Research examining relations between language skills and social competence has yielded mixed findings. Three meta-analyses investigated links between language skills (overall, receptive, and expressive) and social competence in 2- to 12-year-old children. Data from 130 studies representing 62,120 children (M age at language assessment = 4.70…

The current study investigated whether age-related changes in the conceptualization of social groups influences interpretation of the pronoun we. Sixty-four 2- and 4-year-olds (N = 29 female, 50 White-identifying) viewed scenarios in which it was ambiguous how many puppets performed an activity together. When asked who performed the activity, a…

This study explored whether the directionality of the relation between majority language and various facets of socioemotional development (three to 5 years old) differs between children with different language backgrounds. 12,951 children (49% girls; 85% White, 6% Pakistani and Bangladeshi, 3% Black, 3% Mix, 2% Indian) from the British Millennium…

In low- and middle-income countries, urbanization has spurred the expansion of peri-urban communities, or urban communities of formerly rural residents with low socioeconomic status. The growth of these communities offers researchers an opportunity to measure the associations between the level of urbanization and the home language environment…

This study examined the influence of linguistic input on the development of productive and receptive skills across three fundamental language domains: lexico-semantics, syntax, and phonology. Seventy-one (35 female) Basque-Spanish bilingual children were assessed at three time points (Fall 2018, Summer 2019, Winter 2021), between 4 and 6 years of…

This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) phonology on second language (L2) early reading skills in Sylheti-English bilinguals (N = 58; 48% girls; British Bangladeshi) and their monolingual-English peers (N = 43; 45% girls; 96% White British, 4% multiethnic British) in a diaspora context. Language-specific phonological awareness…

Consonants and vowels differentially contribute to lexical acquisition. From 8 months on, infants' preferential reliance on consonants has been shown to predict their lexical outcome. Here, the predictive value of German-learning infants' (n = 58, 29 girls, 29 boys) trajectories of consonant and vowel perception, indicated by the…

The association between decontextualized talk (DT; i.e., talk extending beyond immediate context) and child language outcomes is well-attested but not well-understood. This study tested the hypothesis that DT is more linguistically complex than contextualized talk (CT). Thirty-eight Norwegian children (M[subscript age] = 5.5 years; 25 girls; 30…

Children from language minority homes reach school age with variable dual language skills. Cluster analysis identified four bilingual profiles among 126 U.S.-born, 5-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals. The profiles differed on two dimensions: language balance and total language knowledge. Balance varied primarily as a function of indicators of…

Acquisition of an argument structure may be affected by the diversity of lexical types that appear in that structure (Conwell et al., 2011; Yang, 2016). Seventy-two 5- and 6-year-old English-speaking children completed a learning study where they were exposed to a novel argument structure and then tested on their ability to comprehend it. The…

This study identified changes in Korean and heritage language proficiencies across five waves (2011-2015) and examined the association between linguistic acculturation trajectories and adjustment (2016) among Korean adolescents with immigrant family backgrounds (N = 1441; 51.21% female; M[subscript age(baseline)] = 9.97). All adolescents were from…

The account that word learning starts in earnest during the second year of life, when infants have mastered the disambiguation skills, has recently been challenged by evidence that infants during the first year already know many common words. The preliminary ability to rapidly map and disambiguate linguistic labels was tested in Italian-speaking…

This study investigates the influence of semantic maturation on early lexical development by examining the impact of contextual diversity--known to influence semantic development--on word promotion from receptive to productive vocabularies (i.e., comprehension-expression gap). Study 1 compares the vocabularies of 3685 American-English-speaking…

This study investigates the impact of evidentiality on source monitoring and the impact of source monitoring on false belief understanding (FBU), while controlling for short-term memory, age, gender, and receptive vocabulary. One hundred (50 girls) monolingual 3- and 4-year-olds from Turkey and the UK participated in the study in 2019. In Turkish,…

Gender-science stereotypes emerge early in childhood, but little is known about the developmental processes by which they arise. The present study tested the hypothesis that language implying scientists are a special and distinct kind of person contributes to the development of gender-science stereotypes, even when it does not communicate…