Tools of the Mind project has up an ambitious goal to tackle the problem of early childhood self-regulated learning as many children come to school without the ability to their social, emotional, and cognitive behaviors.

Researchers from the Department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment at the University of Granada have adapted a set of assessment criteria created by lecturers from the USA to the Spanish language.

Some infants are called difficult, challenging parents because they cry frequently, are very active, and may not adapt well to new situations or people. Other infants are described as easy, full of smiles, adaptable, and not very active.

Having close ties with parents is obviously good for preschoolers, but what does that really mean? It means that the preschoolers are better able to control their own behavior by showing patience, deliberation, restraint, and even maturity.

Variations in heart rate patterns provide information on how the nervous system functions in adults and children. Obstetricians have long considered heart rate patterns to be important indicators of fetal well-being during the prenatal period as well as in labor and delivery.

When a young child experiences negative emotions—anger, anxiety, or distress—can his parents respond in a way that fosters the child’s emotional development?

A simple questionnaire developed at the University of Oregon and requiring no more than 15 minutes of a parent’s time before or after a doctor’s appointment is credited with a 224-percent increase in referrals of year-old and 2-year-old children with mild developmental delays in a yearlong study.

Anxious or depressed mothers-to-be are at increased risk of having children who will experience sleep problems in infancy and toddlerhood, finds a study that published this month in Early Human Development.

The relationship between a mother and her infant is believed by many to be the foundation of healthy childhood development, but researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have found pregnancy acceptance to be the first step in forming the mother/child bond.

Children who are part of the cool group are more likely to be influenced by their friends than children who are friends with peers who are kind, nice, and well-liked.

In the first study to examine how children talk about the time-related features of their experiences--when, how often, in what order events occur--researchers have found intriguing changes as children grow older. The study’s findings may have implications for understanding these aspects of cognitive development as well as for questioning child witnesses and victims.

While federal programs such as No Child Left Behind emphasize the importance of academic skills to school success and achievement, there is growing interest in how social skills develop and how they contribute to learning.