The present study examined the growth of receptive lexical skills in preschoolers over an academic year in relation to teacher speech. The participating students were English language learners and their monolingual English-speaking peers from the same classrooms. The measures of teacher input included indicators of the amount of speech (total…

The relation of social and linguistic input measures to early vocabulary development was examined in 30 low-income African American mother-infant pairs. Observations were conducted when the child was 0 years, 1 month (0;1), 0;4, 0;8, 1;0, 1;6, and 2;0. Maternal input was coded for word types and tokens, contingent responsiveness, and…

Two empirical studies set out explore the relation between breadth and depth of word knowledge and to link these concepts with language acquisition and frequency of language input. The studies found that there was no conceptual distinction between breadth and depth of vocabulary, and that breadth and depth were affected by the same factors for…

Examined the relationship between caregiver input to 9-month-old infants and their subsequent language. Mother-infant dyads were videotaped at ages 9, 12, and 30 months. Language comprehension was measured by parent report and correlated with an independent language measure. Found that the total number of words mothers used when their infants were…

Examined the strength of the association between language exposure estimates and vocabulary learning for simultaneous bilingual infants with differing patterns of exposure to the languages being learned. Findings revealed that the correlation was strong, even for children whose language environments changed by more than 20% between observations.…