The boundary effect, namely the infants' failures to compare small and large numerosities, is well documented in studies using visual stimuli. The prevailing explanation is that the numerical system used to process sets up to 3 is incompatible with the system employed for numbers >3. This study investigates the boundary effect in 10-month-old…

Early vocabulary development benefits from diverse lexical exposures within children's language environment. However, the influence of lexical diversity on children as they enter middle childhood and are exposed to multimodal language inputs remains unclear. This study evaluates global and local aspects of lexical diversity in three…

In a seminal study, Cameron-Faulkner et al. made two important observations about utterance-level constructions in English child-directed speech (CDS). First, they observed that canonical in/transitive sentences are surprisingly infrequent in child-direct speech (given that SVO word order is often thought to play a key role in the acquisition of…

Children learn language by listening to speech from caregivers around them. However, the type and quantity of speech input that children are exposed to change throughout early childhood in ways that are poorly understood due to the small samples (few participants, limited hours of observation) typically available in developmental psychology. Here…

Language is an essential component of human communication and interaction. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, specifically in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and speech-recognition, have made is possible for conversational agents, also known as chatbots, to converse with language learners in a way that mimics human speech.…

Before they even talk, infants become sensitive to the speech sounds of their native language and recognize the auditory form of an increasing number of words. Traditionally, these early perceptual changes are attributed to an emerging knowledge of linguistic categories such as phonemes or words. However, there is growing skepticism surrounding…

When interacting with young children, adults often self-repeat their own utterances that vary in sequences of adjacent utterances called variation sets (VS) (Küntay and Slobin 1996). These repetitions benefit children's linguistic development because they emphasize form and meaning. This paper analyzes the use of VS during group interaction and…

Purpose: This meta-analysis study aimed to determine the optimal level of talker variability in training to maximize second-language speech learning. Method: We conducted a systematic search for studies comparing different levels of talker variability in nonnative speech training, published through July 2024. Two independent reviewers screened…

In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross-linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to "front" and "behind," followed by "left" and "right." This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by…

This longitudinal study (data collected from 2019 to 2023) examines the relation between Spanish-English bilingual Latino toddlers' (n=46; F=22; M=24) early gesture production (Mage=18.67 months; SD[subscript age]=1.02) and later language skills (M[subscript age]=36.87 months; SD[subscript age]=0.81). Video recordings at child-age 18-months…

Research on "parentese," the acoustically exaggerated, slower, and higher-pitched speech directed toward infants, has mostly focused on maternal contributions, although it has long been known that fathers also produce parentese. Given recent societal changes in family dynamics, it is necessary to revise these mother-centered models of…

Verbal interactions between children and educators can support the language development of preschoolers when conversations are of high quality. Educators' conversations with preschoolers are known to be responsive, but they are not always sufficiently complex. Educators' talk and topics may be too simple to propel preschoolers' oral language…

The study adopts a multimodal perspective, looking at adults' use of gestures in variation sets (VS; i.e. sequences of partial self-repetitions occurring in successive utterances of varying form) addressed to Spanish-learning toddlers in adult-child interactions. We seek to address the following question: Do adults make simultaneous use of VS and…

Studies on young children's comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interpreting object pronouns, even when reflexive interpretation is already adult-like. Compared to resolving reflexives, linking pronouns to a referent is considered a more "intensive" process, because it also involves non-syntactic factors like…

With the SWIRL method, K-12 teachers can give multilingual learners opportunities to engage in the five elements of speaking, writing, interacting, reading, and listening to English to become confident and proficient in English. The SWIRL Method provides research-based, time-tested, practical activities and strategies. Readers also get…