Language exposure is an important determiner of language outcomes in bilingual children. Family language strategies (FLS, e.g., one-parent-one-language) were contrasted with parents' individual language use to predict language exposure in 4-31-month-old children (50% female) living in Montreal, Quebec. Two-hundred twenty one children (primarily…

Infants begin to produce abstract "math" words -- such as numbers (e.g., "two"), spatial terms (e.g., "down"), and magnitude words (e.g., "more") -- during their second postnatal year. Math words, as all words, are likely learned in the home setting during interactions with caregivers. However, everyday…

This study tested the role of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)'s conversational expansion in mediating between mothers' descriptive language and children with ASD's conversational repair, and whether this mediation was moderated by the relative complexity of mother-child language. Videos of forty children with ASD engaging in various…

This study investigated parental involvement in five Korean American families where there was evidence of successful heritage language (HL) maintenance in the second generation. The data in the current study were drawn from interviews of five Korean women who were first-generation immigrants to the U.S. and their daughters who were raised in the…

This study aimed to determine whether there is a correlation between maternal conversational participation and the unconventional language of autistic children, and whether the relative vocabulary diversity between mother and child would affect the relationship between them. Participants were 39 autistic Mandarin-speaking children, aged 3-6 years,…

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) predicts that people adjust their language to match that of the other to promote comprehension, coordinate action, and facilitate harmonious relationships. CAT predicts that mothers will adjust their sentence length and complexity to match those of children. Prior tests of CAT confounded trait-like language…

This critical autoethnographic article with academic friends explores the complex territory of disability from a strengths-based, inclusive perspective. The article centres on the experiences of a mother and educator (the lead author), who continues to navigate the disability landscape, which is encumbered with deficit views. The curated…

Today, many children worldwide grow up in bilingual or multilingual families. This study explores early literacy development in Russian-Hebrew bilingual families in Israel. It studies the contribution of the home literacy environment (HLE), the language of communication, and the nature of the maternal writing support in Hebrew and Russian, to…

Mountain Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Eastern Caucasus used two heritage languages, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat) and Russian. Juhuri was their home and Russian the societal languages prior to migration. In Israel, Juhuri and Russian are Heritage Languages and Hebrew is the societal language. The present study reports on frequency of use and…

Background: Previous studies have explored the size and word type composition (nouns, predicates, etc.) of expressive vocabularies of preschool children with Down syndrome, both spoken and signed. Separately, overall preferences for modality of expression have also been explored. Aims: To extend previous findings by describing the relationships…

We compared speech acts and complexity of maternal speech to firstborn dizygotic twin and singleton infants. Nine twins and nine singletons were video-recorded at home in spontaneous face-to-face interactions with their mothers, from the 2nd to the 6th month. Continuous micro-analysis revealed that (a) open-ended questions, direct requests,…

The present study aimed at investigating the contextual stability, the contextual continuity and the concurrent associations between maternal measures (general language, communicative functions and mind-mindedness) and child measures (total number of word types and tokens) in two different contexts, free-play and mealtime. To this purpose, the…

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…

This comparative multi-case study investigated the language ideologies of six Latina/Mexican American mothers raising emergent bilingual children. Qualitative data analysis of mother interviews revealed important commonalities in multilingual parenting ideologies and family language socialization practices. The results demonstrate how the mothers…

Children learn math concepts long before they enter school. Across all cultures, children are exposed to number and spatial language to varying degrees during everyday home routines. Yet most studies of math talk occur in the lab and target non-Hispanic, English-speaking families. We expanded inquiry to the spontaneous math language (i.e., number…