Although vocabulary size is thought to index children's language abilities, an increasing body of work suggests that regularities in children's vocabulary composition, particularly the proportion of shape-based nouns (e.g., cup), support language development. Here we examine initial vocabulary composition in children with hearing loss following…

The present study investigated the relationship between lexicon and grammar in individuals who use graphic symbol-based aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Data came from 60 transcripts of generalization sessions that were part of two previous intervention studies, aimed at improving the expressive vocabulary and grammar of 12…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore relations between speech sound disorder severity and selective mutism in a group of children with 7q11.23 duplication syndrome (Dup7), a genetic condition predisposing children to childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and other speech sound disorders and to anxiety disorders, including selective mutism and…

Background: Previous studies have explored the size and word type composition (nouns, predicates, etc.) of expressive vocabularies of preschool children with Down syndrome, both spoken and signed. Separately, overall preferences for modality of expression have also been explored. Aims: To extend previous findings by describing the relationships…

Numerous studies have evidenced the relationship between musical rhythm and language performances, derived from temporal acoustic signal processing. This relationship might be affected by different language experiences. Receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and musical rhythm perception and production were examined…

Purpose: The goal of this work was to examine the semantic and syntactic properties of the vocabularies of autistic and non-autistic infants and toddlers to see if children in these two groups know different kinds of words. We focused on both receptive and expressive vocabularies. For expressive vocabulary, we looked only at the "active"…

Preschoolers born preterm are at an increased risk for adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes; however, the impact of preterm birth on speech development has not been fully investigated. The primary objective of this study was to document the conversational speech production abilities of preschoolers born preterm via speech sample analysis. A…

Pragmatics lies at the point where language meets the social world and encompasses both the linguistic and the social dimensions of communication. However, the relationship between pragmatic abilities, other language skills, and socio-cognitive aspects such as mentalizing is still a matter of wide debate. This study sets out to investigate the…

Purpose: This study compares the home language environments of children with (a suspicion of) developmental language disorder (DLD) with that of children with typical development (TD). It does so by adopting new technology that automatically provides metrics about children's language environment (Language ENvironment Analysis [LENA]). In addition,…

During the second year of life, children acquire words and expand their receptive and expressive vocabularies at a rapid pace. At this age, toddlers' phonological abilities are also developing rapidly. The current study investigated the effect of phonological complexity of words on the order in which they are acquired, receptively and…

Background: Research has established the link between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. However, the theoretical mechanisms underlying the association remain unclear. This study examined the direct and indirect effects of morphological awareness on reading comprehension in L1 Chinese and L2 English, with a sample of Chinese…

Background & aims: Throughout typical development, children prioritize different perceptual, social, and linguistic cues to learn words. The earliest acquired words are often those that are perceptually salient and highly imageable. Imageability, the ease in which a word evokes a mental image, is a strong predictor for word age of acquisition…

The current study investigated the impact of birth order on vocabulary and social language development in 1338 first-born and 1049 s-born autistic youth (M age = 9.03 years, SD = 3.57; 86.4% male) from the Simons Simplex Collection. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses revealed mixed findings in language development. There were no differences in…

This study examined the extent to which classroom quality (emotional and instructional climate) moderates the associations between teachers' beliefs about children, self-efficacy, and children's early language gains (receptive and expressive vocabulary). The study employed multilevel modeling with 606 preschool teachers and 2,536 preschool…

This study examined Thai senior high school EFL learners' receptive and productive knowledge of English polysemous phrasal verbs. The research employed the framework developed by Garnier and Schmitt (2015), which is the most widely acknowledged and functional concept of English polysemous phrasal verb knowledge. A battery of tests measuring the…