This study aimed to adapt and validate the Word Complexity Measure (WCM) for Persian-speaking toddlers. The WCM is a tool for assessing phonological complexity, originally proposed by Stoel-Gammon. The study was conducted in two phases: (1) adapting the WCM parameters to the Persian language and (2) conducting a validation study with 60…

To investigate the longitudinal effects of two domain-general cognitive abilities, namely verbal working memory and visual search skill, on Chinese reading comprehension. To evaluate whether decoding and linguistic comprehension mediate such effects. A total of 202 first-grade Chinese-speaking children from mainland China (M[subscript]age =…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations among children's symbolic functioning at 15 months, joint attention at 24 months, expressive communication at 24 and 36 months, and executive functioning at 36 months. With the sample from rural areas in the United States collected by the Family Life Project (N = 1,008), a longitudinal data…

This study examined the effects of involvement load-based tasks on vocabulary learning in a foreign language, as well as the extent to which task effects are predicted by learners' metacognition (i.e. metacognitive knowledge and regulation). A total of 120 Chinese university students of English as a foreign language (EFL) were randomly assigned to…

Language Instruction, especially teaching and learning English for specific purposes (ESP) with Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has grown in popularity for over a decade. Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) is one of the appropriate teaching approaches used to make CALL more effective. This study attempts to develop, implement, and…

This paper examined to what extent causal explanation speaking tasks (CESTs) are cognitively appropriate for assessing young language learners' (YLLs) L2 speaking. Ninety-six YLLs (48 from Grade 4 and 6 each) in China performed two CESTs in both L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English). They also completed receptive and productive L2 vocabulary size tests.…

Purpose: The extant literature suggests that individual differences in speech perception can be linked to broad receptive language phenotype. For example, a recent study found that individuals with a smaller receptive vocabulary showed diminished lexically guided perceptual learning compared to individuals with a larger receptive vocabulary. Here,…

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 cross-categorical use of nouns and verbs poses a challenging problem to young language learners because they are known to be less willing to accept that a single form of a word be used for more than one linguistic purpose (e.g., one-form/one-function principle). The present study investigated whether children under 3 years of age are able to…

This study investigates the probable effect of a digital game-based vocabulary learning (DGBVL) task on the acquisition of some components of a word knowledge framework. In so doing, 124 Persian speakers (56 males and 68 females) were randomly assigned to either a control or an experimental group. The experimental group participants completed a…

The present study highlights the significance of online self-regulated learning (SRL) in language education by investigating its impact on English as a foreign language (EFL) achievement. It focuses on the self-reported use of online SRL by focusing on six dimensions: goal-setting, structuring the environment, task strategies, time management,…

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficulties acquiring the grammatical rules of their native language. It has been proposed that children's detection of sequential statistical patterns correlates with grammatical proficiency and hence that a deficit in the detection of these regularities may underlie the difficulties with…

Verb use and the production of verb argument structure in the written texts of children in elementary school is a key stepping stone towards academic writing success that has remained relatively unexplored and is a notable gap in our understanding of writing development. To evaluate the role of verbs in the written narrative texts of children, we…

Purpose: We investigated four theoretically based latent variable models of word learning in young school-age children. Method: One hundred sixty-seven English-speaking second graders with typical development from three U.S. states participated. They completed five different tasks designed to assess children's creation, storage, retrieval, and…

Vocabulary has been accepted as an important aspect of language learning in many studies. In the light of these studies in literature, the purpose of the present study is to evaluate the general and academic lexical competence and performance of preparatory class students at School of Foreign Languages, Kütahya Dumlupinar University. Within this…