Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the significance and directions of the relationships among oral and manual fine motor skills and language abilities among Spanish--English bilingual children. If such relationships exist, this would support a shared biological influence on motor and language development. Method: Participants…

Background: Despite accumulated evidence that language development depends on basic cognitive processes, the balance in contributions of verbal and non-verbal cognitive skills to language abilities is still underexplored. Little is known about which cognitive measures best predict the degree of severity in children with language disorder (LD).…

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a common reading disability, affecting 5% to 11% of children in North America. Children classified as having DD often have a history of early language delay (ELD) or language impairments. Nevertheless, studies have reported conflicting results as to the association between DD-ELD and the extent of current language…

Aggression in early childhood has been found to predict negative outcomes later in life, including delinquency and psychopathology. The present study explored associations between young children's language, self-regulation, and physical aggression. A community sample of 126 preschool children aged 3 to 6 years (M = 4.87 years, SD = 0.87; 59% boys)…

Predictors of expressive grammar were compared in formal and naturalistic assessment tasks for children with typically developing (TD) language and with Developmental Langauge Disorder (DLD). Standardized expressive language assessments were administered to 110 preschoolers. The parents of these children reported whether or not they were concerned…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the kindergarten, first-, and second-grade predictors of reading comprehension in bilingual children. Specifically, we evaluated the role that Spanish and English skills play in predicting English reading comprehension in third grade. Method: As part of a longitudinal study, 248 bilingual children…

Purpose: Our purpose was to start examining clinical swallowing and motor speech skills of school-age children with unilateral cerebral palsy (UCP) compared to typically developing children (TDC), how these skills relate to each other, and whether they are predicted by clinical/demographic data (age, birth history, lesion type, etc.). Method:…

Research evidence suggests children experiencing adversity are at risk of language disparities in early childhood. This puts these children at risk of poor language outcomes, perpetuating disadvantage in later development and academic life. This study aimed to investigate associations between Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) attendance,…

The current study examined the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms and child temperament in predicting subsequent child language skills. Participants were 252 mother-child dyads recruited from the All Our Families longitudinal cohort, a primarily middle-class sample (62.9% completed postsecondary education) from Alberta, Canada (90.5%…

Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine whether otitis media (OM) in early childhood has an impact on language development in later childhood. Methods: We analyzed data from 1,344 second-generation (Generation 2) participants in the Raine Study, a longitudinal pregnancy cohort established in Perth, Western Australia, between 1989 and 1991. OM…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine the role that the first language (L1), Spanish, at Pre-Kindergarten plays in predicting second language (L2), English, word reading in first grade. In addition, it examines the role of conceptual vocabulary in predicting word reading in English. Method: As part of a longitudinal study of…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd-grade predictors of reading comprehension in bilingual children. Specifically, we evaluated the role that Spanish and English skills play in predicting English reading comprehension in 3rd grade. Method: As part of a longitudinal study, 248 bilingual children were…

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…

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…