Purpose: Numerous tasks have been developed to measure receptive vocabulary, many of which were designed to be administered in person with a trained researcher or clinician. The purpose of the current study is to compare a common, in-person test of vocabulary with other vocabulary assessments that can be self-administered. Method: Fifty-three…

Children learn language by listening to speech from caregivers around them. However, the type and quantity of speech input that children are exposed to change throughout early childhood in ways that are poorly understood due to the small samples (few participants, limited hours of observation) typically available in developmental psychology. Here…

Objectives: The primary aim was to investigate the variability in language development in children aged 5-7.5 years after bilateral cochlear implantation (CI) up to the age of 2 years, and any impact of the age at implantation and additional noncognitive or anatomical disorders at implantation. Design: Data of 84 congenitally deaf children that…

Objective: To provide an in-depth examination of whether pragmatic, expressive, receptive, and narrative language are associated with the social and academic functioning of children with ADHD. Method: Children with ADHD (n = 46) and neurotypical comparison (NC) children (n = 40) aged 7 to 11 years completed tasks measuring expressive, receptive,…

In this paper, Emeritus Professor Kevin Wheldall AM, who received the Eminent Researcher Award of this journal in 2023, describes his research over the past five decades, together with his wife and research partner Dr Robyn Wheldall. Following a biographical sketch, selected research is reviewed successively over five decades on language,…

Vocabulary knowledge greatly affects writing performance (Staehr in Lang Learn J 36:139-152, 2008; Johnson in Tesol J 7:700-715 2016), but little is known about the relative contribution of different dimensions of vocabulary knowledge to reading-to-write performance. The current study attempted to investigates the contribution of…

Despite the importance of identifying children with developmental language delay, no accurate screening instruments are available for 3-year-olds. The aim of the present study is to compare the accuracy of the General Language Screen (GLS), focusing on receptive and expressive language and intelligibility with the accuracy of the VTO Language…

Children comprehend iconic gestures relatively later than deictic gestures. Previous research with English-learning children indicated that they could comprehend iconic gestures at 26 months, a pattern whose extension to other languages is not yet known. The present study examined Turkish-learning children's iconic gesture comprehension and its…

Consonants and vowels differentially contribute to lexical acquisition. From 8 months on, infants' preferential reliance on consonants has been shown to predict their lexical outcome. Here, the predictive value of German-learning infants' (n = 58, 29 girls, 29 boys) trajectories of consonant and vowel perception, indicated by the…

Developmental difference is a common characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with unclear sex differences. The current study included 610 children with ASD, aged between 2 and 7 years, with completed language profiles. We used a nonparametric item response theory model called Mokken scale analysis to examine the order of acquisition of…

This study investigates the levels of social language and vocabulary characteristics of three- to six-year-old children with autism in Vietnam. The research is based on analysis of the developmental assessment reports of 151 children with autism, and 42 parents' reports on their children's vocabulary (recorded using the Child Word Inventory form).…

Purpose: Using a longitudinal design, this study aimed to describe inferential comprehension abilities of neglected French-speaking preschool children from 42 to 66 months of age in comparison to non-neglected peers, to examine the association with receptive vocabulary, and to determine whether rates of change in inferential abilities over time…

The ability to perceive approximate numerosity is present in many animal species, and emerges early in human infants. Later in life, it is moderately heritable and associated with mathematical abilities, but the etiology of the Approximate Number System (ANS) and its degree of independence from other cognitive abilities in infancy is unknown.…

Joint attention and imitation are thought to facilitate a developmental cascade of language and social communication skills. Delays in developing these skills may affect the quality of children's social interactions and subsequent language development. We examined how responding to joint attention and object imitation skills predicted rate of…

The aim of this study was to investigate individual differences in mathematical problem-solving among 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 328; n[subscript 3-year-olds] = 115, n[subscript 4-year-olds] = 167, n[subscript 5-year-olds] = 46). First, we examined the extent to which children in this age group were able to solve open and closed non-routine…