Some meta-analyses have confirmed the efficacy of technology-enhanced vocabulary learning. However, they have not delved into the specific ways in which technology-based activities facilitate vocabulary acquisition, or into first-language vocabulary learning. We conducted a systematic review that retrieved 1,221 journal articles published between…

This study investigates feature acquisition and feature reassembly associated with Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD). The article compares the acquisition of CLLD in second language (L2) Italian to L2 Romanian to examine effects of first language (L1) transfer, construction frequency and the type of interface involved (external vs. internal…

Interpreting a seemingly simple function word like "or," "behind," or "more" can require logical, numerical, and relational reasoning. How are such words learned by children? Prior acquisition theories have often relied on positing a foundation of innate knowledge. Yet recent neural-network-based visual question…

Children can only develop spoken language through consistent exposure to the acoustic cues that comprise speech and language. Until recently, hearing levels from the clinical audiogram were the primary measure used to define typical hearing and the presence or degree of a child's hearing loss. While the clinical audiogram remains an important…

During their early years, children with autism may not meet the same communication and language milestones as their peers (Wodka et al., 2013). Many children with autism experience language delays and may rely on one-word or phrase speech, rather than using grammatically fluent speech (Anderson et al., 2007; Wodka et al., 2013) that is often…

In this paper, Emeritus Professor Kevin Wheldall AM, who received the Eminent Researcher Award of this journal in 2023, describes his research over the past five decades, together with his wife and research partner Dr Robyn Wheldall. Following a biographical sketch, selected research is reviewed successively over five decades on language,…

This study investigated the impact of language sample length on mean length of utterance (MLU) and aimed to determine the minimum number of utterances required for a reliable MLU. Conversations were collected from Mandarin-speaking, hard-of-hearing and typical-hearing children aged 16-81 months. The MLUs were calculated using sample sizes ranging…

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…

Teaching an infant manual signs is beneficial as it promotes early communication, improves socialization, and can functionally replace behaviors such as crying and whining. Improving early communication also may reduce the probability of an infant engaging in dangerous behavior, like unsafe climbing. The purpose of this study was to extend…

Music substantially impacts early childhood development, especially language development, yet early childhood policies rarely emphasise the role of music in early learning and engagement. Research shows that effective delivery of early childhood music programmes depends on teachers' music knowledge, skills, and music teaching self-efficacy, which…

Cross-linguistically, statements and questions broadly differ in syntactic organization. To learn the syntactic properties of each sentence type, learners might first rely on non-syntactic information. This paper analyzed prosodic differences between infant-directed "wh"-questions and statements to determine what kinds of cues might be…

In Lebanese Arabic, lexical subjects may occur before or after verbs, but only before non-verbal predicates. Analysis of spontaneous language samples from 19 two-year-old children shows that postverbal (VS) and preverbal (SV) subjects emerge simultaneously. The youngest children displayed no VS-SV difference in frequency. A slight preference for…

This study is a validation of the LENA system for the Italian language. In Study 1, to test LENA's accuracy, seventy-two 10-minute samples extracted from daylong LENA recordings were manually transcribed for 12 children longitudinally observed at 1;0 and 2;0. We found strong correlations between LENA and human estimates in the number of Adult Word…

This study explored responsive and linguistic parent input features during parent-child interactions and investigated how four input categories related to children's production of diverse, simple sentences. Of primary interest was parent use of responsive, simple declarative input sentences. Responsive and linguistic features of parent input to 20…

Indirect answers are a common type of non-literal language that do not provide an explicit "yes" or "no" to a question (e.g., "I have to work late" indirectly answered "Are you going to the party?" with a negative response). In the current study, we examined the developmental trajectory of comprehension of…