Children learning two languages (Dual Language Learners; DLLs) represent a rapidly growing population in the United States. DLLs are disproportionately more likely to live in families of low socioeconomic status (SES), which places many of them at risk for poor dual-language outcomes. To date, most studies on SES and dual language development have…

The syntactic structure of sentences in which a new word appears may provide listeners with cues to that new word's form class. In English, for example, a noun tends to follow a determiner ("a"/"an"/"the"), while a verb precedes the morphological inflection [ing]. The presence of these markers may assist children in…

How can we transform places where people gather or wait into hubs for interaction and playful learning? Bus stops offer one setting in which to test this idea. Urban Thinkscape reimagines an everyday bus stop in an under-resourced area as an interaction zone instead of merely a place to wait for a ride. Results suggest that embedding playful…

As the traditional toys of the past are quickly being replaced with electronically "enhanced" toys, it is important to understand how these changes impact parent--child interactions, especially in light of the evidence that the richness and variety of these interactions have long-term effects on diverse areas of cognition (Hart &…

Spatial skills are a central component of intellect and show marked individual differences. There is evidence that variations in the spatial language young children hear, which directs their attention to important aspects of the spatial environment, may be one of the mechanisms that contributes to these differences. To investigate how play affects…