A growing body of literature has begun to explore social attention in infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with hopes of identifying early differences that are associated with later ASD or other aspects of development. The present study used eye-tracking to familiar (mother) and unfamiliar (stranger) faces in two groups…

Purpose: With no existing gold standard for comparison, challenges arise for establishing the validity of a new standardized Mandarin language assessment normed in mainland China. Method: A new assessment, Diagnostic Receptive and Expressive Assessment of Mandarin (DREAM), was normed with a stratified sample of 969 children ages 2;6 (years;months)…

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a heterogeneous disorder affecting various aspects of language. While most studies have investigated impairments in the domain of syntax and morphosyntax, little is known about compositional semantics and the process of deriving pragmatic meanings in SLI. We selected a group of sixteen monolingual…

Oral language and word reading skills have important effects on reading comprehension. The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition (WIAT-III) measures both skill sets, but little is known about their specific effects on reading comprehension within this battery. Path analysis was used to evaluate the collective effects of reading and…

Introduction: Children and young adults with Down syndrome can demonstrate increased behavior problems compared to their typically developing peers through childhood and adolescence. Though current tools measure behavior problems in persons with intellectual disabilities, they do not capture all the behavioral problems that can occur in…

This study investigates the referential choice of Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The data consist of narratives from 16 children with ASD and 16 typically-developing (TD) children. The narratives were elicited using the wordless picture book "Frog, where are you?" Participants' referential expressions…

We asked whether parental questionnaires on the heritage language proficiency of bilingual children might elucidate how proficient bilingual children are in their heritage language. We tested 20 UK-based Polish-English bilingual children between 4;5 and 5;9 years on Polish and English versions of the Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLTs). These…

This study examined the relations between problem behaviors and early learning outcomes among 138 children in dual-language pre-K programs who were identified at the beginning of the school year to be at risk for difficulties in early language and literacy development. Children's expressive and receptive vocabulary, listening comprehension, and…

Some reports suggest that there is an increase in the number of children identified as having developmental language impairment (Bercow, 2008). yet resource issues have meant that many speech and language therapy services have compromised provision in some way. Thus, efficient ways of identifying need and prioritizing intervention are required.…

A randomized control intervention study was conducted to evaluate the effects of the highly structured Heidelberg Parent-Based Language Intervention (HPLI). The outcomes of 43 children (n = 23 intervention, n = 20 control) who had been identified as late talkers during routine developmental check-ups carried out in pediatric practices at the age…

Recent research has established a connection between children's fine motor skills and their academic performance. Previous research has focused on fine motor skills measured prior to elementary school, while the present sample included children ages 5-18 years old, making it possible to examine whether this link remains relevant throughout…

This study used data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) 2009 4-year-old cohort to examine associations among family characteristics, home and classroom environments, and the emergent literacy skills of Head Start children. Results from hierarchical linear models suggest that both family and classroom contexts play a…

Purpose: We sought to identify factors predictive of or associated with receipt of speech/language services during early childhood. We did so by analyzing data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; Andreassen & Fletcher, 2005), a nationally representative dataset maintained by the U.S. Department of Education. We…

This study addressed two aims: First, to examine the quality of adult shared book-reading behaviors for teachers and caregivers of children with communication impairments (CI) and, second, to compare the level of child literacy engagement during the teacher-led (group) and caregiver-led (one-on-one) shared book-reading sessions. Sixteen children…

This study investigates the construct validity of a new measure of Integrative Language functioning, "Tallying Reference Errors In Narratives" (TREIN), by examining the association between previously existing CNS impairment and Expressive Language functioning and elevated outcomes on the TREIN measure "rate of Nominal Reference Errors" (rNRE). The…