The development of language skills is critical to the academic success and overall well-being of children. Research shows that late talking, defined as delayed expressive language development in toddlers, negatively impacts future language and literacy skills. The early identification of children at risk of late talking can significantly improve…

Measures of decoding and oral language have been shown to predict early reading comprehension across a wide variety of languages, though the timeframe and strength of the predictions vary by orthographic depth. This study is the first to examine predictors of early reading in Vietnamese, a transparent orthography of Romanized letters and…

This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of preschoolers' home and classroom literacy environments and the relationships between receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, and concepts about print (CAP) development. The participants were 168 parents and their children from five private preschools in a large suburban…

We conducted two studies to examine the effects of an interactive read aloud and vocabulary intervention on the vocabulary knowledge of Spanish-speaking preschoolers living in the U.S. In Study 1, 68 children (n = 34 in the treatment group) and 6 parents in the treatment group received the intervention in Spanish at home, and in Spanish and…

This study used data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) 2009 4-year-old cohort to examine associations among family characteristics, home and classroom environments, and the emergent literacy skills of Head Start children. Results from hierarchical linear models suggest that both family and classroom contexts play a…

The goal of this study was to longitudinally examine relationships between early factors (child and mother) that may influence children's phonological awareness and reading skills 3 years later in a group of young children with cochlear implants (N = 16). Mothers and children were videotaped during two storybook interactions, and children's oral…

A 20-minute videotape sample was obtained of the language interactions between 20 Down syndrome children (ages 38 to 107 months) and their mothers during informal playtime. Linguistic utterances of mothers and children were coded according to the following language categories: query, declarative, imperative, performative, feedback, imitation,…

Maternal language directed to 21 nonhandicapped, 21 Down syndrome, and 19 language impaired preschool children was examined. The three groups (all Caucasian and middle-class) were matched in mean length of utterance (MLU) and in developmental skills as measured on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. Mother-child language interaction was…

Data from two-year-old children and mothers were collected concerning age at which she began to read to child, frequency of home reading, number of stories read per week, frequency of visits by child to library. Picture-book reading exposure was more strongly related to receptive than expressive language. Age of onset of home reading routines was…