Within a language, there is considerable variation in the pronunciations of words owing to social factors like age, gender, nationality, and race. In the present study, we investigate whether toddlers link social and linguistic variation during word learning. In Experiment 1, 24- to 26-month-old toddlers were exposed to two talkers whose front…

Examines the functioning of toddlers with physical anomalies (but without central nervous system damage) in comparison to premature toddlers (with similar deviant early experience but no deviant physical appearance) and to normal toddlers. Premature and disabled toddlers performed more poorly than normal toddlers in measures of social initiative,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the development of proto-imperative and proto-declarative utterances in normally developing, non-neonatally screened, profoundly deaf toddlers. Method: Both types of proto-declarative are considered to be the most basic prelinguistic and early linguistic communicative functions.…