Normal language acquisition is a process that unfolds with amazing speed primarily in the first years of life. However, the refinement of linguistic proficiency is an ongoing process, extending well into childhood and adolescence. An increase in lateralization and a more focussed productive language network have been suggested to be the neural…

Studies indicate that language impairment that cannot be accounted for by factors such as below-average non-verbal ability, hearing impairment, behaviour or emotional problems, or neurological impairments affects some 6% of school-age children. Language impairment with a receptive language component is more resistant to intervention than specific…

Both reading and language experiences contribute to vocabulary development, but questions remain as to what effect each has and when. This article investigates the effects that reading, telling and sharing a story have on vocabulary acquisition. Children (N = 37) were told nine stories in a randomized, single-blind and counterbalanced 2 × 3 mixed…

This study examined the degree to which dimensions of parenting predicted early academic outcomes in a sample of 111 low-income African American children. Three aspects of parenting were assessed when the children were 36 months old: language stimulation, math-related stimulation, and maternal sensitivity. Academic outcomes were assessed at 54…

Research has shown how cochlear implants (CIs), in children with hearing impairments, have improved speech perception and production, but very little is known about the children's pragmatic language development. During a 4-year longitudinal study of three children with CIs, certain aspects of pragmatic language development were observed in free…

This longitudinal study modeled growth rates, from ages 4.5 to 11, in English and Spanish oral language and word reading skills among 173 Spanish-speaking children from low-income households. Individual growth modeling was employed using scores from standardized measures of word reading, expressive vocabulary, and verbal short-term language…

Children from low-income families benefit remarkably from exposure to compensatory education that began with Head Start in 1965 and aimed to improve school readiness skills by design. While empirical evidence has supported more instructional time in elementary and secondary schools for low-income students, little is known that whether increasing…

This review brings together evidence from a diverse field of methods for investigating sex differences in language processing. Differences are found in certain language-related deficits, such as stuttering, dyslexia, autism and schizophrenia. Common to these is that language problems may follow from, rather than cause the deficit. Large studies…

This brief report focusing on children' s kindergarten readiness i s the third in a series of reports describing data from the 2009 cohort of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES 2009). Previous FACES 2009 reports described the characteristics of children and their families and programs as they entered Head Start in fall 2009…

The current study examined to what extent information in long-term memory concerning the distribution of phoneme clusters in a language, so-called long-term phonotactic knowledge, increased the capacity of verbal short-term memory in young language learners and, through increased verbal short-term memory capacity, supported these children's first…

This paper outlines the strengths and weaknesses in both short-term and long-term memory in Down syndrome, and the implications of these patterns for both other aspects of cognitive development and underlying neural pathology. There is clear evidence that Down syndrome is associated with particularly poor verbal short-term memory performance, and…

Background: Down syndrome (DS) is characterized by impaired memory span, particularly auditory verbal memory span. Memory span is linked developmentally to several language capabilities, and may be a basic capacity that enables language learning. If children with DS had better memory span, they might benefit more from language intervention. The…

Background: Children with Down's syndrome seem to show a preference for the use of gestural rather than vocal productions during the first stages of language development. This "gestural advantage" could actually be due to a developmental strategy used to compensate the difficulties in verbal production that are typical of language…

The importance of cognitive and language skills on reading and spelling development were investigated in a cross-linguistic longitudinal study of 737 English-speaking children (US/Australia) and 169 Scandinavian children (Norway/Sweden) from preschool to Kindergarten and Grade 1. The results revealed that phonological awareness and print knowledge…

Eighty college students mentally rotated 3-D shapes while maintaining a concurrent verbal or spatial memory load to investigate how sex, native language, and college major relate to the cognitive strategies employed during mental rotation (MR). Males were significantly better than females at MR, whereas native language was not related to MR…