This study investigates the influence of semantic maturation on early lexical development by examining the impact of contextual diversity--known to influence semantic development--on word promotion from receptive to productive vocabularies (i.e., comprehension-expression gap). Study 1 compares the vocabularies of 3685 American-English-speaking…

Infants show shifting patterns of visual engagement to faces over the first years of life. To explore the adaptive implications of this engagement, we collected eye-tracking measures on cross-sectional samples of 10-25-month-old typically developing toddlers (TD;N = 28) and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD;N = 54). Concurrent language…

Prior work has found links between consistency in toddler handedness for the fine motor skill role-differentiated bimanual manipulation (RDBM), and language development at 2 and 3 years of age. The current study investigated whether consistency in handedness from 18 to 24 months (N = 90) for RDBM predicts receptive and expressive language…

Background and Aims: This longitudinal study investigated the language skills, phonological working memory and lexical-tone perception of Mandarin-speaking late-talkers (LTs) and those with typical language development (TLD) at 27 months, while also examining their connections with novel word-referent mapping (W-R mapping) through eye-tracking at…

This article presents data on lexical development of 881 Israeli Hebrew-speaking monolingual toddlers ages 1;0 to 2;0. A Web-based version of the Hebrew MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (H-MB-CDI) was used for data collection. Growth curves for expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, actions and gestures were…

Late language emergence (LLE) may result from genetic and environmental factors. Little is known about environmental factors in LLE in South Africa. The study describes the nature of differences in language functioning between toddlers with LLE and without LLE, and which factors were associated with LLE in a middle-income area in South Africa.…

Purpose: This study reexamines the claim that difficulty forming memories of words comprising uncommon sound sequences (i.e., low phonological neighborhood density words) is a determinant of delayed expressive vocabulary development (e.g., Stokes, 2014). Method: We modeled communicative development inventory data from (N = 442) 18-month-old…

We examined language profiles of 2571 children, 30-68 months old, with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), other developmental disabilities (DD), and typical development from the general population (POP). Children were categorized as expressive dominant (ED), receptive dominant (RD), or nondominant (ND). Within each group, the ED profile was the least…

Children with language disorders have particular difficulty with verbs, but when this difficulty emerges is unknown. We examined syntactic (transitive, intransitive, ditransitive) and semantic (manner, result) features of two-year-olds' verb vocabularies, contrasting late talkers and typically developing children to look for early differences in…

This study examined the quantity and quality of parental linguistic input to toddlers with moderate hearing loss (MHL) compared with toddlers with normal hearing (NH). The linguistic input to eighteen toddlers with MHL and twenty-four toddlers with NH was examined during a 10-minute free-play activity in their home environment. Results showed that…

Some children enter elementary school with large vocabulary delays, which negatively influence their later school performance. A rich home language environment can support vocabulary development through frequent high-quality parent-toddler interaction. Elaborated picture home activities can support this rich home language environment. This study…

For more than 20 years, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) and its adaptations for languages other than English have been used as reliable measures of infants' and toddlers' early receptive and productive vocabulary size. This article introduces the OZI, the Australian English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI, now…

Background: Late language emergence is a risk indicator for developmental language disorder. Parent-implemented early language intervention programmes (parent programmes) have been shown to have positive effects on children's receptive and expressive language skills. However, long-term effectiveness has rarely been studied. Additionally, little is…

A training study examined novel word learning in 2-year-old children and assessed two nonverbal mechanisms, pictures and gestures, which are commonly used as communication support. The aim was to (1) compare these two support mechanisms and measure their effects on expressive word learning and (2) to investigate these effects on word production…

The current study compared adaptive and cognitive skills, and autism severity of toddlers with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis under DSM-IV but not DSM-5 criteria (DSM-IV only group) to those who met autism criteria under both diagnostic systems (DSM-5 group) and to those without ASD (non-ASD group). The toddlers in the DSM-IV only…