Purpose: To date, research on effects of prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) has focused on a broad range of cognitive impairments, but relatively few studies have examined effects of PAE on development of reading skills. Although PAE has been linked to poorer reading comprehension, it remains unclear whether this impairment is attributable to…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the types of spelling errors made by children with mild to moderate hearing loss (CMMHL) compared with children with typical hearing (TH) and to determine if types of spelling errors were related to linguistic or audiologic factors. CMMHL and TH completed measures of spelling, spoken language, speech…

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…

In contrast to the large body of research investigating intervention for poor decoding skills, far fewer studies have evaluated interventions for reading comprehension. There is even less research on children with more specific difficulties with reading comprehension, often referred to as "poor comprehenders". Levels of effectiveness…

This study investigated the response to class-wide phonological awareness and oral language teaching for 40 children who entered school with speech and language difficulties. A stepped wedge research design was adopted to compare the immediate impact of the 10-week teacher-led instruction. The progress of the children with speech and language…

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…

Test-taker characteristics (TTCs), or individual difference variables, are known to be a systematic source of variance in language test performance. Although previous research has documented the impact of a range of TTCs on second language (L2) learners' test performance, few of these studies have involved young learners. Given that young L2…

Models of monolingual literacy propose that reading acquisition builds upon children's semantic, phonological, and orthographic knowledge. The relationships between these components vary cross-linguistically, yet it is generally unknown how these differences impact bilingual children's literacy. A comparison between Spanish-English bilingual and…

Better understanding of the mechanisms underlying early reading skills can lead to improved interventions. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine multivariate associations among reading, language, spoken phonological awareness, and fingerspelling abilities for three groups of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) beginning readers: those who…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use an established model of working memory in children to predict an established model of word learning to determine whether working memory explained word learning variance over and above the contributions of expressive vocabulary and nonverbal IQ. Method: One hundred sixty-seven English-speaking second…

Spelling analyses can be used to investigate sources of linguistic knowledge underlying children's literacy development and may be useful in predicting later achievement. This study explored the utility of six analysis metrics in predicting the spelling achievement of school-aged children with literacy learning difficulties via post-hoc analyses…

Morphophonological processing involves the phonological analysis of morphemes. Item-specific phonological characteristics have been shown to influence morphophonological skills in children. This study investigates the relative contributions of broad phonological skills and vocabulary to production and judgement accuracies of the Dutch past tense…

In the present study, we examined relations between children's language and literacy learning opportunities, initial skills, and maternal education. We assessed children's (n = 1,751 in 461 early childhood classrooms) initial language and literacy skills using standardized measures, and caregivers reported maternal education via questionnaires. We…

Purpose: Establishing stable and flexible phonological representations is a key component of language development and one which is thought to vary across children with neurodevelopmental disorders affecting language acquisition. Sleep is understood to support the learning and generalization of new phonological mappings in adults, but this remains…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine how nonword repetition (NWR) performance may be impacted by the presence of concomitant speech and language disorders in young children who stutter (CWS). Method: One hundred forty-one children (88 CWS and 53 children who do not stutter [CWNS]) participated. CWS were divided into groups based on the…