Considering Autonomous Exploration in Healthy Environments: Reflections from an Urban Wildscape

Autonomous exploration should be considered in the creation of healthy environments since autonomy is an important developmental experience for children. For a group of boys in Raleigh, N.C., U.S. during the period 2002–2006, autonomous exploration was a meaningful experience. Results of a qualitative research project (n = 5) which highlight the importance of autonomous exploration are organized within a proposed framework for thick description. The framework creates verisimilitude by reporting on the context, social action and cultural context, and behavior and intentionality. The context of Raleigh and urban wildscapes furnished areas ripe for exploration. The social action and cultural context of attachment supported the autonomous exploration through scaffolded experiences of autonomy. The intentionality of the behavior was a desire to distinct themselves through a focus on individual development and the pursuit of extraordinary experiences. The ultimate outcomes of autonomous exploration for the boys were the development of long-term, intimate friendships and confidence in their decision-making ability. As cities become more health-focused, attention should be paid to preserve the rough edges of a city for children to explore.

A Contactless Method for Measuring Full-Day, Naturalistic Motor Behavior Using Wearable Inertial Sensors

How can researchers best measure infants' motor experiences in the home? Body position—whether infants are held, supine, prone, sitting, or upright—is an important developmental experience. However, the standard way of measuring infant body position, video recording by an experimenter in the home, can only capture short instances, may bias measurements, and conflicts with physical distancing guidelines resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we introduce and validate an alternative method that uses machine learning algorithms to classify infants' body position from a set of wearable inertial sensors. A laboratory study of 15 infants demonstrated that the method was sufficiently accurate to measure individual differences in the time that infants spent in each body position. Two case studies showed the feasibility of applying this method to testing infants in the home using a contactless equipment drop-off procedure.

Playing with gender: taking up and challenging heteronormativity in an early childhood education setting

This study challenges a common view that sexualities and the topic of sexuality are irrelevant and inappropriate to children’s lives. In early childhood education, sexuality is generally viewed as an innate developmental experience that evolves over time as children grows. Framed in a postmodernist and queer perspective, this study upholds sexuality as a social construct influenced by cultural and societal values. This study examines how heteronormativity is discursively constructed in an early childhood education setting. Participant observation was employed and video recorded with ten kindergarten children and their early childhood educators. First, the children were found to employ a number of discourses, including: “hair;” “clothes;” “colours;” “masculinity as the rejection of femininity;” “superhero” and “princess play.” Secondly, the findings suggest that play is a site for children to transgress hegemonic discourses regarding genders and sexualities. Thirdly, the early childhood educator was found to be a critical role in this transgressive play by posing questions and problematizing children’s heteronormative assumptions.

Playing with gender: taking up and challenging heteronormativity in an early childhood education setting

This study challenges a common view that sexualities and the topic of sexuality are irrelevant and inappropriate to children’s lives. In early childhood education, sexuality is generally viewed as an innate developmental experience that evolves over time as children grows. Framed in a postmodernist and queer perspective, this study upholds sexuality as a social construct influenced by cultural and societal values. This study examines how heteronormativity is discursively constructed in an early childhood education setting. Participant observation was employed and video recorded with ten kindergarten children and their early childhood educators. First, the children were found to employ a number of discourses, including: “hair;” “clothes;” “colours;” “masculinity as the rejection of femininity;” “superhero” and “princess play.” Secondly, the findings suggest that play is a site for children to transgress hegemonic discourses regarding genders and sexualities. Thirdly, the early childhood educator was found to be a critical role in this transgressive play by posing questions and problematizing children’s heteronormative assumptions.

INDIA'S DEVELOPMENTAL EXPERIENCE, STRENGTHS AND SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES

The political leadership in India has realized since independence in the year 1947 that it needs to create distinct political, economic and social conditions to move on the path of development based on the human and natural capabilities of India that qualify it to reach the ranks of major powers, the most important characteristic of public policies in India is the comprehensiveness of its results And its outputs for large segments of Indian society, which necessitated attention to developing high-level strategies in various sectors and paying attention to internal challenges and external threats. India pursued the path of development and became an economically advanced country that competes with major powers in the scientific and technological field and became advanced in the field of emerging energy and entered the nuclear club.

Deafness Weakens Interareal Couplings in the Auditory Cortex

The function of the cerebral cortex essentially depends on the ability to form functional assemblies across different cortical areas serving different functions. Here we investigated how developmental hearing experience affects functional and effective interareal connectivity in the auditory cortex in an animal model with years-long and complete auditory deprivation (deafness) from birth, the congenitally deaf cat (CDC). Using intracortical multielectrode arrays, neuronal activity of adult hearing controls and CDCs was registered in the primary auditory cortex and the secondary posterior auditory field (PAF). Ongoing activity as well as responses to acoustic stimulation (in adult hearing controls) and electric stimulation applied via cochlear implants (in adult hearing controls and CDCs) were analyzed. As functional connectivity measures pairwise phase consistency and Granger causality were used. While the number of coupled sites was nearly identical between controls and CDCs, a reduced coupling strength between the primary and the higher order field was found in CDCs under auditory stimulation. Such stimulus-related decoupling was particularly pronounced in the alpha band and in top–down direction. Ongoing connectivity did not show such a decoupling. These findings suggest that developmental experience is essential for functional interareal interactions during sensory processing. The outcomes demonstrate that corticocortical couplings, particularly top-down connectivity, are compromised following congenital sensory deprivation.

The Therapeutic Relationship Reexamined: Clinical and Neurobiological Aspects of Empathic Attunement

This article explores salient aspects of the therapeutic relationship, including transference, nontransference (the “real” relationship), and empathic attunement. Evidence for a mirror neuron system mediating empathy in primates and humans is presented. A clinical illustration describes the interplay between impaired early attachment, developmental experience, psychopathology, mirror neuron dysfunction, and the role of empathic attunement toward facilitating clinical improvement.

Insights Into Category Sorting Flexibility in Bilingual Children: Results of a Cognitive Lab Study

Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore how bilingual children shift sets to gain flexibility when forming categories. Using a cognitive lab approach focused on understanding how learners approach problems, we asked children to sort 10 sets of pictures representing common objects in two different ways and to explain their rationale for the sort. We explored the relationship between age and language use on their performance. Method Forty-six typically developing Spanish–English bilingual children (25 girls, 21 boys) participated in the study. They ranged in age from 4;0 to 10;11 (years;months). Receptive and expressive responses to a novel category sorting task were collected. Results Forty-four of the 46 children tested were able to perform the category sorting task. Within language, receptive and expressive category sorting scores were positively and significantly correlated while only expressive scores were significantly associated across languages. There were significant correlations between the sorting scores and age and language output and input. Children's ability to provide expressive responses explaining their sort strategy was moderately correlated with their language experience, especially English output. Conclusions The category sorting task proved useful in eliciting sorting behaviors and naming from the children tested. The age effect suggests that sorting may reflect their general developmental experience rather than their language-specific experience. The cognitive lab approach allowed us to understand how children shift sets and verbalize their understanding of the categorization process. Knowing how children approach this task can inform future work to develop ways to strategically select language intervention goals and document progress.