A 7-year longitudinal study was conducted as part of the French national cohort ELFE (N = 1095). The aim was to identify how and why early language skills at 2 years might predict later literacy skills assessed successively at 5, 7, and 9 years (LitSk5y; 7y; 9y). Using one and the same model, we also examined the relations between literacy skills…

While it is established that parental "wh"-questions, as a high-quality language input, are associated with child language outcome, less is known about the role of children's "wh"-questions in their language development. This study examines whether children's "wh"-questions during a dinnertime conversation are…

Efficient visual exploration in infancy is essential for cognitive and language development. It allows infants to participate in social interactions by attending to faces and learning about objects of interest. Visual scanning of scenes depends on a number of factors, and early differences in efficiency are likely contributing to differences in…

The present study examined maternal responses to infants' spontaneous communicative behaviors in a sample of 20 extremely-low-gestational-age (ELGA) infants and 20 full-term (FT) infants during 30 minutes of play interaction when infants were 12 months of age. Relations between maternal responses and infants' communication skills at 12 and 24…

This article reports results from a longitudinal study from age 4 to 7 of comprehension and production of narrative macrostructure in Swedish monolingual children (N = 17). "Baby Birds/Baby Goats" from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) were used to elicit narratives and ask comprehension questions at age…

The vocabulary size and composition of one group of full-term and three groups of low risk preterm children with different gestational ages (GA) were longitudinally compared at 10, 22 and 30 months of age. Expressive vocabulary development was assessed through the CDI. Cognitive development was also assessed at 22 months (Batelle Developmental…