Purpose: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) tend to interpret noncanonical sentences like passives using event probability (EP) information regardless of structure (e.g., by interpreting "The dog was chased by the squirrel" as "The dog chased the squirrel"). Verbs are a major source of EP information in adults…

Background: Early and effective treatment for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) is important. Although a growing body of research shows the effects of interventions at the group level, clinicians observe large individual differences in language growth, and differences in outcomes across language domains. A systematic…

Understanding the changes in our language abilities along the lifespan is a crucial step for understanding the aging process both in normal and in abnormal circumstances. Besides controlled experimental tasks, it is equally crucial to investigate language in unconstrained conversation. I present an information-theoretical analysis of a corpus of…

Learning to compose texts adequate for different purposes is crucial for becoming literate. We examined developmental changes in the rhetorical structure of written texts produced by Spanish children throughout the early years of elementary school in the light of descriptive writing purposes. Children had also performed tasks to test…

Purpose: This study aimed to describe change in dual language learners' (DLLs) morphosyntactic skills from kindergarten to first grade based on a sentence repetition task in English and Spanish. Methods: The sample included Spanish-English speaking children (n = 25). Investigators employed a repeated measures analysis of variance with one…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

The overall objective of this article is to examine how oral language abilities relate to reading profiles in English language learners (ELLs) and English as a first language (EL1) learners, and the extent of similarities and differences between ELLs and EL1s in three reading subgroups: normal readers, poor decoders, and poor comprehenders. The…

Vygotsky's writings have established the critical importance of language in the development of higher mental functions, including memory and attention. One of the processes involved in this development is languaging, the activity of mediating cognitively complex ideas using language (Swain, 2006). The present study of an older adult with mild…

The cognitive attributes of Grade 1 students who responded adequately and inadequately to a Tier 2 reading intervention were evaluated. The groups included inadequate responders based on decoding and fluency criteria (n = 29), only fluency criteria (n = 75), adequate responders (n = 85), and typically achieving students (n = 69). The cognitive…

On average, language and communication characteristics of individuals with Down syndrome (the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability) follow a consistent profile. Despite considerable individual variability, receptive language is typically stronger than expressive language, with particular challenges in phonology and syntax. We…

Background: Figurative language, such as metaphor and metonymy, is very common in daily language use. Its underlying cognitive processes are sometimes viewed as lying at the interface of language and thought. Williams syndrome, which is a rare genetic developmental disorder, provides an opportunity to study this interface because individuals with…

Two experiments were conducted to explore processing of relative clause structures by normal elderly adults. Four groups of subjects (aged 20-29 years, 60-69 years, 70-79 years, and 80-89 years) participated in a lexical decision task and a sentence repetition task. (19 references) (VWL)