Deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) need a supportive family environment to facilitate language development. The present study was designed to assess the effects of parent training (PT) on enhancing children's communication development. The PT was based on the "It Takes Two to Talk" model, with specific adaptations for families of…

Mind-mindedness (MM), the parent's propensity to treat their young child as an individual with a mind of their own, has repeatedly been found to be positively associated with subsequent child development outcomes. In the current Swedish study, the first aim was to investigate the main features of MM in this cultural context and the second aim was…

Previous research has shown that the quality of mother-child interactions between pre-term children and their mothers tends to be poorer than that of full-term children and their mothers (Forcada-Guex, Pierrehumbert, Borghini, Moessinger & Muller-Nix, 2006). Mothers of pre-term children are less responsive and more intrusive in interactions…

We aimed to evaluate the validity of the Ages and Stages Questionnaires Edition 3 (ASQ-3) and the MacArthur communicative development inventory (CDI) as a screening measure for children at risk of language development delay in western rural China, by comparing them to the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (BSID-III). We administered…

Vocabulary checklists completed by caregivers are a common way of measuring children's vocabulary knowledge. We provide evidence from checklist data from 31 children with and without autism spectrum disorder. When asked to report twice about whether or not their child produces a particular word, caregivers are largely consistent in their…

This study examines the effect of certain socio-cultural factors of the family environment on the language of toddlers and children in early childhood. The sample included 86 families with one- to six-year-old children. The data on the social, economic, and cultural factors of the family environment, parental reading literacy, parental knowledge…

Children with developmental disabilities (DD) may experience delays in their ability to speak and communicate with their parents, peers, and others. These children often benefit from evidence-based, parent-implemented communication interventions. In the current study, two mothers were trained and coached to use storybook reading techniques and…

In children with a hearing loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) under the age of 2, regular assessments are conducted to monitor auditory and linguistic progress. However, the collection of authentic, representative, and reliable expressive language data on young children with CIs remains a challenge. The purpose of the study was to determine…

Infants from low-socioeconomic status (SES) households hear a projected 30 million fewer words than their higher-SES peers. In a recent study, Hirsh-Pasek et al. (Psychological Science, 2015; 26: 1071) found that in a low-income sample, fluency and connectedness in exchanges between caregivers and toddlers predicted child language a year later…

Young children who hear more child-directed speech (CDS) tend to have larger vocabularies later in childhood, but the specific characteristics of CDS underlying this link are currently underspecified. The present study sought to elucidate how the structure of language input boosts learning by investigating whether repetition of object labels in…

Objective: To chart the emergence of precursors and early signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autistic traits in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective longitudinal cohort study of the surviving offspring of 14,541 pregnant women from southwestern England with an expected delivery date between April 1991 and…

The present study investigated the developmental interrelationships between play, gesture use and spoken language development in children aged 18-31 months. The children completed two tasks: (i) a structured measure of pretend (or "symbolic") play and (ii) a measure of vocabulary knowledge in which children have been shown to gesture.…

Children with Down syndrome (DS) and cerebral palsy (CP) are at risk of remaining pre-symbolic in their communication and play for prolonged periods. The aim of this study was to explore the early communication and play of children with DS and with CP who communicated at the pre-symbolic stage, and to determine the association between these…

Background: Down syndrome (DS, OMIM #190685) is the most commonly identified genetic form of intellectual disability with congenital heart defect (CHD) occurring in 50% of cases. With advances in surgical techniques and an increasing lifespan, this has necessitated a greater understanding of the neurodevelopmental consequences of CHDs. Herein, we…

Background: Children with Down's syndrome seem to show a preference for the use of gestural rather than vocal productions during the first stages of language development. This "gestural advantage" could actually be due to a developmental strategy used to compensate the difficulties in verbal production that are typical of language…