Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore when and how Mandarin-speaking children use contextual cues to normalize speech variability in perceiving lexical tones. Two different cognitive mechanisms underlying speech normalization (lower level acoustic normalization and higher level acoustic-phonemic normalization) were investigated through the…

The role of working memory (WM) in language acquisition has been widely reported in the developmental literature, but few studies have explored the role of sentence recall in the way WM and related linguistic abilities evolve. This study seeks to explore the organization and development of the memory architecture underlying language using a…

This study investigated the relationship between student performance on behavioral measures (reading, language, and executive function) and reading comprehension while reading with and without text-to-speech (TTS) accommodations. Twenty-nine children with reading difficulties ages 8 to 12 years completed a battery of reading, language, and…

Forty native Spanish-speaking children (age 8;0-10;3), 20 with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and 20 with Typical Language Development (TLD), received a battery of psycholinguistic tests, IQ, hearing screenings, and the Spanish Non-word Repetition Task (NRT). The children's repetition of 20 non-words was scored. The percentage of correct…

This study considers the role of verbal working memory in sentence comprehension in typically developing English-speaking children. Fifty-six (N = 56) children aged 4;0-6;6 completed a test of language comprehension that contained sentences which varied in complexity, standardized tests of vocabulary and nonverbal intelligence, and three tests of…

This study considered how far nonverbal cognitive, language and reading abilities are affected by common genetic influences in a sample of 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years. Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme…

This study examined longitudinally the double-deficit hypothesis in Greek, an orthographically consistent language, following a group of children from kindergarten to Grade 2. Four groups were formed on the basis of two composite scores of phonological and naming-speed criterion measures: a double-deficit group (DD; n = 17), a phonological deficit…

A total of 83 children with different special educational needs (SEN) assessments were contrasted with a control group (N = 40) without special needs on measures that aimed to identify potential areas of strengths as well as weaknesses in these SEN groups. Carefully selected groups of dyslexics, dyspraxics, children with specific language…

An intervention study of 7-year-old, poor readers examined the extent to which factors of phoneme manipulation, rhyme, verbal ability, nonverbal ability, and phonological memory were predictive of responsiveness to teaching interventions. Only phoneme manipulation was a predictor for reading accuracy. However, for reading comprehension, verbal…