Purpose: Vocabulary skills in children are typically measured with norm-referenced assessments of receptive and expressive vocabulary. Language sample analysis is an alternative method of examining vocabulary actually produced in communicative events and may be better suited to exposing subtle vocabulary weaknesses. Here, we examine the…

A basic question about bilingual development is how the acquisition of one language affects the acquisition of the other. Previous findings are few and mixed. The present study addressed this question with longitudinal data on the dual-language vocabulary growth of 149 US-born children from Spanish-speaking immigrant families, who were followed…

Purpose: The development of vocabulary size in deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) children and adolescents can be delayed compared to their peers due to lack of access to early language input. Complementary vocabulary interventions are reported in the literature. Our aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention methods for their vocabulary…

Purpose: Prior work has found that "late talkers" (LTs) as a group continue to demonstrate lower language and reading outcomes compared to their typically developing (TD) peers even into young adulthood. Others identified that children diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD) show difficulties later with theory of mind (ToM)…

This study investigated the psycholinguistic and child-related variables that modulate vocabulary development and the so-called receptive-expressive gap in child L2 learners of Gaelic with English as their L1. In total, 50 6- to 8-year-old English-Gaelic bilingual children attending Gaelic-medium immersion education were administered the English…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether families of children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) are organized similarly to those of typically developing, typically hearing (TH) children and whether the dimensions of family dynamics and environment are related to spoken language development similarly in children with and without…

Purpose: Prior studies report conflicting descriptions of the relationships between phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary, and speech perception in preschoolers with speech disorders. This study sought to determine the nature of these relationships in a sample of school-aged children with residual speech sound errors affecting /[voiced alveolar…

For the first time, this study investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children matched on language comprehension (M age equivalent = ~ 44 months) are more likely to retain words when learning from colour photographs than black-and-white cartoons. Participants used mutual exclusivity to fast…

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…

Background: This study examined predictive relationships between two indices of language--receptive vocabulary and morphological comprehension--and inhibition in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. Methods: Participants included 30 children with SLI and 41 TD age-matched peers (8-12 years). At…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine whether oral bilingualism could be an advantage for children with hearing loss when learning new words. Method: Twenty monolingual and 13 bilingual children with hearing loss were compared with each other and with 20 monolingual and 20 bilingual children with normal hearing on receptive vocabulary…

Language is vital for social interaction, leading some to suggest early linguistic ability paves the way for good adolescent mental health. The relation between age-5 vocabulary and adolescent internalizing symptoms was examined in two U.K. birth cohorts that are nationally representative in terms of sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status: the…

The ability to distinguish lies from sincere false statements requires understanding a speaker's communicative intentions and is argued to develop through linguistic interaction. We tested whether this ability was delayed in 26 children with severe-to-profound hearing loss who, based on vocabulary size, were thought to have relatively limited…

Purpose: The current study compared the effects of direct instruction versus indirect exposure on multiple aspects of novel word learning for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with typical language development (TLD). Method: Participants included 36 children with DLD and 45 children with TLD. All children were in the…

Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine whether otitis media (OM) in early childhood has an impact on language development in later childhood. Methods: We analyzed data from 1,344 second-generation (Generation 2) participants in the Raine Study, a longitudinal pregnancy cohort established in Perth, Western Australia, between 1989 and 1991. OM…