As an information-bearing auditory attribute of sound, pitch plays a crucial role in the perception of speech and music. Studies examining pitch processing in autism spectrum disorder have produced equivocal results. To understand this discrepancy from a mechanistic perspective, we used a novel data-driven method, the reverse-correlation paradigm,…

As we listen to speech, our ability to understand what was said requires us to retrieve and bind together individual word meanings into a coherent discourse representation. This so-called semantic unification is a fundamental cognitive skill, and its development relies on the integration of neural activity throughout widely distributed functional…

Listening narrative comprehension is a complex process that requires the processing of explicit (i.e., information presented in the text) and implicit information (i.e., information inferable from the text) and involves several linguistic and cognitive skills. However, the specific role of these skills in children's comprehension remains unclear.…

Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is defined by persistent difficulties with language, but a growing body of evidence suggests that it is also associated with domain-general and nonverbal information-processing deficits. However, the interconnections between cognitive functions, both nonverbal and language related, are still unclear.…

The ability to recognize temporal patterns and position events in time emerges during the preschool years and is refined in middle childhood. This study explored individual differences in temporal cognition in relation to verbal and nonverbal abilities. Children (30 boys, 32 girls; M[subscript age] = 8;2, age range = 6;0-10;8) completed 3…

Bilingual experience has an impact on an individual's linguistic processing and general cognitive abilities. The relation between these linguistic and non-linguistic domains, in turn, is mediated by individual linguistic proficiency and developmental changes that take place across the lifespan. This study evaluated this relationship by assessing…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the verbal and nonverbal cognitive profiles of children with specific language impairment (SLI) with problems predominantly in expressive (SLI-E) or receptive (SLI-R) language skills. These diagnostic subgroups have not been compared before in psychological studies. Method: Participants were…

The purpose of this study was to examine verbal fluency and verbal short-term memory in 12 adults with Down syndrome (DS) and 12 adults with Intellectual Disability (ID) of unspecified origin, matched for receptive vocabulary and chronological age. Participants' performance was assessed on two conditions of a verbal fluency test, namely, semantic…

Background: Research on retelling ability and cognition is limited in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and speech impairment. Aims: To explore the impact of expressive and receptive language, narrative discourse dimensions (Narrative Assessment Profile measures), auditory and visual memory, theory of mind (ToM) and non-verbal cognition on the…

Research Findings: This study examines the effects of low- and high-cognitive demand discussion on children's story comprehension and identifies contributions of discussion, initial vocabularies, and parent reading involvement. A total of 70 English learner preschoolers took baseline vocabulary tests in Portuguese and English, were randomly…

This cohort-sequential study explored the components of working memory (WM) that underlie second language (L2) reading growth in 450 children at risk and not at risk for reading disabilities (RD) whose first language is Spanish. English language learners designated as balanced and nonbalanced bilinguals with and without risk for RD in Grades 1, 2,…

This randomized field trial comparing Strategies for Teaching based on Autism Research and Structured Teaching enrolled educators in 33 kindergarten-through-second-grade autism support classrooms and 119 students, aged 5-8 years in the School District of Philadelphia. Students were assessed at the beginning and end of the academic year using the…

We use a time-course analysis to examine the roles of vocabulary size and executive control in bilinguals' verbal fluency performance. Two groups of bilinguals and a group of monolingual adults were tested in English with verbal fluency subtests from the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System. The two bilingual groups were equivalent in their…

Some insight into the relationship between language and thought can be achieved through a comparison between American Sign Language and English. This paper discusses several studies on this topic and defines some of the problems. The author feels that the deaf using American Sign Language cannot be considered linguistically deficient. A structural…