisensory information. Previous research has demonstrated preverbal infants' capacity to extract an abstract rule from audiovisual temporal sequences matched in temporal synchrony. Interestingly, this capacity was recently reported to be modulated by crossmodal correspondence beyond spatiotemporal matching (e.g., consistent facial emotional expressions or articulatory mouth movements matched with sound). To investigate whether such modulatory influence applies to non-social and non-communicative stimuli, we conducted a critical test using audiovisual stimuli free of social information: visually upward (and downward) moving objects paired with a congruent tone of ascending or incongruent (descending) pitch. East Asian infants (8-10 months old) from a metropolitan area in Asia demonstrated successful abstract rule learning in the congruent audiovisual condition and demonstrated weaker learning in the incongruent condition. This implies that preverbal infants use crossmodal dynamic pitch-height correspondence to integrate multisensory information before rule extraction. This result confirms that preverbal infants are ready to use non-social non-communicative information in serving cognitive functions such as rule extraction in a multisensory context.

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