Toddlers with smaller vocabulary than expected for their age are considered late talkers (LT). This study explored the effects of characteristics of words on vocabulary acquisition of 12- to 24-month-old LT children compared with an age matched (AM) and a vocabulary matched (VM) group of typically developing peers. Using the…

Purpose: The finite verb morphology composite (FVMC) is a valid measure for charting children's tense development and for differentiating children with and without language impairment during preschool and early elementary years. However, it is unclear whether FVMC scores vary as a function of language sample elicitation contexts. The current study…

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is characterized by a range of register-typical characteristics. Many of those can be objectively measured, such as acoustic-prosodic and structural-linguistic modifications. Perceived vocal affect, however, is a socio-emotional IDS characteristic and is subjectively assessed. Vocal affect goes beyond acoustic-prosodic…

Despite earlier claims that language abilities are intact in individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), many studies have shown that language development is often delayed and atypical, that is, it develops in line with different cognitive abilities compared to typically developing populations. It is unclear, however, whether general cognitive…

Emerging evidence suggests domain-general processes, including working memory, may contribute to reduced speech production skills in young children. This study compared the phonological short-term (pSTM) and phonological working memory (pWM) abilities of 50 monolingual English-speaking children between 3;6 and 5;11 with typical speech production…

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the discriminant validity of the Persian version of Alberta Language Development Questionnaire (ALDeQ) in Turkish-Persian bilingual children, aged 75 months with 19 months of exposure to Persian, on average. The study sample included the parents of 22 bilingual children with language…

One of the most popular and widely used parent report instruments for assessing early language acquisition is the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). This study compares normative data of the Italian Words and Sentences complete form (WS-CF) and short form (WS-SF). The samples included 752 children for the WS-CF and 816…

Relations between participation in Imagination Library, a book distribution program that serves children from birth through age 5, and children's literacy outcomes in kindergarten were examined. Children (n = 2,428) who participated in the program had greater letter knowledge and higher scores on measures of phonological awareness when compared to…

Purpose: Language sampling is a critical component of language assessments. However, there are many ways to elicit language samples that likely impact the results. The purpose of this study was to examine how different discourse types and elicitation tasks affect various language sampling outcomes. Method: A diverse group of K-3 students (N =…

The purpose of this research study is to compare the effects of digital, dialogic and traditional reading on children's language development aged 48-66 months. Fifty-six randomly selected children enrolled in three different classrooms in a public preschool in Turkey participated in the study. The three classrooms were again randomly assigned as…

This study explores typically developing bilingual children's performance in their English as a heritage language. The aim of this study is to advance our understanding of heritage language expectations and the role of chronological age and bilingual exposure. A broad range of receptive and expressive linguistic domains are investigated as a…

Research Findings: The present study investigates both the proximal processes and contextual influences on children's oral language development in preschool. We examine whether teacher language practices vary across activity settings and program type, which teacher language practices predict children's oral language skills, and potential…

Age of acquisition (AoA) is a measure of word complexity which refers to the age at which a word is typically learned. AoA measures have shown strong correlations with reading comprehension, lexical decision times, and writing quality. AoA scores based on both adult and child data have limitations that allow for error in measurement, and increase…

This study examined the effect of pre-reading vocabulary instruction on learners' attention and vocabulary learning. We randomly assigned participants (L1 = 92; L2 = 88) to one of four conditions: pre-reading instruction, where participants' received explicit instruction on six novel items and read a text with the items repeated eight times;…

Perinatal HIV infection is associated with delayed neurocognitive development, but less is known about children perinatally HIV-exposed but uninfected (CHEU). We compared cognitive and language outcomes in 4-6-year old CHEU versus children HIV-unexposed and uninfected (CHUU) and children living with HIV (CLHIV). We enrolled 1,581 children (77% of…