Recent studies have suggested that language aptitude is a domain-general and flexible trait to acquire foreign languages, regarding various cognitive abilities such as memory systems as its crucial components. Despite a growing interest in working memory, however, much remains unknown about the impact of associative memory on language aptitude.…

Children with delays in expressive language (late talkers) have heterogeneous developmental trajectories. Some are late bloomers who eventually "catch-up," but others have persisting delays or are later diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD). Early in development it is unclear which children will belong to which group. We…

Categorical induction abilities are robust in typically developing (TD) preschoolers, while children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) frequently perform inconsistently on tasks asking for the transference of traits from a known category member to a new example based on shared category membership. Here, TD five-year-olds and six-year-olds with…

Learning part names, such as hands of a clock, can be a challenge for children because of the whole object assumption; that is, a child will assume that a given label refers to the whole object (e.g., a clock) rather than the object part (e.g., hands of a clock). We examined the effect of gaze shifting and deliberate pointing on learning part…

Language can alter our mental conceptions of space, time, and categories. While there is compelling evidence that thought can be shaped by syntactic, morphological, and lexical features of a language, less is known about the impact of phonology on thought. This dissertation uses novel objects (alien cartoon figures) and pseudoword names in three…

Word knowledge and the speed of word processing in monolingual children and adults are influenced by word properties, such as the age of acquisition (AoA), imageability, and frequency. Understanding how different properties of words contribute to the ease of processing by bilingual children is a critical step for establishing models of childhood…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of mand, tact, and native-to-foreign (NFI) and foreign-to-native (FNI) intraverbal training on the acquisition of a foreign language. We used a multiple-baseline design across participants with an embedded adapted alternating treatments design to compare the effects of mand training, tact…

Purpose: We compared novel word learning in 2nd-grade children with typical development who were Spanish-English bilinguals to English monolinguals to understand word learning in bilingual children. Method: Children (monolinguals n = 167, bilinguals n = 76) engaged in 5 computer-based tasks that assessed word learning in 6 different contexts. The…

This study investigates the probable effect of a digital game-based vocabulary learning (DGBVL) task on the acquisition of some components of a word knowledge framework. In so doing, 124 Persian speakers (56 males and 68 females) were randomly assigned to either a control or an experimental group. The experimental group participants completed a…

Conceptualizing numbers as discursive constructs generated in, and for the sake of, communication, we investigated the development of the numerical discourse of Milo, a boy who was 2 years and 8 months old when we first met him and whom we then followed for 18 months. Our analyses of the child's evolving responses to the question "Where is…

The present study examined oral language growth differences in a sample of 256 Greek-speaking children with and without literacy difficulties (LD), during the first two elementary grades. Measures of vocabulary, phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) were administered in both grades for the…

Although children may productively use concrete nouns after limited exposure, complete mastery of adult-like patterns of noun usage can take up to 14 years. We evaluated whether a transition from universal to language-specific naming is part of the refinement in later lexical development, and we compared how this refinement plays out in…

Background: Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that occurs secondary to brain injury, such as stroke. It causes communication difficulties that have a significant impact on quality of life and social relationships. Although the efficacy of speech-language therapy has been clearly demonstrated in this population, long-term services are…

This article reports a study examining whether foreign language (FL) word learning can be improved with reduction in cognitive load. Cognitive load theory has received substantial supports in various fields of learning but never in FL word learning. Due to the defined poverty in exposure to the FL, hence deprived cognitive pre-requisites for…

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) are a growing population of learners in English primary schools. These children begin school with differing levels of English language proficiency and tend to underperform in relation to their non-EAL peers on measures of English oral language and reading. However, little work has examined…