Examining the dimensionality of oral discourse language skills in early childhood is crucial in informing theories of language and literacy development. This study examined the factor structure of linguistic and discourse features in oral text production for second graders. A total of 330 English-speaking second graders (M[subscript age]= 7.33,…

Children are known to use different types of referential gestures (e.g., deictic, iconic) from a very young age. In contrast, their use of non-referential gestures is not well established. This study investigated the use of "stroke-defined non-referential" 'beat' gestures in a story-retelling and an exposition task by twelve 6-year-olds,…

This study considered the linguistic forms used by 63 English-speaking Canadian children from kindergarten to second grade (ages 5;6-8;8) to introduce, maintain reference to, and reintroduce primary and secondary characters throughout their narratives The expected referring forms were used more frequently for the best-matching referential…

Adjectives, like nouns and verbs, are one of the three major classes of lexical words. But, unlike nouns and verbs, they emerge late in acquisition. In Catalan, as in many other languages, their use is closely linked to the literate lexicon learned at school-age. Thus, the use of adjectives can be a good indicator of later language development.…

This study examines the relationship between complex oral language and phonological awareness in the preschool years. Specifically, the authors investigate the relationship between concurrent measures of oral narrative structure (based on measures of both story retell and generation), and measures of blending and elision in a sample of 89 children…