Purpose Home visiting programs have produced inconsistent outcomes. One challenge for the field is the design and implementation of effective training to support home visiting staff. In part due to a lack of formal training, most home visitors need to develop the majority of their skills on the job. Home visitors typically receive training in their agency's specific model (e.g., HFA, NFP) and, if applicable, curriculum. Increasingly, states and other home visiting systems are developing and/or coordinating more extensive training and support systems beyond model-specific and curricula trainings. To help guide these training efforts and future evaluations of them, this paper reviews research on effective training, particularly principles of training transfer and adult learning. Description Our review summarizes several meta-analyses, reviews, and more recent publications on training transfer and adult learning principles. Assessment Effective training involves not only the introduction and modeling of concepts and skills but also the practice of, evaluation of, and reflection upon these skills. Further, ongoing encouragement of, reward for, and reflection upon use of these skills, particularly by a home visitor's supervisor, are critical for the home visitor's continued use of these skills with families. Conclusion Application of principles of adult learning and training transfer to home visiting training will likely lead to greater transfer of skills from the training environment to work with families. The involvement of both home visitors and their supervisors in training is likely important for this transfer to occur.

Highlights• We developed a state-wide training center for infant home visitors.• Training content was developed through an iterative process of community partner feedback.• Home visitors reported increases in self-confidence following training in most competency areas.• Participant evaluations of training are consistent with positive results from an RCT of training.Abstract This paper informs practice in communitybased home visiting workforce development by describing the development and evaluation of a university-based training certificate program for home visitors and supervisors. The Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF; Wandersman et al., 2008) guides our conceptualization and paper organization. The ISF describes the components involved in translating research findings into effective implementation of prevention programs. We describe implementation and lessons learned from seven development activities: (a) review of the literature, (b) survey of other training initiatives across the country, (c) focus groups with home visitors and supervisors, (d) consultation with individual home visitors, (e) creation of a state advisory board of home visiting providers and stakeholders, (f) evaluation of two pilot trainings, and (g) video development. We then present evaluation data from 49 home visitors and 23 supervisors who completed the training certificate program after the pilot trainings. Both home visitors and supervisors rated training satisfaction highly, reported significant increases in self-efficacy related to the training topics, and reported extensive use of motivational communication techniques, which are the foundational skills of the training content. These and other favorable results reflect the benefits of building on advances in theory and sciencebased practice and of involving providers and stakeholders repeatedly throughout the development process.

PurposeTo evaluate the effect of a NICU parent education program on parents' early language and literacy practices, and on their confidence interpreting and responding to infant signals.DesignSingle group, pre- and post-test, mixed-methods evaluation design.SampleOne hundred and four parents and other caregivers completed questionnaires before and after the one-hour program. Ten parents participated in follow-up interviews.Main Outcome VariablesBefore and after sessions, participants reported on frequency of their current and intended early language and literacy practices, and their confidence interpreting and responding to infant signals. Participants also reported program satisfaction. Interview participants reported their behavior change one to two weeks later.ResultsThe program significantly increased intention to engage in more early language and literacy practices, and increased parent-reported knowledge of how and when to interact with their infants. The majority of interviewed parents reported engaging in these practices one to two weeks later.

Throughout middle childhood and adolescence, hostile intent attributions fairly consistently predict levels of aggression. Across 28 published studies in early childhood, however, researchers have found less consistent relationships. We believe this may be due to a majority of these studies using an inappropriate methodological approach for early childhood, forced-choice questioning. We tested the use of open-ended vs. forced-choice questions about intent in 118 Head Start preschool children. In response to a forced choice question, only about 30% of children attributed intent correctly to a video depicting clearly purposeful behavior. And across 18 video vignettes depicting ambiguous provocation, children's intent attribution scores based on a forced-choice approach demonstrated neither reliability nor validity. Conversely, children's intent attribution scores in response to openended questions demonstrated reliability, correspondence with other aspects of social information processing, and predictive validity in the form of relations to teacher reports of social competence and aggression. Researchers should refrain from utilizing forced-choice approaches to intent attributions in early childhood unless also conducting intent understanding checks. K E Y W O R D S aggression, hostile attributions, preschool, social competence, social information processing | I NTR OD U CTI ONChildren's hostile intent attributions have received much attention from both researchers and prevention and intervention professionals. A meta-analysis of 41 initial studies, including two in early childhood, found that in situations with ambiguous provocation from a peer, aggressive children and peer-rejected children tend to attribute hostile intent to the peer more often than other children do (Many additional studies involving hostile attributions in early childhood have occurred because the Orobio de Castro et al. (2002) meta-analysis. We have identified 28. Many if not most of these investigations, including ours, however, seem to fail to fully recognize and account for limitations to young children's understanding of intention and their abilities to respond meaningfully to assessment questions. Children's understanding of intentionality and the language for it is quite incomplete until at least middle childhood (Fu, Xiao, Killen, & Lee, 2014;Mull & Evans, 2010).Compounding this limitation, researchers have most commonly investigated young children's hostile intent attributions via a forced-choice methodology, and many young children demonstrate response biases to forced choice assessments (Mehrani & Peterson, 2015). To move the field further, we need to understand more fully how young children's limitations impact the validity of the intent attribution data we collect. The present study responds to this need by comparing hostile and benign intent attributions when elicited via open-ended and forced-choice questions.

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