Computers, laptops, digital tablets, and whiteboards are all commonly used technologies in classrooms today. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an increased use of digital technology to offer virtual learning and maintain social connections. Given the multifaceted nature of technology, the complexities of child development, and the increasing…

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) conducted a landscape evaluation of early childhood programs in Indiana (IN) between the spring of 2021 and the summer of 2022. Commissioned by Early Learning Indiana (ELI), this study provides Indiana programs and policymakers with research-based information on the quality of a sample of…

This study aims to enhance our knowledge of the associations between the quality of the language-learning environment in toddler childcare groups and children's vocabulary development from age 3 to age 5. Participants were 1,131 children (48% girls; age at T1 assessment: M = 35.5 months, SD = 2.7; age at T2 assessment: M = 60.3 months, SD = 1.4)…

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) conducted a landscape evaluation of early childhood programs in Indiana (IN) between the spring of 2021 and the summer of 2022. The evaluation included assessments of infant, toddler, and preschooler children's developmental status in multiple domains at two time points to measure growth.…

Partnerships are dynamic, negotiated spaces encompassing community organizations and interprofessionals. Partnerships support young children and families as they transition from home to school. Interprofessionals create a culture for learning and accessible resources. Early childhood centers, public health and libraries develop collaborative…

Background: The facilitating role of sleep for language learning is well-attested in adults and to a lesser extent in infants and toddlers. However, the longitudinal relationship between sleep patterns and early vocabulary development is not well understood. Methods: This study investigates how measures of sleep are related to the development of…

Recent evidence shows that children can use cross-situational statistics to learn new object labels under referential ambiguity (e.g., Smith & Yu, 2008). Such evidence has been interpreted as support for proposals that statistical information about word-referent co-occurrence plays a powerful role in word learning. But object labels represent only…

Children's characteristics, including gender, influence their development by eliciting differential responses from their environments, and by influencing differential responses to their environments. Parenting-related stress, associated with poverty environments, negatively influences children's language, likely through its impact on parent-child…

Purpose: To compare maternal report of children's vocabularies on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories Words and Gestures form (CDI:WG; Fenson et al., 1993) with spontaneous production data in both low- and middle-income families. Method: As part of a longitudinal investigation, language samples were gathered from 23 mother-child…

Since norms for vocabulary acquisition in Maltese children do not yet exist, documentation of productive vocabulary acquisition may contribute to establishing a baseline of lexical development. Clinical implications may thus be derived. The current study is a small-scale investigation of the proportions of Maltese and English lexemes in the…

Eight 20- to 26-month-old children were exposed to 4 novel nouns in a game context over several weeks to determine whether, when, and in what ways the children would use them beyond their original linguistic forms. The majority were productive in their use of the nouns, indicating that the grammatical category for noun is operational by age 2.…

Explored the interplay between gestures and words in the early vocabulary of 12 normally developing Italian children at 16 and 20 months of age. Focused on spontaneous production of verbal and gestural types and tokens to assess the diversity and semantic content of the verbal and gestural vocabularies. Results indicated that gestures were used…

A study of two year olds investigated the nature and development of children's early productivity with verb-argument structure and verb morphology. Results indicated that the children showed no signs of productive verb morphology, but they did use newly learned verbs in some creative ways involving nounlike uses and the appending of locatives.…

The "Everyday Learning" series has been developed to focus attention on the everyday ways in which children can be supported in their growth and development. It is for all those who are involved in children's development and learning, including early childhood professionals in all children's services, parents, grandparents and others with an…

A study investigated the first words produced by 17 bilingual children (ages 1-4) speaking English and Mandarin Chinese from environments where both languages were spoken. A greater number of nouns than verbs were produced as first words in both English and Mandarin Chinese. Verbs were produced only in Mandarin Chinese. (Contains references.)…