The importance of early vocabulary development to later reading comprehension has been well-established. However, there have been a number of criticisms that the assessments typically used to measure oral vocabulary knowledge do not adequately capture the complexity of this construct. This conceptual review works towards a more robust theoretical…

We investigated "scalar implicature" in adolescents and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to test whether theory of mind deficits associated with autism affect pragmatic inferences in language. We tested scalar implicature computation in adolescents with ASD (12-18 years) and asked whether they reason about mental states when…

There is a virtual consensus regarding the types of language processes, interactions, and material supports that are central for young children to become proficient readers and writers (Shanahan et al., 2008). In this study, we examine these supports in both home and school contexts during children's critical transitional kindergarten year.…

The purpose of this study was to support teachers' child-directed language and student outcomes by enhancing the educative features of an intervention targeted to vocabulary, conceptual development and comprehension. Using a set of design heuristics (Davis & Krajcik, 2005), our goal was to support teachers' professional development within the…