Children who grow up without being surrounded by greenery, and having ready access to natural environments, have up to 55 per cent higher risk of developing mental health disorders later in life, scientists in Denmark have found.

Interactions between caregivers, including early childhood education and care (ECEC) providers, and babies may help to shape the same brain regions adults use for vocal emotion processing, UK researchers have found.

A new UK-based study has found that boys from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit the most from early learning, with participation in early learning narrowing the skills gap between them and boys from more advantaged circumstances by up to 80 per cent.

United States researchers have demonstrated that preschool children show clear evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender, with males from African American backgrounds receiving less positive responses from their peers in a study involving neutral images.

The New Zealand Government has announced a move to ensure that subsidised in home care, known in Australia as family day care (FDC) becomes “professionalised” through mandated qualification levels for educators, to ensure “better and more consistent quality”.