This study examined the influence of linguistic input on the development of productive and receptive skills across three fundamental language domains: lexico-semantics, syntax, and phonology. Seventy-one (35 female) Basque-Spanish bilingual children were assessed at three time points (Fall 2018, Summer 2019, Winter 2021), between 4 and 6 years of…

Preschoolers' language abilities are associated with their social interactions in early childhood classrooms. Few studies, however, have examined associations between social interactions and objective measures of children's real-time classroom language environments, information key to informing interventions to support preschool children at risk…

This study investigated the feasibility of a vocabulary-based teacher intervention to increase preschool teachers' production of complement clauses (e.g. "I wonder if we can put the monkey in the tree") in teacher-children play interactions. Using a multiple baseline across participants design we measured the impact of an intervention…

Young children's language skills have a significant positive impact on their academic success throughout school, especially on reading and writing performance. The spread of COVID-19, which has resulted in lockdowns, fewer learning hours in kindergarten, and distance learning, might have affected children's exposure to learning opportunities. The…

Many studies suggest that detecting statistical regularities in linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. Although statistical learning is not necessarily implicit in nature, it is often defined as learning that happens without awareness. This article investigates whether statistical learning in young children is indeed implicit,…

Mental rotation has emerged as an important predictor of success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). By the age of 4.5 years, boys outperform girls in these abilities. Because parents use less spatial language with girls at this age (Pruden and Levine, 2017), the amount of spatial language that children are exposed to at home is…

The potential of speech technology to improve educational outcomes has been a topic of great interest in recent years. For example, automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems could be employed to provide kindergarten-aged children with real-time feedback on their literacy and pronunciation as they practice reading aloud. Within these systems,…

Measurements of infants' quotidian experiences provide critical information about early development. However, the role of sampling methods in providing these measurements is rarely examined. Here we directly compare language input from hour-long video-recordings and daylong audio-recordings within the same group of 44 infants at 6 and 7 months. We…

According to the Michigan Department of Education, between 2011 and 2017, the number of multilingual learners (MLs) enrolled in K-12 schools in the state increased by more than 50%. In 2017, the average teacher to ML ratio in the state was an alarmingly low 1:168. To increase the number of teachers prepared to effectively serve MLs, we developed…

Morphemes, the smallest meaning-bearing units of language, recur in many words. Therefore, morphological knowledge can facilitate the comprehension of novel words. This study tested the effectiveness of a morphological training program on children's learning and retention of exposed words and morphologically related unexposed words compared with…

While numerous training models aim to empower teachers by positioning them as active participants with agency and freedom, they often fall short in providing opportunities for training that seamlessly incorporates both the participants' own language and English. In this study, we used loop input (process and content aligned) in two languages that…

Purpose: This study was conducted in a large Midwestern metropolitan area to examine the language environments at home and in center-based childcare for young children who are living in poverty. We compared child language use and exposure in the home and childcare settings using extended observations with automated Language Environment Analysis to…

Given the changing demographics of young children served by U.S. schools, educational equity practices must include ways of sustaining cultural heritage practices of children from ethno-linguistic, minoritized, and under-resourced communities. In the present study, we partnered with a bilingual Head Start serving mostly children of immigrant…

Research consistently shows that adults engaged in tutored acquisition benefit from explicit instruction in several linguistic domains. For preschool children, it is often assumed that such explicit instruction does not make a difference. In the present study, we investigated whether explicit instruction affected young learners in acquiring a…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has become the focus of Foreign Language (FL) research within the last decades. CLIL provides a more complete, naturalistic, and meaningful context to FL learning, which has proven to bring many benefits to learners, such as a higher motivation and promotion of creativity, and better results in…