Purpose: This study examined how mothers' question-asking behavior relates to their child's syntactic skills. One important aspect of maternal question-asking behavior is the use of complex questions when speaking with children. These questions can differ based on both their purpose and structure. The purpose may be to seek out information, to…

Background: Variability in the vocabulary outcomes of children with cochlear implants (CIs) is partially explained by child-directed speech (CDS) characteristics. Yet, relatively little is known about whether and how mothers adapt their lexical and prosodic characteristics to the child's hearing status (before and after implantation, and compared…

The purpose of the study was to examine word learning in preschool children from families who differed in socioeconomic status (SES). Preschool children (N = 58) were assigned to SES groups based on maternal education and completed a dynamic assessment of explicit word learning 2 times. At the first administration, no SES-group differences were…

Background: Previous studies have explored the size and word type composition (nouns, predicates, etc.) of expressive vocabularies of preschool children with Down syndrome, both spoken and signed. Separately, overall preferences for modality of expression have also been explored. Aims: To extend previous findings by describing the relationships…

Previous studies have found correlations between parent input and child language outcomes, providing prima facie evidence for a causal relation. However, this could also reflect the effects of shared genes. The present study removed this genetic confound by measuring English vocabulary growth in 29 preschool-aged children (21 girls) aged…

Research on "parentese," the acoustically exaggerated, slower, and higher-pitched speech directed toward infants, has mostly focused on maternal contributions, although it has long been known that fathers also produce parentese. Given recent societal changes in family dynamics, it is necessary to revise these mother-centered models of…

Background: Despite the ability of cochlear implants (CIs) to provide children with access to speech, there is considerable variability in spoken language outcomes. Research aimed at identifying factors influencing speech production accuracy is needed. Aims: To characterize the consonant production accuracy of children with cochlear implants…

Background: Drawing on the family stress model (Conger and Donnellan in Ann Rev Psychol 58:175-199, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085551), parenting programs typically support caregivers' nurturing and cognitively stimulating practices to mitigate the effects of poverty on child development, with small-to-moderate…

Receptive vocabulary development was examined in 313 children (151 girls; 78% White) as a function of infant attention and maternal education (66% of mothers held a college degree or higher). Attention was measured at 10 months using a dynamic puppet task and receptive vocabulary was measured at 3-, 4-, 6-, and 9 years of age using the Peabody…

In a changing society where the roles of fathers and mothers in caregiving are becoming more equal, the role of the father in early language development has also changed. We aimed to study associations between paternal factors and early vocabulary development in boys and girls. In a longitudinal cohort study, we examined the growth of expressive…

Many Western industrialized nations have high levels of ethnic diversity but to date there are very few studies which investigate prelinguistic and early language development in infants from ethnic minority backgrounds. This study tracked the development of infant communicative gestures from 10 to 12 months (n = 59) in three culturally distinct…

Potentially serving as the primary national literacy initiative, the Reading Seed Programme (RSP) by PUSTAKA Negeri Sarawak aims to enculturate a reading culture from an early age. For instance, RSP was invented to promote reading culture by having the pregnant mother read to their infant until the child was three years old. The process is vital…

This study investigated responsive and directive speech from 60 Finnish mothers to their 2-year-old children, as well as correlations with concurrent and later vocabulary. Possible gender differences with regard to both maternal speech and children's vocabulary skills were considered. There were no gender differences in maternal utterance…

Aims: Although IDS is typically described as slower than adult-directed speech (ADS), potential impacts of slower speech on language development have not been examined. We explored whether IDS speech rates in 42 mother-infant dyads at four time periods predicted children's language outcomes at two years. Method: We correlated IDS speech rate with…

Infants build knowledge by acting on the world. We conducted an ecologically grounded test of an embodied learning hypothesis: that infants' active engagement with objects in the home environment elicits caregiver naming and cascades to learning object names. Our home-based study extends laboratory-based theories to identify real-world processes…