Preschool teachers' perceptions about relationships with students (teacher-child relationships [TCRs]) predict children's subsequent social competence (SC) and academic progress. Why this is so remains unclear. Do TCRs shape children's development, or do child attributes influence both TCRs and subsequent development? Relations between TCRs and…

This study attempted to investigate the effects of two forms of text-based glosses, namely dynamic and non-dynamic glosses, on vocabulary learning of EFL learners. To this end, two experimental groups and one control group, each comprising 25 participants, took part in the study. The DIALANG test was employed as a homogenizing tool to ensure the…

There is a growing body of research examining the efficacy of teaching a foreign language using procedures that would lead to generative learning. This study assessed the acquisition of foreign tacts and the emergence of bidirectional intraverbal responses (native-foreign and foreign-native) as a function of target stimulus preference. Three…

Both classic thought experiments and recent empirical evidence suggest that children frequently encounter new words whose meanings are underdetermined by the extralinguistic contexts in which they occur. The role that these referentially ambiguous events play in children's word learning is central to ongoing debates in the field. Do children learn…

There is considerable lab-based evidence for successful incidental learning, in which a learner's attention is directed away from the to-be-learned stimulus and towards another stimulus. In this study, we extend incidental learning research into the language learning classroom. Three groups of adult second language (L2) learners (N = 52) engaged…

Infants experience language in rich multisensory environments. For example, they may first be exposed to the word applesauce while touching, tasting, smelling, and seeing applesauce. In three experiments using different methods we asked whether the number of distinct senses linked with the semantic features of objects would impact word recognition…

Despite the growing interest in incorporating textual glosses into second language (L2) reading in hypermedia and paper media, no agreements have been reached as to whether and what extent a textual gloss facilitates L2 learners' vocabulary acquisition in hypermedia and paper media. The present study meta-analysed the overall effects of textual…

The collocation frequency of words in the language environment contributes to early vocabulary development. Vocabulary size, in turn, predicts children's reading comprehension skills later in development. Both collocation frequency and reading comprehension have been connected to inferential reasoning at different time points in development. Here,…

This dissertation is a program evaluation of the Building Blocks of Comprehension vocabulary program, which was first implemented during the 2019-2020 school year by the English department at the school site. The study aimed to investigate the impact of morphological instruction on student vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension.…

There has been a great deal of interest in second language vocabulary studies regarding the potential of reading as a source of incidental vocabulary learning. More recently, several studies have also focused on comparing reading with other input modes, such as listening, or reading-while-listening. Among these studies there are two -- Brown et…

Children with delays in expressive language (late talkers) have heterogeneous developmental trajectories. Some are late bloomers who eventually "catch-up," but others have persisting delays or are later diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD). Early in development it is unclear which children will belong to which group. We…

This article explores primary school teachers' views and practices in literacy instruction to support students' word knowledge development. This study provides insights into how primary school teachers with a deep interest in literacy understand and apply the literacy strategies they employ in their classrooms, and how previous professional…

Questions about early word knowledge pervade the literature on both typical and atypical language trajectories. To determine which words an infant knows, researchers have relied on two types of measures--caregiver-report and eye-gaze behavior. When these measures are compared, however, their results frequently fail to converge, making it difficult…

The purpose of this article is to describe a 40+ year journey during which researchers have endeavored to design and evaluate an integrated, empirically based reading intervention for secondary students and to chronicle the lessons learned as well as suggest future directions for this type of work. Initial development of the intervention began in…

Purpose: The aims of this study were to explore expressive vocabulary growth rates of children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) during critical periods of brain development (birth to 3 years) as well as the factors that influence the trajectories of vocabulary growth in these early years of development. Of primary interest was the effect of…