Purpose: Previously, Lancaster and Camarata (2019) showed that the continuum/spectrum model of the developmental language disorder (DLD) best explained the high heterogeneity of symptoms in children with DLD. We hypothesize that the continuum/spectrum approach can include not only children with DLD but also typically developing (TD) children with…

Children learn language by listening to speech from caregivers around them. However, the type and quantity of speech input that children are exposed to change throughout early childhood in ways that are poorly understood due to the small samples (few participants, limited hours of observation) typically available in developmental psychology. Here…

Causation is a core feature of human cognition and language. How children learn about intricate causal meanings is yet unresolved. Here, we focus on how children learn verbs that express causation. Such verbs, known as lexical causatives (e.g., break and raise), lack explicit morphosyntactic markers indicating causation, thus requiring that the…

Young learners are known to extend verb regularity further than it actually is. When it happens, this children's overregularization phenomenon can be a result of several reasons: a failed linguistic development due to confusion between rules and memory, a lack of feedback from adults, and problems with cognitive development. The present study…

Purpose: The Arabic verb system features a nonlinear root and pattern derivational morphology. Previous studies suggest that young Arabic and Hebrew speakers' early verb use is based on semantic complexity rather than derivational morphological structure. The present study examines the role of morphological and semantic complexity in the emergence…

Background: In typically developing (TD) children, gesture emerges around 9 months of age, allowing children to communicate prior to speech. Due to the important role gesture plays in the early communication of autistic and TD children, various tasks have been used to assess gesture ability. However, few data exist on whether and how tasks…

Joint attention and imitation are thought to facilitate a developmental cascade of language and social communication skills. Delays in developing these skills may affect the quality of children's social interactions and subsequent language development. We examined how responding to joint attention and object imitation skills predicted rate of…

The current study used a multiple baseline across behaviors design to evaluate a rapid coaching intervention for teaching two caregivers to implement naturalistic language interventions (NLIs) with their child with autism. Coaches were preservice behavior analysts completing a personnel preparation program in applied behavior analysis who…

Oral language is the primary means through which a child controls, describes, organises, and evaluates their life experiences and their ability to use oral language which effectively impacts their future literacy development. Currently, the world is awash with dynamic change and constant disruption. These include natural disasters such as the…

Research Findings: Early elementary school is a crucial time for the development of executive functions, but less is known about the impact of parent-child narratives on executive function development in children of this age group. This study aims to investigate the influence of parental scaffolding styles in parent-child co-constructed narratives…

We test children's distributive and collective sentence interpretations and the variables that predict them. In our first experiment, we establish that adult English collective sentences with "the" or "some" in the subject are categorically collective in their interpretations. We further demonstrate that children's collective…

Associations between home learning opportunities, parental growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is malleable), and children's academic skills have been documented primarily in European descent communities. Less is known about other communities. This study examined associations among home learning opportunities, parental mindsets, and child…

Associations between home learning opportunities, parental growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is malleable), and children's academic skills have been documented primarily in European descent communities. Less is known about other communities. This study examined associations among home learning opportunities, parental mindsets, and child…

We used the elicited production task to explore the production of short and long passives in 15 Mandarin-speaking preschool children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD; aged 4;2-5;11) in comparison with 15 Typically Developing Aged-matched (TDA) children (aged 4;3-5;8) and 15 Typically Developing Younger (TDY) children (aged 3;2-4;3). This…