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…

Purpose: This experiment examined English- or Spanish-learning preverbal (8-9 months, n = 32) and postverbal (12-14 months, n = 40) infants' learning of word-action pairings prior to and after the transition to verb comprehension and its relation to naturally learned vocabulary. Method: Infants of both verbal levels were first habituated to 2…

A handful of recent experimental reports have shown that infants of 6-9 months know the meanings of some common words. Here, we replicate and extend these findings. With a new set of items, we show that when young infants (age 6-16 months, n = 49) are presented with side-by-side video clips depicting various common early words, and one clip is…

When children hear a novel word in a context presenting a novel object and a familiar one, they usually assume that the novel word refers to the novel object. In a series of experiments, we tested whether this behavior would be found when 2-year-olds interpreted novel words that differed phonologically from familiar words in only 1 sound, either a…

In the report presented here, the authors describe a pilot intervention study that was intended to teach children with visual impairments the meaning of far-away words, and that used their mothers as mediators. The aim was to teach both labels and deep word knowledge, which is the comprehension of the full meaning of words, illustrated through…

This study presents findings on patterns of communication between internationally adopted children and their mothers in order to better understand the nature of these interactions and their influence on language learning. We examined maternal language use and joint attention behaviors of mothers and their children in 21 mother-child pairs: 10…

Thirty infants at 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while playing for 18 minutes. Experimental stimuli were presented in three communicative intent contexts--proto-declarative, proto-imperative, and ambiguous--to elicit infant communicative bids that did and did not contain gestures. Mothers' responses were analyzed, and their verbal responses…