The Baby Blog
A place to highlight new published findings, shine a spotlight on the researchers in our field, and share new tools of the trade that might help make life easier for ICIS Membership.
Voices from the Field: Community-Based Solutions for Young Children in Guatemala
Background Guatemala, a Central American nation of 18 million inhabitants, boasts rich cultural, ethnic, and geographical diversity along with abundant natural and human resources. An estimated 40.19% of the total population is under the age of 18 (6.57 million...
Towards a science of both variability and consistency in infant development
by Leher Singh, Dean D’Souza, and Michael C. Frank Infancy researchers often seek to understand the initial state of the human mind. The goal of this research has traditionally been to identify basic principles of development common to all infants. This viewpoint...
Born in a time of climate crisis: Understanding the risks and supporting the wellbeing of infants in the 21st century
Raising children during a time of climate crisis can pose many challenges for parents as well as professionals who work with them. Surveys show that most people are now aware of, and alarmed by, the impacts of climate change on the physical environment (Edelman,...
Parent-Child Interactions Support Early Language Development in Diverse Families
The formative years of a child’s life, from birth to age five, are pivotal for language development. During this crucial period, children rapidly acquire sounds, words, and communication skills essential for school readiness and future success. Central to this process...
Researcher Spotlight: New ICIS Communications Committee Members 2024-2027
In our recent Newsletter, we introduced the new ICIS Communications Committee team members for the 2024-2027 cycle. In addition to Kiley Hamlin, Vanessa LoBue, Jessica Bradshaw, and Ron Seifer, and with thanks to outgoing members Mireille Babineau and Sheena Carter,...
In Memoriam: Thérèse Gouin Décarie
I wish to share the sad news that Professor Thérèse Gouin Décarie (1923-2024) has passed away on April 2nd. Professor Décarie was internationally known for her research on infant development and has been a leader in the establishment of the field of developmental...
Electronic books for Ukrainian children soften the blows of war
by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, University of Delaware (USA) & Natalia Kucirkova, University of Stavanger (Norway) In 1971, Michael S. Hart digitized the U.S. Declaration of Independence, making it the first e-book in the world. When e-books for children began to...
Making fathers more visible in parenting research
by Natasha J. Cabrera, Ph.D. & Pinar Karan, MA. In 2018, my colleagues and I wrote an article emphasizing the non-contested fact that fathers are parents too, and that research on parents should intentionally include them (Cabrera, Volling, & Barr, 2018). We...
Protecting Maternal Health – For the sake of mothers and their children
by Vanessa LoBue January 23, 2024 will mark the 8th Annual Maternal Health Awareness Day—the one day a year we come together to raise awareness about the country’s maternal morbidity crisis and how we can improve physical and mental health outcomes for mothers. This...
Rethinking Perturbations in Naturalistic Studies of Development
Drew H. Abney University of Georgia For many decades, some developmental scientists have used the framework of dynamic systems to guide theory and prediction about how human infants change while embedded in a complex, social world. A dynamic systems framework has...