Purpose: The aim of this study was to gain more insight into the linguistic characterization of dyslexia by investigating vocabulary acquisition. In a previous study, vocabulary at 17 months of age appeared to be related to familial risk (FR) of dyslexia. The aim of this study was to investigate how the differences in lexical composition further…

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…

This mixed two-way experimental, cross-sectional study investigated fast-mapping (FM) of novel nouns and verbs in 63 Persian-speaking toddlers aged 30 months, including 31 late-talking (LT) and 32 typically developing (TD) matched with respect to age and maternal education. Toddlers were classified as LT if they had limited expressive vocabulary…

Linguistic contexts provide useful information about verb meanings by narrowing the space of candidate concepts. Intuitively, the more information, the better. For example, "the tall girl is 'fezzing,'" as compared to "the girl is fezzing," provides more information about which event, out of multiple candidate events, is being…

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…

One of the most popular and widely used parent report instruments for assessing early language acquisition is the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). This study compares normative data of the Italian Words and Sentences complete form (WS-CF) and short form (WS-SF). The samples included 752 children for the WS-CF and 816…

This study investigated the role of language exposure in vocabulary acquisition in Irish, a threatened minority language in Ireland which is usually acquired with English in a bilingual context. Using a bilingual Irish-English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories) [Fenson, L., V. A. Marchman, D. J. Thal, P. S.…

This paper compared the vocabulary size of a group of 250 bilinguals aged 24-36 months acquiring six different language pairs using an analogous tool, and attempted to identify factors that influence vocabulary sizes and ultimately place children at risk for language delay. Each research group used adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative…

The main aims of this study were to investigate the relationship between the lexical size and the emergence of morphological and syntactic markers in toddlers between the ages of 16 and 30 months and to compare these results between Galician and European Portuguese. Parents of 3012 Portuguese toddlers and those of 1081 Galician toddlers completed…

When toddlers hear a novel word, they quickly and independently link it with a novel object rather than known-name objects. However, they are less proficient in retaining multiple novel words. Sleep and even short naps can enhance declarative memory in adults and children and this study investigates the effect of napping on children's memory for…

The results from a large-scale study on toddlers' language acquisition in European Portuguese are presented. Toddlers' lexical and grammatical competencies were assessed using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. The results, based on 3012 reports completed by parents, indicate an increase in the lexical…

The expressive lexical skills of 53 Polish bilinguals aged 24-36 months living in the UK and Ireland were assessed using Polish and British English adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Polish vocabulary scores were compared to those of 53 Polish monolinguals matched for age, gender and parental education. The…

Measuring individual differences in children's emerging language abilities is important to researchers and clinicians alike. The 2 most widely used methods for assessing children's vocabulary both have limitations: Experimenter-administered tests are time-consuming and expensive, and parent questionnaires have only been designed for children up to…

Research Findings: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of linguistic training based on the use of the Drežancic method in educational settings. It is hypothesized that characteristics of this method, based on the typical stages of linguistic and cognitive development, could influence both language competence and executive function (EF). A…

Adult humans process communicative interactions by recognizing that information is being communicated through speech (linguistic ability) and simultaneously evaluating how to respond appropriately (social-pragmatic ability). These abilities may originate in infancy. Infants understand how speech communicates in social interactions, helping them…