Although a "semantic receptive-expressive gap" appears to be a universal feature of early bilingualism, little is known about its development. We sought to determine if the magnitude of the discrepancy between receptive and expressive standard scores changed over time in bilingual children's two languages. In this longitudinal study,…

Research on the effects of bilingualism on third language (L3) development set in bilingual communities is scarce, outdated, and has provided mixed results. This study investigated the effects of exposure and age of onset of acquisition (AOA) of L3-English, as well as first and second language (L1/L2) skills and use, in the development of…

It is well-documented that there is a strong relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension in school-age children. Limited vocabulary knowledge can impact a student's reading achievement, as may be the case for school-age English Learners (ELs). This study aims to analyze the role of vocabulary in predicting reading comprehension…

The role of working memory (WM) in language acquisition has been widely reported in the developmental literature, but few studies have explored the role of sentence recall in the way WM and related linguistic abilities evolve. This study seeks to explore the organization and development of the memory architecture underlying language using a…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was (a) to examine the underlying components or factor structure of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA; Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, Goldstein, & Bedore, 2014) sentence repetition task and (b) to examine the relationship between Spanish-English speaking children's sentence repetition and…

This longitudinal study examined the role of narrative skills in English reading comprehension, after controlling for vocabulary and decoding, with a sample of 112 dual language learners (DLLs), including both Spanish-English and Cantonese-English children. Decoding, vocabulary, and narrative samples were collected in the winter of first grade and…

This study investigated contributors of English reading comprehension outcomes among predominantly U.S.-born 1st- and 3rd-grade (N = 73) dual language learners (DLLs) from Spanish-speaking, low-income homes who attend English-only instructional schools in the Southern region of the United States, which is experiencing historic rates of school-age…

Purpose: The authors of this study described developmental trajectories and predicted kindergarten performance of Spanish and English receptive vocabulary acquisition of young Latino/a English language learners (ELLs) from socioeconomically disadvantaged migrant families. In addition, the authors examined the extent to which gender and individual…

The Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS) was designed as a behavioral rating tool to assist teachers in identifying students at risk of working memory difficulties. The instrument was originally normed on 417 monolingual English-speaking children from the United Kingdom. The purpose of this study was to test the reliability and validity of the WMRS…

This cohort-sequential study explored the components of working memory (WM) that underlie second language (L2) reading growth in 450 children at risk and not at risk for reading disabilities (RD) whose first language is Spanish. English language learners designated as balanced and nonbalanced bilinguals with and without risk for RD in Grades 1, 2,…

This study examined the impact of a 15-min daily explicit vocabulary intervention in Spanish on expressive and receptive vocabulary knowledge and oral reading fluency in Spanish, and on language proficiency in English. Fifty Spanish-speaking English learners who received 90 min of Spanish reading instruction in an early transition model were…

It is well established that monolingual preschoolers' oral language development (vocabulary and oral comprehension) contributes to their later reading abilities; however, less is known about this relationship in bilingual populations where children are developing knowledge of two languages. It may be that children's abilities in one language do…

Emerging pragmatic language skills involve social, cognitive and linguistic abilities, including children's awareness of the conversational partner's mental states. The present study investigated the relation between children's theory of mind (ToM) and features of pragmatic language skills assessed through narrative discourse. One hundred and…

This study used a copying task to examine spelling acquisition in French and Spanish from a perception and action perspective. Experiment 1 compared French and Spanish-speaking monolingual children's performance. Experiment 2 analysed the behaviour of bilingual children when copying words in French and Spanish. Gaze lift analysis showed that in…