There is a long-standing gap in literacy achievement between African American and European American students (e.g., NAEP, 2019, 2022). A large body of research has examined different factors that continue to reinforce performance differences across students. One variable that has been a long-term interest to sociolinguists and applied scientists…

One of the most important outcomes in a child's education is the ability to read proficiently, which can improve future academic progress and occupational success. Due to the impairments in social and communication areas of development for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), literacy provides the possibility of improved communication…

Pitch discrimination, or the ability to differentiate stimuli using auditory frequency, may be an important correlate of language acquisition. Research consistently finds that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have differences in auditory discrimination abilities. However, studies linking these abilities to delays or impairments in…

Children of today are gaining exposure to electronic reading environments at earlier ages and in greater frequencies than prior generations, as evidenced by the ubiquity of modern technologies. Such technologies provide affordances beyond basic text by supporting the screen-based rendering of aural, visual, and gestural elements. This research…

One important concept in the development of number knowledge is the cardinality principle, or knowing that the last word counted refers to the total number of items within the set. One prominent theory suggests that children learn this concept by observing sets being both counted and labeled with the correct set size (e.g., 1-2-3! 3!), thus…

This study examines the application of the Simple View of Reading (SVR), a reading comprehension theory focusing on word recognition and linguistic comprehension, to English Language Learners' (ELLs') English reading development. This study examines the concurrent and predictive validity of two components of the SVR, oral language and word-level…

The case study of bilingual tutors and their impact on the reading comprehension of children whose primary language is not English is fundamental to this dissertation. Recent research has indicated that there is a positive correlation between a tutor having knowledge of the parent language of bilingual children and the children's improvements in…

Reading comprehension is a complex interactional process whereby the accumulated meaning of sounds, words, and sentences is integrated to form a meaningful representation of text. It is well established that many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reading comprehension difficulties, but less is understood about the underlying…

This dissertation investigates the acquisition of subject-to-subject raising (StSR) in English. The goal is twofold: to determine whether StSR predicates that permit experiencers (1) are delayed relative to those which do not (2), and to link the acquisition of StSR to that of other A-movement structures. (1) William seems (to Leonard) to be…

Reading development in students who are second language learners (SLLs) has been a concern of many educators. It is important to understand reading development in students who are SLLs to effectively support their reading development. The dissertation consists of two studies, presented in two stand-alone manuscripts, that aimed to deepen our…

Previous research in the area of children's knowledge of number agreement morphology has yielded mixed results. Some researchers have found evidence for sensitivity to agreement morphology at as early as 16 months, while others report that children do not comprehend number agreement morphology until as late as five or six years old. Studies of…

References that speakers make can include both "conceptual information," which contributes to explicatures, and "procedural information," which constrains explicatures (Wilson & Sperber 1993). The current study compares the references made by autistic and typically developing children in naturally occurring conversational…

The present study was conducted in three parts. Each part analyzed theory of mind (ToM) development in children who are deaf in relation to mental verb and complement syntax understanding. In the first part, participants were given a series of tests for the purpose of correlational analysis of ToM, mental verb understanding, and memory for…

Research has shown that educators may be missing an under-identified population of approximately 10 percent of typically developing children, who have fluent, age-appropriate decoding and word recognition skills, yet have specific difficulties with other higher-level text processing factors. These children are said to have specific comprehension…

Students exhibiting speech deficits may not have the appropriate skills or support structures necessary to obtain adequate or acceptable literacy development as mixed results from past research have indicated that some students with speech impairments have the capacity to gain appropriate literacy skills. The purpose of the qualitative holistic…