Purpose: Children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) often struggle with forming early representations for phonemes and words, which could impact their speech production as well as their lexical access. This difficulty may limit their ability to accurately identify nonexemplar productions of words, such as developmental misarticulations produced…

A cluster randomized design was used to investigate the effects of the "Story Friends" vocabulary curriculum on learning of 84 preschoolers in 24 classrooms who were at risk for language difficulties. Children in the treatment condition received explicit vocabulary instruction of 36 words during small-group storybook listening centers…

Purpose: Diagnostic tools developed for monolinguals are frequently used for bilingual linguistic assessment. The absence of evaluation criteria for using monolingual norms for bilinguals contributes to inconsistent diagnostic procedures, impacting research and clinical practice. This study considers the reliance on monolingual tools to assess the…

A cluster randomized design was used to investigate effects of the Story Friends vocabulary curriculum on learning of 84 preschoolers in 24 classrooms who were at risk for language difficulties. Children in the treatment condition received explicit vocabulary instruction of 36 words during small-group storybook listening centers with extended…

Purpose: Narrative skill represents a higher-level linguistic skill that shows incremental development in the preschool years. During these years, there are considerable individual differences in this skill, with some children being highly skilled narrators (i.e., precocious) relative to peers of their age. In this study, we explored the…

Israel's population includes over a million Russian-speaking immigrants and more than 300,000 native English speakers. These groups differ in social integration and in the status of their heritage languages in Israel. We compared children's and parents' perceptions of children's identities, language abilities, and language preferences among…

Purpose: Working memory and linguistic knowledge are highly intertwined in language tasks. Verbal working memory in particular has been studied as a potential constraint on language performance. This, in turn, highlights the need for a clinical assessment tool that will assist clinicians in understanding individual children's performance in…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the change in specific English microstructure features according to language ability in preschool Spanish-English dual language learners. Method: We collected English narratives from 22 Spanish-English dual language learners with typical language development (TD) and 22 Spanish-English dual language…

The current study was designed to determine whether classroom quality (i.e., the quality of teacher--child interactions) served as a mediator of peer effects with respect to preschool children's gain in language skills over an academic year. Participants were 670 preschool-age children (64.6% boys; "M" = 4 years, 4 months, "SD"…

Toddlerhood is marked by advances in several lexico-semantic skills, including improvements in the size and structure of the lexicon and increased efficiency in lexical processing. This project seeks to delineate how early changes in vocabulary size and vocabulary structure support lexical processing (Experiment 1), and how these three skills…

Purpose: We examined the effects of physiological arousal on speech motor control and speech motor practice effects in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS). Method: Participants included 18 CWS (M[subscript age] = 4 years 5 months) and 18 age- and gender-matched CWNS. The participants repeated a phrase "buy bobby a…

This study applied multilevel modeling to examine the relationship between the percentage of children with mild/moderate disabilities in classrooms and children's language and literacy achievement over an academic year. The sample included 516 preschool children (mean age = 52.3 months, SD = 6.3) in 75 classrooms; 42% of the children had…

Dialogic reading during shared book reading between adults and children is an effective way to promote vocabulary acquisition. However, there is limited research on what strategies parents are spontaneously using during book reading sessions, which are important to understand for optimizing parent training in dialogic reading. The current study…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the appropriateness of standardized assessments of expressive grammar and vocabulary in a sample of preschool-age dual language learners (DLLs) who use Jamaican Creole (JC) and English. Adult models from the same linguistic community as these children were used to inform culturally and…

This study explores typically developing bilingual children's performance in their English as a heritage language. The aim of this study is to advance our understanding of heritage language expectations and the role of chronological age and bilingual exposure. A broad range of receptive and expressive linguistic domains are investigated as a…