I am very honored to have been asked to continue as Editor of Infants & Young Children (IYC): An Interdisciplinary Journal of Early Childhood Intervention for another 5 years! I am thankful to Wolters Kluwer for continuing its commitment to this journal and its mission to enhance early childhood intervention for children aged birth to 5 years with disabilities, or at risk for disability, and their families. I will continue to focus on issues that are international in scope and relevant to a wide audience of professional disciplines involved in IYC.
In addition, IYC will continue to provide encouragement and support to new authors, as I feel strongly that the publication process can provide invaluable feedback for improvement and eventual success for those new to the process of publishing. I also send out most manuscripts for review as I feel prospective author(s) should have the opportunity to receive feedback from an expert in the field to help them understand publication standards.
This feedback has been provided by the most dedicated and knowledgeable group of editors who form the IYC editorial board. I am immensely grateful for their service to IYC over the past years. I am also grateful to our international acquisition editor Robin McWilliam, our methodological consultant Carl Dunst, and our managing editor extraordinaire, Linda Procko (who does IYC from retirement!) without whom the journal would not be published. These individuals are the reason that IYC continues to grow and that I can continue as Editor.
Finally, I want to thank the readers of IYC who are dedicated to early childhood intervention. Our field has grown to provide evidence-based intervention across the world. Yet, our work continues as the needs of the infants, young children, and families continue to grow in diversity, complexity, and urgency!
CURRENT ISSUE
Our first article by Bulbin Sucuoglu, Hatice Bakkaloglu, Seyda Demir, and Derya Atalan provides evidence for the benefit of participating in an inclusive preschool for children with disabilities. The study collected data for 1 year on 60 children with disabilities and 75 children without disabilities. The children's social skills, problem behaviors, school adjustment, student-teacher relationships and development were measured at the beginning and end of the year. After 1 year, all the children made developmental gains, with the greatest gains made by children with disabilities in an inclusive preschool setting. Of interest, social skills and school adjustment levels were significant predictors of developmental gains in children with disabilities. The authors conclude with recommendations about preschool curriculum, teacher training for inclusive programs, and the importance of teaching of social skills to children with disabilities.
Our next article by Susan Dickerson Mayes describes psychometric information on a short form of the Checklist for Autism Spectrum Disorder (CASD). The six-item short-form checklist was compared with the 30-item checklist to establish sensitivity and specificity of the short form and to see whether scores differed by the children's age. The sample included 1,266 children aged 1-17 years with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 97 toddlers and preschoolers with diagnosis other than ASD, and 65 typical toddlers and preschoolers. Both the long- and short-form scores were somewhat higher for toddlers and preschoolers than for older children with ASD, and all toddlers and preschoolers with ASD had scores in the autism range for both the long and short forms. Both also correctly identified typical toddlers and preschoolers and toddlers and preschoolers with disorders other than ASD as not having ASD. Results suggest high sensitivity and specificity for toddlers and preschoolers on both forms of the CASD.
Alysse Melville Loomis and Cristina Mogro-Wilson address the significance of aversive events on early social development in a group of preschoolers from a predominant Hispanic community. Descriptive, correlational, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to explore the relationship between cumulative adversity, teacher-rated and -observed measures of self-regulation, and student-teacher conflict. The study found that more than half of the preschoolers in the sample experienced at least one type of adversity, and this cumulative exposure affected teacher-rated child self-regulation and the student-teacher relationship. The authors suggest the need for further research on the role of adversity in preschools and for children who are Hispanic.
Our next article by Lixin Ren, Aileen S. Garcia, Jan M. Esteraich, Amy Encinger, Helen H. Raikes, and Ibrahim H. Acar focuses the role of parental nativity on parent-child relationships and social-emotional development in a sample of preschool-aged children and their families attending an Educare/Head Start program. The sample included 199 preschool children, and 134 of the parents were born in the United States and 65 born in Mexico. Data were collected from parents on parent-child closeness and conflict and teacher-reported children's social-emotional strength and behavioral concerns. Study staff evaluated children's executive functioning and behavior regulation. The results suggested that parent-child conflict was related to behavioral concerns and lower levels of executive function among children with U.S.-born parents but not among children with Mexican-born parents. The authors discus the role of parenting and cultural background on the social development of children.
Our last article written by Dana C. Childress, Sarah Nichols, and Melissa Schnurr focuses on service coordination as required by IDEA, Part C early intervention program. The survey was designed and implemented in eight states and responses were received from 769 service coordinators and other personnel in these states. The results provide an overview of the service coordination activities being implemented in each state in the context of each state's early intervention system. In addition, several needs for the future of service coordination were identified by the respondents. The authors describe how the survey findings are being used by representatives from the participating states to develop action plans to improve the professional development of service coordinators in the context of their state systems.
I would like to thank the authors for submitting their work to IYC and the reviewers who assisted the editorial process by offering salient suggestions to bring these manuscripts to publication. The articles represent international authors, authors from the AUCD network, and new authors.
-Mary Beth Bruder, PhD
Editor