Introduction: Social knowledge is an important aspect of social cognition that pertains to broader knowledge of social concepts and norms. People with intellectual disabilities are more likely to experience mental health challenges, and it's important to pay special attention to how comorbid conditions can affect their social cognition skills,…

Purpose: Despite the unprecedented growth of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in new destination states--where DLLs have not been historically served--empirical understanding of their language and literacy skills is scant. Drawing on scientific understandings of bilingual language acquisition, we compare monolingually scored and…

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) is a widely used test of receptive vocabulary, but no researchers to date have examined the performance of low-educated, low-literate L2 adults, or compared these individuals' performances to their more highly educated peers. In this study, we used many-facet Rasch analysis and mixed-effects linear…

Bilingual children's dominance can predict a variety of language and cognitive outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test the validity of parents' classifications of 3- to 6-year-old bilingual children's dominance against relative receptive vocabulary scores. In Study 1, the parents' classifications of Mandarin-English bilingual children's…

The current study assessed the impact of parents' dialogical storybook reading on their children's receptive vocabulary and reading attitudes. Forty parents and their preschoolers participated in the study. Parents were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups. The experimental group received dialogical storybook reading training.…

The present contribution aims at presenting an assessment tool (i.e., the TALK-assessment) built to evaluate the language development and school readiness of Italian preschoolers before they enter primary school, and its predictive validity for the children's reading and writing skills at the end of the first year of primary school. The early…

Purpose: This work describes community-based participatory research (CBPR) to support language and literacy development with Pre-K and kindergarten African American boys. Method: The aim and goals of the project were designed using the CBPR model. Interventionists were trained with researcher-designed videos. Interventionist fidelity to training…

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…

Cognates are known to facilitate second language acquisition and use, as learners tend to assign to a new L2 word the meaning of a similar L1 word. Consequently, for L2 tests that rely largely on lexical items, performance may prove inflated for examinees whose L1 shares many cognates with the language being tested. This article examines the…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate language growth in individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS) from early childhood to adolescence and the influence of maternal responsivity on language growth. Method: We conducted a longitudinal analysis of language development in 55 youths (44 males, 11 females) with FXS. Data collection spanned…

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a heterogeneous disorder affecting various aspects of language. While most studies have investigated impairments in the domain of syntax and morphosyntax, little is known about compositional semantics and the process of deriving pragmatic meanings in SLI. We selected a group of sixteen monolingual…

Bilingual experience has an impact on an individual's linguistic processing and general cognitive abilities. The relation between these linguistic and non-linguistic domains, in turn, is mediated by individual linguistic proficiency and developmental changes that take place across the lifespan. This study evaluated this relationship by assessing…

Measuring individual differences in children's emerging language abilities is important to researchers and clinicians alike. The 2 most widely used methods for assessing children's vocabulary both have limitations: Experimenter-administered tests are time-consuming and expensive, and parent questionnaires have only been designed for children up to…

Background: This study examined language development in young children with hearing loss and different types of additional disabilities (ADs). Method: A population-based cohort of 67 children who were enrolled in the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment study took part. Language ability was directly assessed at 3 and 5 years…

We investigated whether individual differences in overall receptive vocabulary knowledge measured at the beginning of the year moderated the effects of a kindergarten vocabulary intervention that supplemented classroom vocabulary instruction. We also examined whether moderation would offset the benefits of providing Tier-2 vocabulary intervention…