This study investigated the complex relationship between false-belief (FB) understanding, structural language and pragmatic communication in typically developing children. A total of 78 Finnish children, aged from 4 to 6 years, including an equal number of boys and girls, participated in this study. In the first instance, the study explored the…

This study aimed to adapt and validate the Word Complexity Measure (WCM) for Persian-speaking toddlers. The WCM is a tool for assessing phonological complexity, originally proposed by Stoel-Gammon. The study was conducted in two phases: (1) adapting the WCM parameters to the Persian language and (2) conducting a validation study with 60…

We examined the concurrent relationship between narrative skills (the Renfrew Bus Story Test) and core language measures (vocabulary, grammar and verbal memory) at age 4 and the longitudinal relationship between core language and listening comprehension skills at age 7 in a sample of 215 children using latent variables and structural equation…

When toddlers hear a novel word, they quickly and independently link it with a novel object rather than known-name objects. However, they are less proficient in retaining multiple novel words. Sleep and even short naps can enhance declarative memory in adults and children and this study investigates the effect of napping on children's memory for…

Language difficulties are frequently characterized by a significantly lower mean length of utterances (MLU) among children experiencing neglect. More opportunities to experience positive interactions, such as in early childhood education (ECE) settings, could help increase these children's MLU. This study aims to examine the relationship between…

Narrative production draws upon linguistic, cognitive and pragmatic skills, and is subject to substantial individual differences. This study aimed to characterise the development of narrative production in late childhood and to assess whether children's cumulative experience of reading fiction is associated with individual differences in narrative…

The present study examines the linguistic expression of causal relations between the motion events within the main episode in a picture-based narrative. One hundred and fifty children aged 5-7 were asked to narrate a story based on a series of pictures: 45 Hebrew monolinguals (19 with Developmental Language Disorders [DLD]), 57 English-Hebrew…

This cross-sectional study investigated the use of four verbal indices of social knowledge (personal pronouns, verb conjugations, people words and mental state language) and their concurrent relations in a sample of 287 Italian-speaking children between 18 and 36 months. Results showed that the production of all indices increased with age. Mental…

Parent-child interaction plays a crucial role in early language acquisition. In young typically developing children, direct and indirect relationships between parent gesture, child gesture and child language have been observed. Far less is known about these relationships in atypical language development. The present study investigated parent…

The main aims of this study were to investigate the relationship between the lexical size and the emergence of morphological and syntactic markers in toddlers between the ages of 16 and 30 months and to compare these results between Galician and European Portuguese. Parents of 3012 Portuguese toddlers and those of 1081 Galician toddlers completed…

This is the first study of a large sample of Bulgarian-speaking toddlers and their communicative development. A Bulgarian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory Words and Sentences was used to obtain parent report data on 153 children between the ages of 20 and 30 months. Lexical and grammatical development were…

This article describes the European Portuguese MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories short forms, the first published instruments for the assessment of language development in EP-learning infants and toddlers. Normative data from the EP population are presented, focusing on developmental trends for vocabulary learning, production…

Children's phonological awareness develops rapidly in the preschool years and is an important contributor to later reading skill. This study addresses the role of parents' talk in preschool children's phonological awareness development. A community sample of 27 parents and their 3- to 4-year-old children participated in a new "Sound…

This study examined the validity and reliability of different measures of morphosyntactic complexity, including the Morphosyntactic Complexity Scale (MSCS), a novel adaptation of the Developmental Sentence Scoring, in French-speaking school-aged children. Seventy-three Quebec children from kindergarten to Grade 3 completed a definition task and a…

Dynamic analyses of language growth tell us how vocabulary and grammar develop and how the two might be intertwined. Analyses of growth curves between 17 and 42 months, based on longitudinal data for 34 children, revealed interesting patterns of vocabulary and grammatical developments. They showed that these patterns were nonlinear, but with…