Research suggests foster children are at risk for poor language skills. One intervention, attachment and biobehavioral catch-up (ABC), was shown to successfully improve not only young foster children's attachment to their parents, but also their receptive vocabulary skills (Bernard et al., 2017; Raby et al., 2019). Given that language acquisition…

Early emerging executive functioning is associated with important emotional, social, and academic outcomes, including academic competence in elementary school. Employing a family study design, the current study investigated preschoolers' executive functioning and receptive vocabulary knowledge, maternal depression and anxiety measured when the…

Background: Accumulating evidence shows that the home literacy environment (HLE) has a potent and early influence on children's language and literacy development. However, there is a more limited understanding of HLE and its contribution to children's outcomes for simultaneous bilingual children exposed to two languages at home, particularly in…

Receptive vocabulary development was examined in 313 children (151 girls; 78% White) as a function of infant attention and maternal education (66% of mothers held a college degree or higher). Attention was measured at 10 months using a dynamic puppet task and receptive vocabulary was measured at 3-, 4-, 6-, and 9 years of age using the Peabody…

Previous studies have suggested that parents may support the development of theory of mind (ToM) in their child by talking about mental states (mental state talk; MST). However, MST has not been sufficiently explored in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study investigated ToM and availability of parental MST in deaf children with…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between the early mathematic and receptive language skills while considering letter knowledge as a mediator. Participants included 357 children with a mean age of 64.5 months and their parents. Results suggest that letter knowledge mediates the relation between the early mathematic and…

Purpose: This study evaluates the impact of temporal synchrony between maternal touch and speech on children's early language development. It investigates whether the proportion of word-touch co-occurrence, overlap, and alignment precision in maternal input influences language acquisition, hypothesizing that such synchrony boosts infants'…

Purpose: Conversational latency entails the temporal feature of turn-taking, which is understudied in autistic children. The current study investigated the influences of child-based and parental factors on conversational latency in autistic children with heterogeneous spoken language abilities. Method: Participants were 46 autistic children aged…

Parental engagement in home-based learning activities is linked to children's academic skills. Yet, interventions that try to enhance parental engagement--sometimes targeted to families with low levels of education--have small effects. This study aimed to inform supports for families by examining how different types of home-based learning…

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…

Observational studies have shown that caregiver sensitivity predicts child language skills. These studies, however, have entirely relied on between-family designs (single parent-child dyad per family), which cannot rule out the contribution of shared family confounds (e.g., genetics, books in home). The current study investigates whether observed…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the role of parental sensitivity in language and neurocognitive outcomes in children who are deaf and/or hard of hearing (DHH). Method: Sixty-two parent-child dyads of children with normal hearing (NH) and 64 of children who are DHH (3-8 years) completed parent and child measures of inhibitory…

Purpose: A rich body of evidence has illuminated the importance of caregivers' use of prosody in facilitating young children's language development. Although caregiver-child shared reading has been repeatedly linked to children's language skills, caregiver prosody during shared reading interactions (i.e., oral reading expressiveness) has been…

Vocabulary size is a crucial early indicator of language development, for both monolingual and bilingual children. Assessing vocabulary in bilingual children is complex because they learn words in two languages, and there remains significant controversy about how to best measure their vocabulary size, especially in relation to monolinguals. This…

Improving social communication is a frequent goal of early autism services. However, it is unclear whether existing models of social communication align with the perspectives and priorities of key stakeholders, including parents, teachers, and expert clinicians. Stakeholder perspectives on social communication characteristics and priorities for…