Background: Early and effective treatment for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) is important. Although a growing body of research shows the effects of interventions at the group level, clinicians observe large individual differences in language growth, and differences in outcomes across language domains. A systematic…

While we know that interventions targeting oral language can be effective, little is known about what drives these effects. In this study, we examine whether gains in transfer measures are mediated through the specific words that are trained in a language intervention. Based on a large-scale randomized controlled trial of language intervention in…

Aggression observed in early childhood is considered to be an important problem. Multiple factors may play a decisive role in children's aggressive behaviors. The aim of this study was to examine whether the receptive and expressive language skills of preschool children (39-75 months-old) had predictive role on the levels of physical and…

Background and Aims: This longitudinal study investigated the language skills, phonological working memory and lexical-tone perception of Mandarin-speaking late-talkers (LTs) and those with typical language development (TLD) at 27 months, while also examining their connections with novel word-referent mapping (W-R mapping) through eye-tracking at…

Children with hearing loss often attend inclusive preschool classrooms aimed at improving their spoken language skills. Although preschool classrooms are fertile environments for vocal interaction with peers, little is known about the dyadic processes that influence children's speech to one another and foster their language abilities and how these…

In this study, the researchers explored the impact of reading aloud on language acquisition for 12 infants and toddlers (6-22 months old) attending a preschool located in South Florida. The research team included university professors, a preschool director and two preschool teachers. A teacher assistant read a selected picture book to each child…

In language learning, aided language modeling refers to the method by which communication partners provide models of the communication system used by individuals with complex communication repertoires that involving both symbols and speech. Providing aided language models creates opportunities for individuals with complex communication repertoires…

Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine whether otitis media (OM) in early childhood has an impact on language development in later childhood. Methods: We analyzed data from 1,344 second-generation (Generation 2) participants in the Raine Study, a longitudinal pregnancy cohort established in Perth, Western Australia, between 1989 and 1991. OM…

Purpose: Previous research shows that shared storybook reading interactions can function as effective speech and language interventions for young children, helping to improve a variety of skills--including word-learning. This study sought to investigate the potential benefits of elaboration of new words during a single storybook reading with…

In typical development, listeners can use semantic content of verbs to facilitate incremental language processing--a skill that is associated with existing language skills. Studies of children with ASD have not identified an association between incremental language processing in semantically-constraining contexts and language skills, perhaps…

Classic studies of educational media have demonstrated that children can engage in quick, incidental word learning on the basis of a single exposure of a program. Since most words are learned from context, a lingering question has been whether the kind of contextual support affects word learning. Using a within-subjects design this study examined…

How the construct of vocabulary is defined remains unclear although multiple theories have been put forth. In light of the lack of empirical work investigating the dimensionality of vocabulary knowledge in Chinese, the present study investigated the factor structure of Chinese print vocabulary in a sample of 111 Taiwanese children in Grades 1 and…

There is considerable controversy over the factors that shape infants' developing knowledge of grammar. Work with artificial languages suggests that infants' ability to track statistical regularities within the speech they hear could, in principle, support grammatical development. However, little work has tested whether infants' performance on…

The current study investigated language development of children residing in institutional care (IC) in Russia, compared to peers raised by biological family care (BFC). We used standardized behavioral testing (Preschool Language Scale-5, McArthur CDI), and an event-related potential picture-word matching paradigm. Children in IC significantly…

Classic studies of educational media have demonstrated that children can engage in quick, incidental word learning on the basis of a single exposure of a program. Since most words are learned from context, a lingering question has been whether the degree of contextual support affects word learning. Using a within-subjects design this study…