Play observations with a total of 400 toddlers and preschoolers were videotaped and rated for Intensity and Quality of play with their parents. Parents were asked about perceived stress and personality characteristics (Big 5). Child's motor, cognitive skills, temperament, and internalizing behaviors were assessed. Study 1 investigated the robustness of play across child age and gender, and examined differences between fathers and mothers. Study 2 explored the vulnerability of play with fathers of children born preterm (PT-fathers) and fathers who had experienced adverse childhoods (AC-fathers). Study 3 investigated child internalizing behaviors. Intensity of play was maintained almost independently of child age and gender. It was similar for AC- and PT-fathers, and similar to maternal Intensity. In contrast, paternal Quality of play was higher with boys and independent of fathers' personality and perceived parenting stress whereas maternal Quality of play was higher with girls and linked to mothers' perceived parenting competence, acceptability of the child, and neuroticism. AC-fathers scored significantly low on Quality, as did PT-fathers, but the Quality of their play became better with growing child age, birth weight, and cognitive (but not motor and temperament) scores. Finally, child internalizing behaviors were negatively related to paternal Quality of play.

Attachment (AQS) of 100 children aged 12 to 24 months was observed, with more than half of the fathers (and mothers) representing higher social status. Children's language comprehension and production were measured using the Bayley Scales for receptive (RLS) and expressive language skills (ELS). Spontaneous book reading conversations in father-child and mother-child dyads were coded from videotapes, capturing five modes of conversation derived from research on dialogic reading. Path modelling examined the association of these modes on children's RLS and ELS in concurrence with parental attachment and education. First time, significant effects of father-child attachment security on children's RLS were revealed (and confirmed for mother-child dyads). Fathers' impact on child language skills could be further explained through modes which inquire and imitate child responses which were related to RLS and ELS, respectively. Although mothers' modes of conversation were associated with the mother-child attachment relationship, the father-child conversations were not so but instead were associated with the father's educational background. KEYWORDS Language pragmatics; dialogic reading; parent gender; fatherhood; picture book How Fathers' Attachment Security and Education Contribute to Early Child Language Skills Above and Beyond Mothers: Five Modes of Conversation under Scrutiny Studies on early language acquisition traditionally focused on the two basic integral facets of language, i.e., comprehension and production. Clearly, universal mechanisms play a role, such that comprehension drives language acquisition insofar as comprehension precedes language production developmentally and exceeds it substantively (see Bornstein & Hendricks, 2012). However, early language acquisition is also clearly susceptible to environmental conditions, of which parent-child interactions that provide children with opportunities for communicative experiences are central. In exploring parents' and children's language use, past studies have therefore increasingly paid attention to the quality of the home environment in the form of social status, and a few studies also began to examine the quality of the parent-child relationship. Different home environments produce different communication contexts and shape language development in such a way that effects of the social status of the families are obvious even when children's language skills in middle-class and upper-class families are CONTACT Lukas Teufl

Given the substantial heterogeneity across studies on parent-child play, we comparatively explored fatherchild and mother-child play while controlling for effects of the play settings in two diverse situations. We pursued three open questions: (a) how play behaviors inherently differ between the parents, and (b) relate to play quality, and (c) what does this mean for the parent-child relationship? Father-child and mother-child play was separately instructed and videotaped in 80 two-parent families with children aged 18-58 months (44 boys). We offered a physical and a cognitive game, and analyzed each parent-child dyad after rating 10 characteristic parental play behaviors (Encouraging, Surprising, Teasing, Explaining, Confirming, Instructing, Restricting, Lampooning, Sound-Imitating, and Caressing) and three subscales of the Play Quality scale (Piskernik & Ruiz, 2018). External observers also assessed father-and mother-child relationships with the Attachment-Q Sort (Waters, 1995). Results suggest that types of game, rather than parent gender, predicted parental play behaviors. Parents differed in behaviors typical for involving children mentally (e.g., parents explained, confirmed, and surprised) or are popular for stimulating children physically (e.g., parents frequently encouraged, limited restrictions, and imitated sounds). High levels of encouraging and confirming behaviors were related to high quality across games with frequent bouts of teasing. During cognitive games, fathers obtained lower quality than mothers, yet both showed the same quality levels in physical games, where fathers, however, were less instructive and more restrictive while also caressing. High play quality in both games was not associated with mother-child but linked to fatherchild attachment.

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Background Childhood is characterized by a wide array of cognitive and social-emotional developments, which facilitate the overall learning capacities. Therefore, children should be seen as a target group for programs and interventions concerning health literacy. An appropriate measurement tool for taping children's health literacy is still needed since the quality of the current tools does not reach satisfying levels and/or these tools can only be applied in clinical settings. This study aimed to develop an age-appropriate measurement tool to fill this gap. Methods The authors used four cognitive processes (access, understand, appraise and apply) and five topics (physical activity, nutrition, media, psycho-social health, and health care) to develop the items. These items were then discussed with primary school teachers and health intervention experts. Developmental characteristics of the middle childhood guided and shaped the decisions on the test and item formats. During the pilot testing, 155 pupils aged 8 to 10 years fillet out the 60 items of the piloting-version of the QUIGK-K. Results After the pilot testing, a reduction to 40 items based on the data was made. The final QUIGK-K shows (very) good quality with regards to reliability and validity. Conclusions The application of the QUIGK-K takes 40 minutes and can be conducted in a group context. The test yields five scores representing the overall level of health literacy and detailed information on the four cognitive processes involved. Therefore, the QUIGK-K fills in the gap of the missing age-appropriate measurement tool for health literacy. Key messages An age-appropriate measurement tool for health literacy is now available for children aged 8-10 years which allows profile analyses via five test scores. The (very) satisfying test quality may be attributed to the design as a performance test and the active integration of the developmental characteristics of the target group.