Infant and Preschool Learning News

April 30, 2025

Top Headlines

By 15 Months, Infants Begin to Learn New Words for Objects, Even Those They've Never Seen

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study by developmental scientists offers the first evidence that infants as young as 15 months can identify an object they have learned about from listening to language -- even if the object ...

Father's Mental Health Can Impact Children for Years

Apr. 19, 2025 — Five-year-olds exposed to paternal depression are more likely to have behavioral issues in grade school, researchers ...

Nurturing Now, Thriving Later: The Lasting Power of Affectionate Mothering

Apr. 16, 2025 — Affectionate mothering in childhood may have a lasting impact on important personality traits, potentially influencing life outcomes such as educational achievement, economic success, and health and well-being, according to new research. The ...

Perceiving One's Own Body: Babies Sense Their Heartbeat and Breathing

Apr. 7, 2025 — Body signals such as heartbeat and breathing accompany us constantly, often unnoticed as background noise of our perception. Even in the earliest years of life, these signals are important as they contribute to the development of self-awareness and ...

Latest Headlines

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An Immune Cell May Explain How Maternal Inflammation Causes Neurodevelopmental Disorder

Apr. 1, 2025 — A research group has uncovered a potential mechanism linking maternal inflammation to delayed neurodevelopment in infants. The research suggests the ...

Using Everyday Products During Pregnancy Can Affect Newborn's Metabolism, Study Finds

Apr. 2, 2025 — A newly published study found that a mother's exposure to phthalates during pregnancy can affect their newborn's metabolism and brain development. ...

Why Don't We Remember Being a Baby? New Study Provides Clues

Mar. 20, 2025 — Though we learn so much during our first years of life, we can't, as adults, remember specific events from that time. Researchers have long believed we don't hold onto these experiences because the ...

Bridging Nature and Nurture: Study Reveals Brain's Flexible Foundation from Birth

Mar. 17, 2025 — By studying never-before-seen details of brain connectivity in human infants, researchers have identified how a balance of innate structure and ...

Oxytocin System of Breastfeeding Affected in Mothers With Postnatal Depression

Mar. 14, 2025 — The oxytocin system -- which helps release breast milk and strengthens the bond between mother and baby -- may be affected during breastfeeding in ...

Good Parenting Helps, but Has Limits Under Major Deprivation

Mar. 11, 2025 — Parenting skills can make a big difference in fostering a newborn's language acquisition and cognition, but there may be a limit to how far parenting can go to make up the challenges to developing ...

Creativity Boosts Standardized Literacy and Numeracy Test Scores: Australia

Mar. 4, 2025 — A groundbreaking study shows that creativity plays an essential role in academic success, suggesting that students who think outside the box are more likely to excel in literacy and numeracy ...

Associative Learning: Primary School Children Outperform All Other Age Groups

Feb. 27, 2025 — The ability to make the connection between an event and its consequences -- experts use the term associative learning -- is a crucial skill for ...

Cold Treatment Does Not Appear to Protect Preterm Infants from Disability or Death Caused by Oxygen Loss

Feb. 25, 2025 — Lowering the body temperature of preterm infants (born at 33 to 35 weeks of pregnancy) with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE -- a type of brain ...

Another Way Longer Paternity Leaves Help New Parents

Feb. 20, 2025 — A longer paternity leave after the birth of a child can improve the co-parenting relationship between moms and dads in a key way, a new study finds. Researchers found that mothers were less likely to ...

Group Childcare Positively Affects Toddler Development

Feb. 13, 2025 — Many Japanese mothers are reluctant to send their children to childcare before the age of three due to the 'Three-Year-Old Myth,' which suggests that healthy development requires a child to ...

Preterm Babies Receive Insufficient Pain Management: Study

Jan. 27, 2025 — A large proportion of babies born very early need intensive care, which can be painful. But the healthcare system fails to provide pain relief to the full extent. This is shown by the largest survey ...

Do Parents Really Have a Favorite Child? Here's What New Research Says

Jan. 16, 2025 — A new study found that younger siblings generally receive more favorable treatment from parents. Meanwhile, older siblings are often granted more autonomy, and parents are less controlling towards ...

Heart Rate Activity Influences When Infants Speak

Dec. 17, 2024 — A psychologist found that a baby's first sweet sounds and early attempts at forming words are directly linked to the baby's heart ...

Naughty or Nice? Many Parents Rely on Threats to Manage Misbehavior -- From No Dessert to No Santa

Dec. 16, 2024 — When young children's behavior becomes challenging, many parents resort to threats -- from taking away toys to threatening that Santa will skip their house, a national poll ...

Mothers' Language Choices Have Double the Impact in Bilingual Families

Dec. 10, 2024 — New research shows that mothers have twice the impact on language exposure, challenging traditional parenting advice. In a new study, researchers found that there wasn't a single strategy that ...

Preschool Education: A Key to Supporting Allophone Children

Nov. 28, 2024 — A Canadian study reveals that allophone children often face learning and communication difficulties in kindergarten, which can negatively impact their educational ...

Language Used by Mothers Affects Oxytocin Levels of Infants

Nov. 25, 2024 — Infants whose mothers regularly use language to describe what their child is thinking or feeling, have higher levels of the hormone oxytocin, finds a new ...

Beyond Screen Time: Complex Factors Shaping Child Development

Nov. 25, 2024 — New research challenges views on screen time, revealing factors such as parental mental health and the type of screen being used may have some impact on child ...

Need a Landing Pad for Helicopter Parenting? Frame Tasks as Learning

Nov. 22, 2024 — Parents are much less likely to intervene when their young children are getting dressed or performing other simple chores if those tasks are framed as learning opportunities, according to a new ...

Consistent Bedtime Linked With Better Child Emotion and Behavior Regulation

Nov. 11, 2024 — A consistent bedtime may be more important to a child's ability to control their emotions and behavior than the duration or quality of their sleep, according to a new ...

Toddlers Understand Concept of Possibility

Nov. 4, 2024 — Children too young to know words like 'impossible' and 'improbable' nonetheless understand how possibility works, finds new work with two- and three-year-olds. The findings ...

A Common Steroid Therapy May Influence Brain Development in Preterm Infants

Oct. 31, 2024 — Antenatal corticosteroids (ACS) are an established therapy for pregnant women at risk of preterm birth. Researchers have found that babies given ACS had notably smaller volumes of two key brain ...

Screen-Free Bedtimes Boost Toddler Sleep, New Research Shows

Oct. 22, 2024 — A world-first randomised controlled trial (RCT) of toddler screen time shows that removing screen time in the hour before bed improves the quality of toddler ...

Parenting Programs Help Kids, but Provide Insufficient Support for Parents

Oct. 9, 2024 — Parenting programs that address both mental health and parenting skills can improve children's development, but often fall short when it comes to offering effective mental-health support for ...

Feet First: AI Reveals How Infants Connect With Their World

Oct. 1, 2024 — Researchers explored how infants act purposefully by attaching a colorful mobile to their foot and tracking movements with a Vicon 3D motion capture system. The study tested AI's ability to ...

Babies Born to Women Consuming a High Fat, Sugary Diet at Greater Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes in Later Life

Sep. 13, 2024 — Babies born to pregnant women with obesity are more likely to develop heart problems and diabetes as adults due to fetal damage caused by the high-fat, high-energy diet of their ...

Wearable Brain Imaging Device Shines a Light on How Babies Respond in Real-World Situations

Sep. 11, 2024 — A technology which uses harmless light waves to measure activity in babies' brains has provided the most complete picture to date of brain functions like hearing, vision and cognitive processing ...

Early Exposure to Diverse Faces Helps Babies Overcome Prejudices Later in Life

Sep. 10, 2024 — Babies who have more diverse social contacts in the first years of their life can get over their prejudices more easily by the age of 17, according to new ...

Researcher Finds Sound Progress in Babies' Speech Development

Aug. 23, 2024 — The sounds babies make in their first year of life may be less random and more self-driven than previously believed, according to new ...