The importance of early vocabulary development to later reading comprehension has been well-established. However, there have been a number of criticisms that the assessments typically used to measure oral vocabulary knowledge do not adequately capture the complexity of this construct. This conceptual review works towards a more robust theoretical…

The purpose of this study is to examine the bidirectional relationship between children's language development and challenging behaviors as well as the moderating roles of gender and race/ethnicity. We conducted a number of structural equation modeling analyses with a national representative sample (N = 2,462) of Head Start children from the 2014…

This study examines the influence of a parent workshop intervention on vocabulary acquisition of at-risk preschool children during parent-child shared storybook reading. Sixty-nine parents were randomly assigned to either treatment or control group. In the treatment condition, parents were taught to implement elaborated vocabulary instruction…

Few studies have examined growth and predictors of receptive vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder. Here we aimed to compare receptive vocabulary from 4 to 8 years and identify predictors of receptive vocabulary, at 8 years, in children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Participants were drawn from a nationally…

Previous research shows that Early Childhood Education (ECE) positively impacts cognitive outcomes later in life. Few studies examine the impacts of ECE in developing countries. We use data from the Young Lives project in Vietnam with 2SLS regressions to estimate the impact of years spent in ECE on cognitive outcomes in adolescence. We find that…

Inference making is fundamental to the construction of a coherent mental model of a text. We examined how vocabulary and verbal working memory relate to inference development concurrently and longitudinally in 4- to 9-year-olds. Four hundred and twenty prekindergartners completed oral assessments of inference making, vocabulary breadth, vocabulary…

This case study analyzes and describes the language, executive function, and psychosocial outcomes of two 6-year-old children with cochlear implants in the context of their respective family environments. Despite having nearly identical audiological histories, their language abilities and social skills are markedly different from one another,…

Research Findings Research suggests children from low-income environments have vocabularies that differ from those of their higher-income peers. They may have basic knowledge of many words of which children from higher income environments have acquired sub- or supra-ordinate knowledge. This study sought to determine if children from low-income…

Research Findings: The study examined the relationship between Spanish-speaking DLL children's engagement within the preschool classroom with teachers, peers, and tasks and their school readiness skills compared to monolingual English-speaking peers. Results suggested that DLL children had lower language skills and phonological awareness by the…

Children have been taught to demonstrate a safety response when they encounter a dangerous stimulus using behavioral skills training (BST). However, little research has evaluated the usefulness of BST to teach safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the current study, we evaluated BST to establish a generalized repertoire…

The sentences in texts are far more complex and diverse than those that children commonly encounter in oral language. This raises interesting questions as to whether the understanding of some sentence types might be more important than others in children's reading comprehension. Accordingly, we examined the relation between children's reading…

This study examines growth in language and math skills during the summer before kindergarten; considers variation by family income, race/ethnicity, and dual language learner status; and tests whether summer center-based care sustains preschool gains. Growth in skills slowed during summer for all children, but the patterns varied by domain and…

Given the importance of writing for academic achievement, this study aimed to understand how early oral language contributes to later writing skills. The first objective was to determine if preschool language skills were associated with high school writing, and if so, whether they contributed directly or indirectly through school age language. The…

Early indicators of academic risk were used to predict the academic skills, socioemotional functioning, and receipt of special education services at age 10 among children from low-income families who participated in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. Pairwise comparison of academic skills and socioemotional functioning among…

The present study extends research on classroom quality profiles by examining the differences between profiles with respect to children's development in pre-academic skills and motivation across the kindergarten year. Teacher-child interactions were observed in 49 Finnish kindergarten classrooms using the CLASS Pre-K instrument. Based on prior…