Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine mothers' sophisticated vocabulary while reminiscing with their preschool-aged children, and its relation to children's story comprehension. The study used a cross-lagged panel design in which all assessments were collected twice, 6 months apart. We also compared two methods of examining…

How does linguistic structure affect children's developing cardinal number knowledge? The bootstrapping theory proposes that children might use syntactic information provided by known words such as quantifiers to bootstrap the meanings of unfamiliar words such as number words. Prior studies of numeral and quantifier development have indicated that…

Late language emergence (LLE) may result from genetic and environmental factors. Little is known about environmental factors in LLE in South Africa. The study describes the nature of differences in language functioning between toddlers with LLE and without LLE, and which factors were associated with LLE in a middle-income area in South Africa.…

Scholars debate whether musical and linguistic abilities are associated or independent. In the present study, we examined whether musical rhythm skills predict receptive grammar proficiency in childhood. In Experiment 1, 7- to 17-year-old children (N = 68) were tested on their grammar and rhythm abilities. In the grammar-comprehension task,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare masked English speech recognition thresholds between Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual children and to evaluate effects of age, maternal education, and English receptive language abilities on individual differences in masked speech recognition. Method: Forty-three Spanish-English…

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy is an empirically based, behavioral parent training program for young children exhibiting disruptive behaviors. Parent--Child Interaction Therapy shows promise for treating disruptive behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorder. Treatment processes (i.e. treatment length and homework compliance), parenting…

Background: Children with unilateral cochlear implants (CIs) may have delayed vocabulary development for an extended period after implantation. Bilateral cochlear implantation is reported to be associated with improved sound localization and enhanced speech perception in noise. This study proposed that bilateral implantation might also promote…

Purpose: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often have vocabulary impairments. This study evaluates longitudinal growth in a latent trait of receptive vocabulary in affected and unaffected children ages 2;6 (years;months) to 21 years and evaluates as possible predictors maternal education, child gender, and nonverbal IQ. Method: A…

Using multi-level growth modeling, we examined the effect of several measures of maternal input on growth in children's word types from 15-54 months. Mothers and children engaged in a picture description task (N = 77) at 15, 24, 33, and 54 months; the frequency of children's observed word types at each wave was coded and additional independent…

This article documents differences in cognitive development, as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), between children from households with high and low socioeconomic status (SES) in two different phases of early childhood in four developing countries. A large number of potential mediators, such as urban residence, preschool…

This study investigated the potential interrelationship between parental (maternal) and expert assessments of the expressive and receptive language skills of 12- to 18-month-old children. The language activities of 27 children were monitored by their mothers (MCDI scale: Lyytinen, 2000. "Varhaisen kommunikaation ja kielen kehityksen…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine child and environmental factors known to be associated to language development and how they relate to results in expressive vocabulary, expressive language, and receptive language in language-delayed toddlers. The cross-sectional data on 96 French-speaking children aged 18-36 months were…

Research Findings: Environmental print provides children with their earliest print experiences. This observational study investigated the frequency of mother-child environmental print referencing and its relationship with emergent literacy. A total of 35 mothers and their children (ages 3-4 years) were videotaped interacting in an environmental…

Purpose: In this article, the authors sought to determine whether the precise age of implantation (AOI) remains an important predictor of spoken language outcomes in later childhood for those who received a cochlear implant (CI) between 12 and 38 months of age. Relative advantages of receiving a bilateral CI after age 4.5 years, better…

To investigate the relationship between cognitive and social functioning, 20 Israeli individuals with HFASD aged 8-12 and 22 age, maternal education, and receptive vocabulary-matched preadolescents with typical development (TYP) came to the lab with a close friend. Measures of abstract reasoning, friendship quality, and dyadic interaction during a…