Longitudinal research on language abilities and social functioning in young children suggests that gains in one domain affect gains in the other. However, few studies have examined inter-relations of language and social functioning jointly among young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Pre-verbal toddlers with ASD are a group…

Research suggests that elements of the family environment may have significant associations with cognitive and language development outcomes. Less is known, however, about the family environment in peri-urban China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0-3 years are as high as 51% and 54%, respectively. Using data collected…

Despite support for the importance of early language environments, little is known about the naturally occurring experiences children have in preschool settings. The current study sample included 91 children (M[subscript age] = 4.72 years; 56% male; 67% White) from 23 preschool classrooms and nearly 1500 h of language environment data from three…

Language development plays a pivotal role in a child's cognitive and overall growth, progressing through identifiable stages that ultimately lead to adult communication. It serves as a significant indicator of a child's intellectual and overall development. This study aims to explore the impact of daily technology use on children's language…

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…

Purpose: This study evaluates the extent to which automated indices of vocal development are stable and valid for predicting language in infants at increased familial likelihood for autism and/or language impairment and relatively lower likelihood infants. Method: A group of infants with autistic siblings (Sibs-autism; 20 infants) and a comparison…

Parenting and children's temperament are important influences on language development. However, temperament may reflect prior parenting, and parenting effects may reflect genes common to parents and children. In 561 U.S. adoptees (57% male) and their birth and rearing parents (70% and 92% White, 13% and 4% African American, and 7% and 2% Latinx,…

High-quality caregiver-child relationships are critical to healthy development, including the acquisition of language and literacy skills. However, their potential benefits to early mathematical development and its underlying mechanisms have been minimally explored. In view that language and literacy development play prominent roles in…

Multiple domains develop simultaneously and interact throughout infancy and early childhood. Although relationships between motor and language skills have been examined cross-sectionally during the first three years of life, little is known regarding the individual factors that influence the development of these domains as well as the relationship…

Preschool teachers' perceptions about relationships with students (teacher-child relationships [TCRs]) predict children's subsequent social competence (SC) and academic progress. Why this is so remains unclear. Do TCRs shape children's development, or do child attributes influence both TCRs and subsequent development? Relations between TCRs and…

During human childhood, brain development and body growth compete for limited metabolic resources, resulting in a trade-off where energy allocated to brain development can decrease as body growth accelerates. This preregistered study explores the relationship between language skills, serving as a proxy for brain development, and body mass index at…

The present study examined individual differences in the development of sustained attention across toddlerhood, as well as how these individual differences related to the development of language and sleep. Toddlers (N = 314; 54% male) were assessed at 30, 36, and 42 months using multiple measures of attention, a standardized language assessment,…

How does language shape mathematical development? In this article, we consider this question by reviewing findings from cross-sectional and longitudinal research. In this literature, we find that differences in the structures of languages and individual variations in language ability are associated with mathematical performance in both obvious and…

A surprising comprehension-production asymmetry in subject-verb (SV) agreement acquisition has been suggested in the literature, and recent research indicates that task-specific as well as language-specific features may contribute to this apparent asymmetry across languages. The present study investigates when during development children acquiring…

This Special Issue on linguistic and cognitive development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) arose from the 42nd Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) (2017), when Jeannette Schaeffer, Stephanie Durrleman, and Inge-Marie Eigsti organized a symposium on this topic. It shows that the study of language development…