Researchers have focused on how deaf signing children acquire and use American Sign Language (ASL). One sub-skill of ASL proficiency is ASL phonology. This includes the ability to isolate and manipulate parameters within signs (i.e., handshape, location, and movement). Expressively, signed language phonological fluency tasks have investigated…

This study aimed to adapt and validate the Word Complexity Measure (WCM) for Persian-speaking toddlers. The WCM is a tool for assessing phonological complexity, originally proposed by Stoel-Gammon. The study was conducted in two phases: (1) adapting the WCM parameters to the Persian language and (2) conducting a validation study with 60…

During the second year of life, children acquire words and expand their receptive and expressive vocabularies at a rapid pace. At this age, toddlers' phonological abilities are also developing rapidly. The current study investigated the effect of phonological complexity of words on the order in which they are acquired, receptively and…

Purpose: This study examined the effect of phonological overlap on English and Spanish expressive vocabulary accuracy as measured by the bilingual Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test--Fourth Edition (EOWPVT-IV). We hypothesized that if languages interact during an expressive vocabulary task, then higher phonological overlap will predict…

Purpose: This study examined the effect of Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers (VAULT) treatment on toddlers' expressive vocabulary and phonology. Parent acceptability of VAULT treatment was also considered. Method: We used a nonconcurrent multiple baseline single case experimental design with three late talking toddlers aged 21-25…

Purpose: Cognates, words in two languages that share form and meaning, can be used to support vocabulary development in bilingual children. Typically developing bilinguals have shown better performance on cognates versus noncognates. Of key interest is whether bilinguals with developmental language disorder (DLD) also show a cognate effect and, if…

There has been a resurgence in concern about the levels of pupils' oral language skills at school entry. To support and develop these skills effectively an understanding of the key components of oral language is required. We examined the oral language skills of monolingual children in Reception (M[subscript Age] = 57.9 months; n = 126) and Year 1…

Oral language skills are essential for developing good interpersonal relationships, for emotional and behavioral function as well as for academic and vocational success. Language problems can have serious, adverse consequences, and individuals coming into conflict with the law often have a history of undiagnosed language problems and poor academic…

Purpose: This study followed up children identified with expressive language delay (ELD) or receptive/expressive language delay (R/ELD) at 2 years of age, Time 1 (T1), in order to identify their language profiles at 4--5 years, Time 2 (T2), and explore relationships to T1 language, gesture use, and symbolic comprehension. Method: Nineteen of 22…

Purpose: Phonological complexity is known to be a good index of developmental language disorder (DLD) in normal-hearing children, who have major difficulties on some complex structures. Some deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) present a profile that evokes DLD, with persistent linguistic difficulties despite good audiological and…

The relationship between first and second language in early vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children is still debated in the literature. This study compared the expressive vocabulary of 39 equivalently low-SES two-year-old bilingual children from immigrant families with different heritage languages (Romanian vs. Nigerian English) and the same…

Background: Recent evidence suggests that pre-school children with co-occurring phonological speech sound disorder (SSD) and expressive language difficulties are at a higher risk of ongoing communication and literacy needs in comparison with children with these difficulties in isolation. However, to date there has been no systematic or scoping…

Purpose: The fine-tuning of linguistic prosody in later childhood is poorly understood, and its neurological processing is even less well studied. In particular, it is unknown if grammatical processing of prosody is left- or rightlateralized in childhood versus adulthood and how phonological working memory might modulate such lateralization.…

Purpose: This study examines intraword variability in 40 typically developing French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, aged 2;6-4;8 (years;months). Specifically, it measures rate of intraword variability and investigates which factors best account for it. They include child-specific ones such as age, expressive vocabulary, gender,…

Purpose: This study reexamines the claim that difficulty forming memories of words comprising uncommon sound sequences (i.e., low phonological neighborhood density words) is a determinant of delayed expressive vocabulary development (e.g., Stokes, 2014). Method: We modeled communicative development inventory data from (N = 442) 18-month-old…