Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a multifaceted disorder. Recently, interest has grown in prosodic aspects of DLD, but most investigations of possible prosodic causes focus on speech perception tasks. Here, we focus on speech production from a speech amplitude envelope (AE) perspective. Perceptual studies have indicated a role for…

Early literacy and writing development are inter-related, yet predictors of beginning writing are less well studied than beginning reading. This study investigated contributions of school-entry name-writing to writing skills after 1 and 2 years of school in New Zealand above and beyond school-entry oral language and early literacy skills.…

Background: Although most prevalent in childhood, the acquisition of new words in oral vocabulary takes place right across the lifespan. Of the many factors that influence oral vocabulary learning, one extrinsic factor is the listening environment. The current study aimed to examine whether the presence of noise impacts oral vocabulary learning in…

This study examined high-leverage teaching practices (HLTPs) in foreign language instruction. Specifically, this study sought to identify teaching practices that Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) learners and instructors think could enhance learners' oral communicative competence. It attempted to answer the following questions: (1) What are the…

Children can only develop spoken language through consistent exposure to the acoustic cues that comprise speech and language. Until recently, hearing levels from the clinical audiogram were the primary measure used to define typical hearing and the presence or degree of a child's hearing loss. While the clinical audiogram remains an important…

This article provides a conceptual review of the principles of input spacing as they might relate specifically to oral task repetition research and presents some of the common methodological considerations from the broader input spacing literature. The specific considerations discussed include the interaction between intersession intervals and…

Purpose: In the last decade, psychology and other sciences have implemented numerous reforms to improve the robustness of our research, many of which are based on increasing transparency throughout the research process. Among these reforms is the practice of preregistration, in which researchers create a time-stamped and uneditable document before…

The current study explored the link between mouthing and fingering and vocal behaviours directed to objects and caregivers. Nine infants were tracked from the ages of 8-16 months by video recording their mouthing and fingering vignettes and vocal behaviours and vocal behaviours resulting in a total of 2,061 coded behaviours. Microanalysis revealed…

This study examines a 30-item Spanish elicited imitation task (EIT) as a measure of global language proficiency for heritage language (HL) learners of Spanish. Results from Rasch modeling suggest that, while EIT scores demonstrated excellent reliability, the ability of much of the HL sample far exceeded the difficulty of the items. Differential…

Whereas it is generally accepted that theory of mind and language are related constructs, the nature of the relation remains unclear. Past research has suggested that two related, but distinct, components of theory of mind are differentially related to language. The present study attempted to clarify the relation between theory of mind and…

The current study evaluated the use of the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) instructional approach to teach the TRAP mnemonic (Think before reading, Read a paragraph, Ask what is the main idea/important details, Paraphrase the paragraph) and its impact on youth reading comprehension performance. The TRAP mnemonic was taught to an…

Background: Oral language has long been acknowledged as a prominent influence on children's reading development. Here, we examine the intersecting contribution of two prominent aspects of oral language - phonology and morphology. We explore this interface by examining contributions from the two dimensions of phonology - phonemic and prosodic - of…

The nationally funded Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) programme aimed to design, deliver and evaluate interventions to improve a range of outcomes for children growing up in areas of low socio-economic status (SES). A key focus for many PEI programmes was to improve the oral language abilities of children, recognising its important link to…

Children's language development can reflect the developmental process of children's cognition and social emotions. The present study focuses on preschool children's conversational competence and narrative competence, aiming at exploring developmental features of preschool children's pragmatic competence through analyzing data from self-built oral…

It has become increasingly clear that we as communication center professionals must confront the deeply rooted linguistic assumptions and traditions that underlie notions of speaking well. In this essay, we argue that one place to start is to look closely how and why conceptions of speaking well have come to rest on an unquestioned ideal of what…