A fundamental challenge in the cognitive sciences is discovering the dynamics that govern behavior. Take the example of spoken language, which is characterized by a highly variable and complex set of physical movements that map onto the small set of cognitive units that comprise language. What are the fundamental dynamical principles behind the…

Speech development occurs in highly variable environments; however, little is known about the effect of situational context on emerging infant vocalizations. At 4 time points (4, 6, 9, and 12 months), we longitudinally measured vocalizations of 104 White infant-caregiver dyads (41 girls) during three play contexts: book-sharing, toy play, and…

Purpose: Autistic individuals often face challenges perceiving and expressing emotions, potentially stemming from differences in speech prosody. Here we explore how autism diagnoses between groups, and measures of social competence within groups may be related to, first, children's speech characteristics (both prosodic features and amount of…

Introduction: Life with aphasia affects the whole family with shorter, less frequent conversations, frustration, reduced social networks, isolation and tension in relationships. Evidence suggests communication partner training (CPT) benefits families. However, expected improvements are poorly articulated. The Aphasia Partnership Training (APT)…

The study was conducted to identify students' difficulties in speaking English and recommend strategies to cope with these difficulties so that their ability to speak English can be improved. The era of globalization requires students to be able to master English to keep up with current developments. Entering the era of free markets requires…

It is established that a greater rate of conversational turns (CTs) is associated with improved language outcomes for hearing children (HC). This study investigates the number of CTs experienced by deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children and HC--a total of 10 children matched for age, gender and Special Educational Needs (SEN) in an Early Years…

Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs) are increasingly prevalent in world language instruction. While researchers have investigated various dimensions of IPAs, only one previous study has analyzed the discursive content of associated teacher-learner co-constructive feedback sessions (Adair-Hauck & Troyan, 2013). The present study examines…

This study investigates the communication practices of four teachers in 3rd to 6th grade classrooms with 9 deaf students with limited language proficiency and in stages of emergent writing development. Analyzing language modalities, utterance types, and class interactivity, we found that teachers using American sign language used student-centered…

This article reports a qualitative action research study regarding the influence of strategies that may be used in oral conversation to avoid communication breakdowns. After analyzing college students' performance in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes, the problem was that many adult learners exhibited poor oral English communication…

We present a new corpus design for multi-lingual corpora that involve intra-speaker variation in different situational-functional contexts, including primarily spoken but also the written mode, with the aim towards enhancing language documentation efforts and resources. We illustrate how this comparative design and the resulting cross-culturally…

Early-life abilities involved in perceiving, producing and engaging with music (musicality) may shape later (social) communication and language abilities. Here, we investigate phenotypic and genetic relationships linking musicality and communication abilities by studying information from preschool and school-aged children of the Avon Longitudinal…

On average, groups of autistic individuals are more likely than groups of non-autistic individuals to exhibit unconventional conversational behaviours. We examined autistic and non-autistic children's social impressions of unconventional responding, as well as actual conversational behaviours in the same participants. Across two studies, 36…