The current study examined how mothers' production of four types of internal state words at multiple ages across the second year in a free play context was related to their infants' acquisition of those words. Twenty-nine mother-infant dyads were videotaped for 18 minutes during free play when infants were 13 and 17 months old. Mothers' total and…

During the second year of life, children acquire words and expand their receptive and expressive vocabularies at a rapid pace. At this age, toddlers' phonological abilities are also developing rapidly. The current study investigated the effect of phonological complexity of words on the order in which they are acquired, receptively and…

Lexical development of bilingual children is influenced by a number of input factors. In the present study, early lexical skills of 25-month old children growing up with Turkish and German were assessed. Parents of 92 children filled out a newly developed list for productive Turkish vocabulary, as well as a vocabulary list for German. A parental…

It is well established that deictic gestures, especially pointing, play an important role in children's language development. However, recent evidence suggests that other types of deictic gestures, specifically show and give gestures, emerge before pointing and are associated with later pointing. In the present study, we examined the development…

Younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders (HR-Sibs) are at elevated risk for social communication deficits and language delays. One way to mitigate this risk early, before these deficits and delays become clear or impairing, may be to equip parents to use the strategies taught through the "Improving Parents as Communication…

Trajectories of expressive language development are highly heterogeneous in autism. Yoder et al. found that parental responsiveness, child response to joint attention, child communicative intent and consonant inventory were unique predictors of expressive language growth in minimally verbal preschoolers 16 months later (n = 87). This study applied…

Infants' pointing is associated with concurrent and later language development. The communicative intention behind the point -- i.e., imperative versus declarative -- can affect both the nature and strength of these associations, and is therefore a critical factor to consider. Parents' pointing is associated with both infant pointing and infant…

Research on immediate effects of background television during mother-infant toy play shows that an operating television in the room disrupts maternal communicative behaviors crucial for infants' vocabulary acquisition. This study is the first to examine associations between frequent background TV/video exposure during mother-infant toy play at…

This study explored participation- and impairment-based outcomes for 24 late-to-talk toddlers (M age = 20.46 months, SD = 3.09, 62.5% male) whose parents participated in Target Word™, The Hanen Program® for Parents of Children who are Late Talkers in community clinics across Ontario. Parents completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development…

Research regarding specific strategies adolescent mothers (AMs) may utilize to facilitate early language and emergent literacy skills in their children is lacking. This exploratory study investigated AMs' perceived use of preselected common language and emergent literacy strategies and correlated their use of these strategies to their children's…

In order to address gaps in the literature surrounding the acquisition of translation equivalents (TEs) in young bilinguals, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, TEs were measured in the expressive vocabularies of thirty-four French-English bilinguals at 1;4, 1;10, and 2;6 using the MacArthur Bates CDI. Children's acquisition of TEs…

Purpose: We examined receptive verb knowledge in 22- to 24-month-old toddlers with a dynamic video eye-tracking test. The primary goal of the study was to examine the utility of eye-gaze measures that are commonly used to study noun knowledge for studying verb knowledge. Method: Forty typically developing toddlers participated. They viewed 2…

In children with a hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) under the age of 2, regular assessments are conducted to monitor auditory and linguistic progress. However, the collection of authentic, representative, and reliable expressive language data on young children with CIs remains a challenge. The purpose of the study was to determine…

For more than 20 years, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) and its adaptations for languages other than English have been used as reliable measures of infants' and toddlers' early receptive and productive vocabulary size. This article introduces the OZI, the Australian English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI, now…

Infants from low-socioeconomic status (SES) households hear a projected 30 million fewer words than their higher-SES peers. In a recent study, Hirsh-Pasek et al. (Psychological Science, 2015; 26: 1071) found that in a low-income sample, fluency and connectedness in exchanges between caregivers and toddlers predicted child language a year later…