This study examined associations between caregiver talk and language skills in full term (FT) and preterm (PT) children (n = 97). All-day recordings of caregiver-child interactions revealed striking similarities in amount of caregiver talk heard by FT and PT children. Children who heard more caregiver talk at 16 months demonstrated better…

Many Latino children in the U.S. speak primarily Spanish at home with few opportunities for exposure to English before entering school. For monolingual children, the strongest early predictor of later school success is oral language skill developed before kindergarten. Less is known about how early oral language skills support later learning in…

Research with monolingual children has shown that early efficiency in real-time word recognition predicts later language and cognitive outcomes. In parallel research with young bilingual children, processing ability and vocabulary size are closely related within each language, although not across the two languages. For children in dual-language…

Using online measures of familiar word recognition in the looking-while-listening procedure, this prospective longitudinal study revealed robust links between processing efficiency and vocabulary growth from 18 to 30 months in children classified as typically developing (n = 46) and as "late talkers" (n = 36) at 18 months. Those late talkers who…

This research revealed both similarities and striking differences in early language proficiency among infants from a broad range of advantaged and disadvantaged families. English-learning infants ("n" = 48) were followed longitudinally from 18 to 24 months, using real-time measures of spoken language processing. The first goal was to…

Two experiments investigated the development of fluency in interpreting adjective-noun phrases in 30- and 36-month-old English-learning children. Using online processing measures, children's gaze patterns were monitored as they heard the familiar adjective-noun phrases (e.g. "blue car") in visual contexts where the adjective was either informative…

The nature of predictive relations between early language and later cognitive function is a fundamental question in research on human cognition. In a longitudinal study assessing speed of language processing in infancy, Fernald, Perfors and Marchman (2006 ) found that reaction time at 25 months was strongly related to lexical and grammatical…

Research on the development of efficiency in spoken language understanding has focused largely on middle-class children learning English. Here we extend this research to Spanish-learning children (n=49; M=2;0; range=1;3-3;1) living in the USA in Latino families from primarily low socioeconomic backgrounds. Children looked at pictures of familiar…

In two experiments, mothers told their infant and an adult a story that involved target words, and women taught an assembly procedure involving novel terminology to another adult. In speech to infants, mothers positioned focused words on pitch peaks, but in speech to adults, the emphasis was more variable. (BC)