Purpose: This commentary responds to the implications for child language intervention of Catts and Kamhi's (2017) call to move from viewing reading comprehension as a single ability to recognizing it as a complex constellation of reader, text, and activity. Method: Reading comprehension, as Catts and Kamhi explain, is very complicated. In this…

Oral reading fluency probes are essential for reading assessment, intervention, and progress monitoring. Due to the limited options for choosing oral reading fluency probes, it is important to utilize all available resources such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT to create oral reading fluency probes. The purpose of this…

Scores derived from intelligence instruments predict many important outcomes in life, so it is not surprising that researchers and clinicians seek out interventions aimed at increasing these scores. Dixon et al. (J Behav Educ, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-019-09344-7) recently investigated the relation between instruction based on…

Though the U.S. health care system is among the best in the developed world, access to chronic care remains a problem for many, in part, because the system is not ideally suited to treat long-term conditions. Consequently, economic and societal costs associated with chronic disease are rising rapidly. To complement traditional pathogenic chronic…

In this commentary, I highlight key insights from research on learning disabilities (LD) reported in this special issue. Authors of each article describe innovative work that is expanding frontiers of LD knowledge, by focusing on vulnerable and understudied populations, using multiple methodologies and data sources, and building and refining…

The ethos behind provision of early intervention programmes to infants and young children with additional support needs has been established for some time (e.g. Right-from-the-Start), but targeting the development of typically developing infants has been a relatively recent phenomenon. Baby sign is one of the many intervention techniques…

A systematic review was conducted to synthesize the evidence related to the effectiveness of baby sign language for children with typical development. This response to a Commentary on the review stresses that the primary purpose of the review was to assist caregivers and policy makers with informed decision-making related to the benefits of the…

Fricke et al. and Hagen et al. (2017) each report on large-scale pragmatic randomised controlled trials delivered in schools or nurseries, investigating language interventions for vulnerable children and showing moderate positive effect sizes. Such research is part of a recent development of 'what works' research in England, and the number of…

Acquiring proficiency in the various English language skills and the ability to utilize those skills as a medium of learning is a daunting task. Research suggests that children who do not speak English as their first language (L1) need five to seven years in school before they can perform as well in English as their English peers who are native…

Our commentary responds to the five articles of the special issue on multidisciplinary collaboration to support struggling readers. From our perspectives informed by experiences working with diverse student and family populations in urban settings, preparing pre- and in-service educators and specialists to do the same, and working in federally…

Construction grammars (Lakoff, Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the Mind, University of Chicago Press, 1987; Langacker, Foundations of cognitive grammar: Theoretical pre-requisites, Stanford University Press, 1987; Croft, Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective, Oxford University…

Over the years, the annual "What's Hot, What's Not" survey by Jack Cassidy has served as an important indicator for issues in the continuously changing landscape of literacy education within North America. In "Beyond the Common Core," Cassidy, Ortlieb, and GroteGarcia (2016) note the meteoric rise of the Common Core State…

Korean American adolescents may find themselves caught between traditional Korean culture and demands for Americanization. Subsequently this population of students and parents may have very distinct needs in our schools as they are a growing population of students. This commentary discusses important considerations for teachers and administrators…

A commentary on Williams's (2012) invited article on the use of adapted vocabulary learning interventions focuses on three areas: (a) Vocabulary interventions with storybook reading originally designed for hearing children can be adapted for deaf children. (b) Teachers are invited to reflect on how the read-aloud process in English differs from…

Compared with autistic disorder and developmental dyslexia, specific language impairment (SLI) attracts considerably less media coverage and research funding. Whereas most members of the public have some idea of the characteristics of autistic disorder and developmental dyslexia, this is not so for SLI. It is intriguing to consider why this might…