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 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…

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,…

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…

There has been a resurgence in concern about the levels of pupils' oral language skills at school entry. To support and develop these skills effectively an understanding of the key components of oral language is required. We examined the oral language skills of monolingual children in Reception (M[subscript Age] = 57.9 months; n = 126) and Year 1…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate if higher quantity, diversity, and grammatical informativeness of verb phrases in parent follow-in utterances (i.e., utterances that mapped onto child attentional leads) were significantly related to later expressive verb vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Method: We…

Predictors of expressive grammar were compared in formal and naturalistic assessment tasks for children with typically developing (TD) language and with Developmental Langauge Disorder (DLD). Standardized expressive language assessments were administered to 110 preschoolers. The parents of these children reported whether or not they were concerned…

Purpose: This longitudinal study assessed continuity and stability of productive language (vocabulary and grammar) and discourse features (turn-taking; asking and responding to questions) during mother-child play. Method: Parent-child language use in 119 Spanish-speaking, Mexican immigrant mothers and their children at two ages (M = 2.5 and 3.6…

The present study examined the effects of different types of written input on the learning and retention of collocational knowledge. Eighty-three second language (L2) learners from four intact classes were divided into a control group and three treatment groups. The treatment groups were provided with infrequent grammatical collocations embedded…

Purpose: This study compares online word recognition and prediction in preschoolers with (a suspicion of) a developmental language disorder (DLD) and typically developing (TD) controls. Furthermore, it investigates correlations between these measures and the link between online and off-line language scores in the DLD group. Method: Using the…

When threatened with ostracism, children attempt to strengthen social relationships by engaging in affiliative behaviors such as imitation. We investigated whether an experience of ostracism influenced the extent to which children imitated a partner's language use. In two experiments, 7- to 12-year-old children either experienced ostracism or did…

There can be significant diversity in the language experience of minority language children, and in the levels of proficiency reached. The declining numbers of children now exposed to Irish include those from homes where only/mainly Irish is spoken, those with only one Irish-speaking parent, and children from homes where one/both parent(s) speak…

Forty-two adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) ages 10 to 21 years completed a battery of language and phonological memory measures twice, 2 years apart. Individual differences were highly stable across two years. Receptive vocabulary scores improved, there was no change in receptive or expressive grammar scores, and nonword repetition scores…

Purpose: Some boys with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and boys with fragile X syndrome and a codiagnosis of ASD (FXS+ASD) have impairments in expressive grammatical abilities. The current study compared grammatical performance in these 2 groups of school-age boys. Method: Thirty-seven boys similar on mean length of utterance participated in the…