The interaction of visual exploration and auditory processing is central to early cognitive development, supporting object discrimination, categorization, and word learning. Research has shown visual-auditory interactions to be complex, created from multiple processes and changing over multiple timescales. To better understand these interactions,…

Although statistical learning (SL) has been studied extensively in developmental dyslexia (DD), less attention has been paid to other fundamental challenges in language acquisition, such as cross-situational word learning. Such investigation is important for determining whether and how SL processes are affected in DD at the word level. In this…

From the very first moments of their lives, infants selectively attend to the visible orofacial movements of their social partners and apply their exquisite speech perception skills to the service of lexical learning. Here we explore how early bilingual experience modulates children's ability to use visible speech as they form new lexical…

Coviewing media is a practice commonly recommended to parents of young children. However, little is known about how coviewing might scaffold the vocabulary learning of low-income preschoolers. The present study focused on how coviewing educational media influences children's learning of two different vocabulary associations--auditory-only and…

Despite the body of research on auditory-visual speech perception in infants and schoolchildren, development in the early childhood period remains relatively uncharted. In this study, English-speaking children between three and four years of age were investigated for: (i) the development of visual speech perception--lip-reading and visual…

Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential…

This paper provides three representative examples that highlight the ways in which procedures can be combined to study interactions across traditional domains of study: segmentation, word learning, and grammar. The first section uses visual familiarization prior to the Headturn Preference Procedure to demonstrate that synchronized visual…

Understanding the involvement of reading skills with the development of musicianship may help to differentiate between the pupil who really has no musical talent and the one who is merely defeated by a lack of competence in the required reading skills. (Author/JB)

Discusses (1) the process of early language development, giving specific attention to problematic aspects of a vocabulary for audition; (2) elicitation and instruction tasks used in the study of language acquisition; and (3) an investigation designed to compare language acquisition for dimensions of visual, spatial, and tactual perception with…

An outline of seven important steps for teaching vocabulary development includes components of language development, visual memory, visual-auditory perception, speeded recall, spelling, reading the word in a sentence, and word comprehension in written context. (JN)

In response to the research findings of Head Start programs, in particular, and of research in early childhood education, in general, this manual was created by the Kindergarten Study Group of the Cincinnati Public Schools to examine the kindergarten program. The purpose of this manual is to help teachers broaden and extend the learning of the…

The reading activities collected in this handbook were used in parent workshops organized to increase the involvement of parents of Italian descent in teaching their children reading skills. The goal of the lessons was to increase parents' activities directed toward reading skills and to familiarize parents with what their children were learning…

Research on reading has tried, and failed, to account for wide disparities in reading skill even among children taught by the same method. Why do some children learn to read easily and quickly while others, in the same classroom and taught by the same teacher, don't learn to read at all? In "Language Development and Learning to Read", Diane…