Reading comprehension is a complex task which depends on a range of cognitive and linguistic processes. According to the Simple View of Reading, this complexity can be captured as the product of two sets of skills: decoding and linguistic comprehension. The Simple View explains variance in reading comprehension and provides a good framework to…

Purpose: Oral language skills provide a critical foundation for formal education and especially for the development of children's literacy (reading and spelling) skills. It is therefore important for teachers to be able to assess children's language skills, especially if they are concerned about their learning. We report the development and…

Background: Children with language impairment (LI) show heterogeneity in development. We tracked children from pre-school to middle childhood to characterize three developmental trajectories: resolving, persisting and emerging LI. Methods: We analyzed data from children identified as having preschool LI, or being at family risk of dyslexia,…

In controlled contexts, young children find it more difficult to learn novel words for actions than words for objects: Imai et al. found that English-speaking three-year-olds mistakenly choose a novel object as a referent for a novel verb about 42% of the time despite hearing the verb in a transitive sentence. The current two studies investigated…

This study investigates the knowledge of binding in 21 English-speaking children with SLI, aged 6;08-16;05, compared to 21 children with WS, language- and age-matched, and 21 language-matched control children, aged 4-7;10. Our results demonstrate no difficulties in the interpretation of reflexive or personal pronouns in SLI, revealing an intact…

This study developed, delivered and evaluated an interactive intervention, which targeted three- and four-year-old children's oral language. The intervention was carried out over twice-weekly sessions, for ten weeks. The first weekly session was a group shared storybook reading session with a puppet and the second weekly session consisted of…

This study examines whether books that contain personalized content are better facilitators of young children's word acquisition than books which are not personalized for a child. In a repeated-measures experimental design, 18 children (mean age 3;10) were read a picture book which contained both personalized and non-personalized sections, with…

International comparisons strongly influence national policy agendas in the early years. However, an appreciation of details and national context and differences is imperative to promote democracy. From the perspective of a Danish social pedagogue lecturing in Early Childhood Studies in England, the author presents a cross-national comparison to…

This research investigated the developing inter-relationships between language, graphic symbolism and symbolic play both concurrently and longitudinally from the fourth to the fifth year of childhood. Sixty children ("n"?=?60) aged between 3 and 4?years completed multiple assessments of language and assessments of graphic symbolism,…

Background: Increased demand for access to specialist services for providing support to children with speech, language and communication needs prompted a local service review of how best to allocate limited resources. This study arose as a consequence of a wish to evaluate the effectiveness of an enhanced consultative approach to delivering speech…

Background: Adequate assessment of "normal variation" versus "abnormal status" is particularly difficult for clinicians working with young children who are under 5 years of age and who present with slow language development. There is therefore clinical motivation to identify possible key difficulties (or "risk…

The use of the Language Background Questionnaire is analyzed, and the following criticisms are offered: (1) the varying nature and range of questions used, (2) the inclusion of indirect language background questions, and (3) previous methods of categorization of individuals into groups using language background scores. (SL)

Various socio-environmental influences (social class, preschool education, and home environment) on the development of receptive language in preschool children were investigated. Only middle class children benefitted significantly from nursery school experience. (BW)

This book documents the results of a survey to acquire information regarding the English proficiency of second generation minority group children in Britain. The aim of the survey was to do the following: to establish the level of proficiency in English of minority group pupils of junior school age who had received different educational…

Modeled on a similar study conducted in Scotland, this study reports on preschool children in two cities of England's Midlands Region (Birmingham and Coventry). Subjects had special needs including physical, mental, behavioral, speech, and second language problems; in addition, some were gifted. A survey identified children with special needs in…