Learning to read is a fundamental skill that is understudied among children who hear more than one language at home. A particular limitation in the extant literature is that the samples are often Spanish-dominant and come from low-income households. This literature has evidence that Spanish skills -- both language-specific (i.e., vocabulary) and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the significance and directions of the relationships among oral and manual fine motor skills and language abilities among Spanish--English bilingual children. If such relationships exist, this would support a shared biological influence on motor and language development. Method: Participants…

Situated within the Simple View of Reading, this study examined the code-related (word reading) and oral language (receptive vocabulary, narrative comprehension, narrative production) skills that contribute to English and Arabic reading comprehension in two groups of Arabic-English bilingual children (7-9 and 10-12 years) living in an English…

Over half of US children are enrolled in preschools, where the quantity and quality of language input from teachers are likely to affect children's language development. Leveraging repeated objective measurements, we examined the rate per minute and phonemic diversity of child and teacher speech-related vocalizations in preschool classrooms and…

Purpose: This study reports on how very old (VO) Finnish people without dementia perform in the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) and two verbal fluency tasks and which demographic factors predict the performance. Method: The study included fifty 80- to 100-year-old community-dwelling Finnish speakers with no dementing illnesses or speech-language…

Educators and researchers agree that oral language is fundamental to students' reading acquisition. It is not clear how best to conceptualise oral language within models of reading -- as one's overall understanding of spoken language, or as individual skills, each with unique contributions to children's reading comprehension. In our longitudinal…

Purpose: The present study examined the nature of the effects (direct or indirect) of vocabulary, phonological and morphological awareness on early reading skills in the consistent Greek orthography by testing a unifying model of early reading development in a sample of 141 first-grade children. Method: Vocabulary, phonological and morphological…

The present study investigates to what extent first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) speakers use lexical futures, whether such forms provide evidence of development, and whether these forms are constrained differently from the present indicative (PI) according to linguistic predictors. It uses a combined approach through its…

Purpose: In spite of improvements in language outcomes for children with hearing loss (HL) arising from cochlear implants (CIs), these children can falter when it comes to academic achievement, especially in higher grades. Given that writing becomes increasingly relevant to educational pursuits as children progress through school, this study…

Children with hearing loss often attend inclusive preschool classrooms aimed at improving their spoken language skills. Although preschool classrooms are fertile environments for vocal interaction with peers, little is known about the dyadic processes that influence children's speech to one another and foster their language abilities and how these…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the kindergarten, first-, and second-grade predictors of reading comprehension in bilingual children. Specifically, we evaluated the role that Spanish and English skills play in predicting English reading comprehension in third grade. Method: As part of a longitudinal study, 248 bilingual children…

Bilingual children, the majority of whom are Spanish-English learners, now constitute over a third of the preschool population in the United States (Migration Policy Institute, 2021). Bilingual children and their families face multiple barriers to high-quality early childhood education, which are largely due to the underutilization of culturally…

Purpose: Auditory deprivation has downstream effects on the development of language and executive functioning (EF) in prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs), but little is known about the very early development of EF during preschool ages in children with CIs. This study investigated the longitudinal development of EF and spoken…

Listening comprehension and word decoding are the two major determinants of the development of reading comprehension. The relative importance of different language skills for the development of listening and reading comprehension remains unclear. In this 5-year longitudinal study, starting at age 7.5 years (n = 198), it was found that the shared…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd-grade predictors of reading comprehension in bilingual children. Specifically, we evaluated the role that Spanish and English skills play in predicting English reading comprehension in 3rd grade. Method: As part of a longitudinal study, 248 bilingual children were…