The way a young child uses language has an impact on their future life. Early language acquisition is a determinant in adult employment, mental health and relationships with others. At the same time there is a broad evidence base that play and learning in the natural environment is beneficial for young children's physical, emotional, social and…

In this article, I briefly review theories about the development of theory of mind, and then examine evidence for minimalism, the idea that infants initially understand only behaviors. To this end, I consider the need for a wide variety of species to predict the behaviors of other animals and that human infants are not unique in this regard. I…

Human movement plays a foundational role in cognition and learning. This topical collection brings together theoretical and empirical work examining how gestures, physical activity, and virtual movement enhance learning in language, multimedia, and activity-based learning. Regarding language learning, interacting with virtual object improves…

Despite the growing interest in incorporating textual glosses into second language (L2) reading in hypermedia and paper media, no agreements have been reached as to whether and what extent a textual gloss facilitates L2 learners' vocabulary acquisition in hypermedia and paper media. The present study meta-analysed the overall effects of textual…

The purpose of this article is to describe a 40+ year journey during which researchers have endeavored to design and evaluate an integrated, empirically based reading intervention for secondary students and to chronicle the lessons learned as well as suggest future directions for this type of work. Initial development of the intervention began in…

Background and aims: Current evidence shows that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) benefit from spaced retrieval during word learning activities. Word recall is quite good relative to recall with alternative word learning procedures. However, recall on an absolute basis can be improved further; many studies report that fewer than…

While extensive research has explored Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (SLVA) acquisition, there has been a lack of comprehensive bibliometric analysis on this topic. This study addresses this gap by investigating research trends and collaboration networks in SLVA over the past 24 years. Publications on SLVA were retrieved and analysed using…

This systematic review surveyed research on the associations between sleep and the memory processes involved in word learning in infancy. We found only 16 studies that addressed this topic directly, identifying associations between infant sleep and the memory processes, the identification of word forms in running speech, and the stabilization and…

Purpose: The integration of mobile technology in ESL/EFL contexts has garnered significant attention from contemporary researchers, teachers, and learners due to the advancements in technology, dynamic features, and multimodal applications. With this growing interest, there is a need to synthesize the existing literature and identify current…

As they develop into mature speakers of their native language, infants must not only learn words but also the sounds that make up those words. To do so, they must strike a balance between accepting speaker-dependent variation (e.g., mood, voice, accent) but appropriately rejecting variation when it (potentially) changes a word's meaning (e.g., cat…

Some meta-analyses have confirmed the efficacy of technology-enhanced vocabulary learning. However, they have not delved into the specific ways in which technology-based activities facilitate vocabulary acquisition, or into first-language vocabulary learning. We conducted a systematic review that retrieved 1,221 journal articles published between…

Purpose: To become good at anything we need to practice. However, in the classroom context, much of the reading time is devoted to instruction rather than practice. Reading practice should be daily. Text choice, motivation and reading for pleasure all interact to support implicit learning. Design/methodology/approach: Review and synthesise the…

There is a great deal of variation in gains found between studies of second language (L2) incidental vocabulary learning, as well as many factors that affect learning. This meta-analysis investigated the effects of exposure to L2 meaning-focused input on incidental vocabulary learning with an aim to clarify the proportional gains that occur…

With rapid development of mobile technology, the number of researches on its use in language education process has increased. This growing body of interest has led to a need for review studies that are expected to explain the literature and the trend in the field succinctly. Based on this ground, this study aimed to review the studies conducted on…

This paper reports a bibliometric analysis of two small data sets: a set of 34 papers that make up "The Routledge handbook of vocabulary studies" (Webb, 2020) and a set of papers dealing with second language (L2) vocabulary research taken from a single journal "Frontiers in Psychology." Bibliometric maps based on author…