Vocabulary acquisition is a fundamental element of mastering the English language, necessitating a comprehensive lexicon that evolves through experiential learning to facilitate accurate comprehension and production of language. The current study examined the impact of Total Physical Response (TPR) tasks on the vocabulary acquisition of Thai…

While it is established that parental "wh"-questions, as a high-quality language input, are associated with child language outcome, less is known about the role of children's "wh"-questions in their language development. This study examines whether children's "wh"-questions during a dinnertime conversation are…

The 3 papers by Hammond and Drummond (2019), LoBue and Adolph (2019), and Stern, Botdorf, Cassidy, and Riggins (2019) bring into focus some of the exciting and promising new directions emerging in the field of emotional development. This commentary urges researchers moving in these new directions to leverage what is already known about emotional…

This study examined the connection between young children's social play, creativity, storytelling, and language abilities. Participants were 56 primarily European American preschool children. First, to assess creativity we asked children to draw several pictures. Children created stories about their pictures during the creative process. Second,…

Little empirical evidence exists about school-age pragmatic communication or predictors in siblings at heightened familial risk for ASD (HR) and low-risk (LR) controls. The "Pragmatic Rating Scale-School-Age" (Landa unpublished) was scored for 49 HR siblings and 18 LR controls at 8-12 years. Social-communication and language measures…

To craft engaging nonfiction prose, young writers should focus on a specific idea or concept of interest and use acclaimed children's books as mentor texts to help them understand options for developing their ideas. In this article, the authors provide examples of high-quality children's nonfiction for exploring various formats and text structures…

The purpose of this quasi-experiment is to test two different methods for helping students reduce anxiety before an exam. Students in two introductory psychology courses (N = 111) engaged in either a focused breathing exercise or an expressive writing exercise before their final exam. Results indicated that, compared with previous exam…

Some college students who experience discontent with the instructional experience engage in a complaining and problem-solving behavior called "instructional dissent." Three types of dissent have been identified: rhetorical, expressive, and vengeful. Student perceptions of "instructor power" influence if and how students…

This paper reviews the theoretical and pedagogical affordances and challenges highlighted in studies on correcting second language (L2) learners' errors via computer-mediated feedback (CMF) in blended and distance learning. The study aimed at understanding and conveying the reported challenges and affordances of CMF to inform the computer-assisted…

Purpose: This study was designed to assess the utility of a tool for automated analysis of rare vocabulary use in the spoken narratives of a group of school-age children from low-income communities. Method: We evaluated personal and fictional narratives from 76 school-age children from low-income communities (M[subscript age] = 9;3…

Purpose: Wide interindividual variability characterizes language development in the general and at-risk populations of up to 3 years of age. We adopted a complex approach that considers multiple aspects of lexical and grammatical skills to identify language profiles in low-risk preterm and full-term children. We also investigated biological and…

This study examines the relationship between developing writer's vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, and writing abilities. Participants were EFL Chinese junior-high students, of whom there were 120 Grade 8 and 147 Grade 9 students. Measures included tests of vocabulary size, word association, and morphological awareness. Students' writing…

The development of an expressive language score for people with autism based on the ADOS-2 was recently reported by Mazurek et al. (2019). The current study examined the construct validity of the ADOS-2 expressive language score (ELS) in a sample of adolescents with fragile X syndrome (n = 45, 10 girls), a neurodevelopmental disorder with high…

Few American Sign Language (ASL) assessments are readily available for educators to administer and score to document deaf students' skill levels and direct ASL instruction. Even fewer studies include deaf students with intellectual disabilities or document deaf students' ASL skills across time. The present study reports deaf school-aged students'…

Background: Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome (RSTS) is a multiple congenital anomaly syndrome characterised by several typical somatic characteristics and by developmental disabilities with various degrees of severity. Focusing on children with RSTS, the aim of this study was to describe their psychomotor, cognitive, and socio-emotional developmental…