Purpose: Autistic individuals often face challenges perceiving and expressing emotions, potentially stemming from differences in speech prosody. Here we explore how autism diagnoses between groups, and measures of social competence within groups may be related to, first, children's speech characteristics (both prosodic features and amount of…

Causation is a core feature of human cognition and language. How children learn about intricate causal meanings is yet unresolved. Here, we focus on how children learn verbs that express causation. Such verbs, known as lexical causatives (e.g., break and raise), lack explicit morphosyntactic markers indicating causation, thus requiring that the…

What are the vocal experiences of children growing up on Malakula island, Vanuatu, where multilingualism is the norm? Long-form audio-recordings captured spontaneous speech behavior by, and around, 38 children (5-33 months, 23 girls) from 11 villages. Automated analyses revealed most children's vocal input came from female adults and other…

This study explored the language experiences of dual language learners (DLL; n = 19) and English monolinguals (EM; n = 13) in preschool classrooms where English is the primary language of instruction and many home languages are present. Using the Language ENvironment Analysis™ system as a primary tool, we quantitatively analysed an average of 34…

Do parents fine-tune the MLU of utterances with a particular word as the word is on the verge of appearing in the child's production? We analyzed a corpus of spontaneous interactions of 30 dyads. The children were in the initial stages of their lexical development, and the parents' utterances containing the words the children eventually acquired…

Adults adjust the informativeness of their utterances to the needs of their addressee. For children, however, relevant evidence is mixed. In this article we explore the communicative circumstances under which children offer informative descriptions. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-old children and adults described a target event from a pair of…

Purpose: There has been increased interest in using telepractice for involving more diverse children in research and clinical services, as well as when in-person assessment is challenging, such as during COVID-19. Little is known, however, about the feasibility, reliability, and validity of language samples when conducted via telepractice. Method:…

This study presents the first investigation of the development of possessive constructions in Northern East Cree, a polysynthetic language indigenous to Canada. It examines transcripts from naturalistic recording sessions involving one adult and one child, from age 2;01.12 to 3;08.24. Findings reveal that, despite the frequency of possessive…

This study compares parental pause and utterance duration in conversations with Swedish speaking children at age 1;6 who have either a large, typical, or small expressive vocabulary, as measured by the Swedish version of the McArthur-Bates CDI. The adjustments that parents do when they speak to children are similar across all three vocabulary…

Research on immediate effects of background television during mother-infant toy play shows that an operating television in the room disrupts maternal communicative behaviors crucial for infants' vocabulary acquisition. This study is the first to examine associations between frequent background TV/video exposure during mother-infant toy play at…

This study examined potential differences in vocabulary found in picture books and adult's speech to children and to other adults. Using a small sample of various sources of speech and print, Hayes observed that print had a more extensive vocabulary than speech. The current analyses of two different spoken language databases and an assembled…

Generics ("'Dogs' bark") convey important information about categories and facilitate children's learning. Two studies with parents and their 2- or 4-year-old children (N = 104 dyads) examined whether individual differences in generic language use are as follows: (a) stable over time, contexts, and domains, and (b) linked…

For socially appropriate communication, speakers must command a variety of linguistic styles, or "registers", that vary according to social context and social relationships. This study examined preschool children's ability to use a speaker's register choice to infer the identity of their addressee. Four-year-olds could draw correct inferences…

We report on a study investigating 3-5-year-old children's use of gesture to resolve lexical ambiguity. Children were told three short stories that contained two homonym senses; for example, "bat" (flying mammal) and "bat" (sports equipment). They were then asked to re-tell these stories to a second experimenter. The data were coded for the means…

The early noncry vocalizations of infants are salient social signals. Caregivers spontaneously respond to 30%-50% of these sounds, and their responsiveness to infants' prelinguistic noncry vocalizations facilitates the development of phonology and speech. Have infants learned that their vocalizations influence the behavior of social partners? If…