How does linguistic structure affect children's developing cardinal number knowledge? The bootstrapping theory proposes that children might use syntactic information provided by known words such as quantifiers to bootstrap the meanings of unfamiliar words such as number words. Prior studies of numeral and quantifier development have indicated that…

Despite the important role assigned to analogical reasoning (AR) in cognition and language, the relationship between this ability and language skills in the emergent literacy period has not been sufficiently studied, especially in Spanish speakers. To explore this link, we examined two modalities of AR (verbal and non-verbal) as predictors of…

We examined the concurrent relationship between narrative skills (the Renfrew Bus Story Test) and core language measures (vocabulary, grammar and verbal memory) at age 4 and the longitudinal relationship between core language and listening comprehension skills at age 7 in a sample of 215 children using latent variables and structural equation…

This study aims to investigate the linguistic organisation and coherence of personal narratives among children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) to provide insight into their communication skills in everyday contexts. A cohort of 10-year-old Croatian-speaking children diagnosed with DLD (n = 50, M = 10;8) and their gender-matched…

Narrative production draws upon linguistic, cognitive and pragmatic skills, and is subject to substantial individual differences. This study aimed to characterise the development of narrative production in late childhood and to assess whether children's cumulative experience of reading fiction is associated with individual differences in narrative…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to examine online and off-line sentence processing using Korean language relative clause sentences between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical development (TD). Method: Twenty-four children with TD and 19 children with SLI participated in this study. Children completed…

This cross-sectional study investigated the use of four verbal indices of social knowledge (personal pronouns, verb conjugations, people words and mental state language) and their concurrent relations in a sample of 287 Italian-speaking children between 18 and 36 months. Results showed that the production of all indices increased with age. Mental…

This corpus-based study provides a baseline of complex word usage patterns in the spontaneous speech of English preschool children to ascertain the characteristics of their derivative vocabulary before literacy development affects language skills. Frequencies of suffixed derivatives produced by (N = 243) children aged 2-5 and their caregivers were…

An extensive literature links language problems with behavioral difficulties and academic underachievement. Although less extensive, emerging literature suggests that temperament, Positive Affectivity (PA) in particular, contributes to language development. Thus, the present study was focused on PA related temperament dimensions in infancy as…

Children vary widely in the rate at which they acquire words--some start slow and speed up, others start fast and continue at a steady pace. Do early developmental variations of this sort help predict vocabulary skill just prior to kindergarten entry? This longitudinal study starts by examining important predictors (socioeconomic status [SES],…

Using behavioral, structural, and functional imaging techniques, we demonstrate contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure in 47 healthy volunteers who ranged in age from 7 to 73 years. In the left posterior supramarginal gyrus, vocabulary knowledge was positively correlated with gray matter density in…

This is a dissertation study focusing on the ability of deaf children to fast map common and newly learned novel fingerspelled words through a training task. It also explored the relationship between the ability to learn fingerspelled words and the children's reading and vocabulary skills. Learning was assessed using five domains: imitation,…

People of ages 4, 6, 8, 10, 20 and 70 years named pictures selected to represent the entire range of lexical consensus among 20-year-olds. Consensus within each group increased with age, up to 20. Data indicate words coding culturally important events are acquired earliest. (CHK)

A sample of 180 students in fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grades participated in a study of the effect of age on the precision of interpretation of metaphorical language. All students read at or above fourth grade level. Metaphorical-language interpretation ability was measured by a 38-item instrument developed by the investigator using…

Ability to distinguish "ask" and "tell" in Spanish was studied with five groups of native Spanish speakers: adults, 7- and 10-year-olds in a full bilingual school and 7- and 10-year-olds in a non-total bilingual school. Increased age, bilingual schooling and presence of contextual clues enhanced performance. (CHK)