Purpose: The purposes of this tutorial are (a) to describe a method of language sample analysis (LSA) referred to as SUGAR (Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised) and (b) to offer step-by-step instructions detailing how to collect, transcribe, analyze, and interpret the results of a SUGAR language sample. Method: The tutorial begins…

Language sample analysis (LSA) is valuable clinical tool and an important component of comprehensive language assessment. However, LSA is underutilized in real-world practice. SLPs have identified time constraints, insufficient training, and lack of confidence in LSA skills as barriers to regular LSA implementation. Communication science and…

The number of unique words in children's speech is one of most basic statistics indicating their language development. We may, however, face difficulties when trying to accurately evaluate the number of unique words in a child's growing corpus over time with a limited sample size. This study proposes a novel technique to estimate the latent number…

The present study investigated children's early use of verb inflection in Japanese by comparing a generativist account, which predicts that the past tense will have a special default-like status for the child during the early stages, with a constructivist input-driven account, which assumes that children's acquisition and use of inflectional forms…

The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to study the language development of 4-year-old emergent bilinguals in a bilingual (Spanish/English) Head Start classroom with flexible language practices. Data were collected throughout the 10-month school year by visiting the classroom 2-3 times per week. Data include: field notes (observations and…

Many English-speaking children use plural nominal forms in spontaneous speech before the age of two, and display some understanding of plural inflection in production tasks. However, results from an intermodal preferential study suggested a lack of "comprehension" of nominal plural morphology at 24 months of age (Kouider, Halberda, Wood,…

This study assesses the consequences of housing instability during the first 5 years of a child's life for a host of school readiness outcomes. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 2,810), this study examines the relation between multiple moves and children's language and literacy and behavior problems at…

Language brokering (LB) is the act of translating and interpreting within immigrant families by children and adolescents for their parents, other family members, and other adults. Although LB is a common phenomenon among immigrant families in the United States, research regarding its impact on immigrant families mainly focuses on the experiences…

The relationship between early maternal responsivity and later child communication outcomes in young children with fragile X syndrome was investigated. Data were obtained from 55 mother-child dyads over a 36-month period. Performance data were obtained at each measurement point from video observations of four different contexts. These were coded…

The acquisition of noun gender on articles was studied in a sample of 21 young German-speaking children. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data were used. Data analysis is based on 22 two-hourly speech samples per child from 6 children between 1 ; 4 and 3 ; 8 and on 5 two-hourly speech samples per child from 15 children between 1 ; 4 and 2 ; 10. The…

The CHAT transcription standard of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), the world's largest computer archive of child language data, is critiqued. CHAT is being considered as a possible standard for the field of child language as a whole. It is argued that CHAT is biased toward three views that are no longer current in the field: (1)…

Presents a framework for studying the effects of the Maturation Hypothesis on the problem of language learning, parametrically conceived, and offers a method for finding all existing maturational solutions for any parametric hypothesis space and any learning algorithm that differs from Gibson and Wexler's Triggering Learning Algorithm. (27…

Production of the deictic verbs "bring" and "take" was evaluated among 88 normally functioning elementary school children. Results showed that data evaluation procedures greatly influenced conclusions, the second-to-emerge form was easier to learn in a conventional way, and the second term was the proactive stimulus for…

Investigates the relationship between observational and checklist measures of vocabulary composition in preschool children. Results indicate that while the two measures are correlated, there are systematic quantitative differences between them, reflecting a combination of checklist, maternal-report and observational sampling biases. (22…

Examines two methods of differentially classifying language-delayed children as either specifically language impaired (SLI) or developmental-lag language impaired. Results indicated significant differences in classification between the two methods of defining SLI, as well as substantial changes in classification over time using either method. (47…