Children's speech development begins in infancy. The pattern of this development has been explored in studies over a number of years using a range of research methodology and approaches to investigation. A systematic review of the existing literature was carried out to determine the collective contribution of this literature to our understanding…

In bilingual language environments, infants and toddlers listen to two separate languages during the same key years that monolingual children listen to just one and bilinguals rarely learn each of their two languages at the same rate. Learning to understand language requires them to cope with challenges not found in monolingual input, notably the…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate children's acquisition of Vietnamese speech sounds. Method: Participants were 195 children aged 2;2-5;11 (years;months) living in Northern Viet Nam who spoke Vietnamese as their 1st language. Single-word samples were collected using the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (Ph?m, Le, & McLeod, 2016) to…

Over two decades ago, the "30-million-word" gap rose to prominence after work by Hart & Risley (1995) suggested that children from families with low socioeconomic status (SES) heard fewer words than their peers from families with higher SES during their first 4 years of life. Recent research challenges the magnitude and even…

Learning to read relies upon the integration of phonological, orthographic, and semantic information. However, no studies have investigated how children with varying reading abilities learn phonological-orthographic (PO) and semantic aspects of novel words as a function of both learning approach (LA; e.g., learning new words in isolation or…

Purpose: Child language acquisition is marked by an optional infinitive period (ages 2-4 years) during which children use nonfinite (infinitival) verb forms and finite verb forms interchangeably in grammatical contexts that require finite forms. In English, children's errors include omissions of past tense /--ed/ and 3rd-person singular /--s/.…

Conversation-for-learning (Kasper and Kim 2015) is a pedagogical arrangement set up with a view to maximizing the potential benefit of interaction for language learning. As participants for conversation-for-learning are recruited for their relative expertise in the target languages, the talk is often characterized by asymmetries in knowledge and…

In this study, the authors compare the production of internal codas and branching onsets in four groups of children learning French: monolingual typically-developing children (n = 12), bilingual typically-developing children (n = 61), monolingual children with Specific Language Impairment (n = 17) and bilingual children with Specific Language…

This study examines the role of the lexicon and grammatical structure building in early grammar. Parent-report data in CDI format from a sample of 1151 German-speaking children between 1;6 and 2;6 and longitudinal spontaneous speech data from 22 children between 1;8 and 2;5 were used. Regression analysis of the parent-report data indicates that…

In lexical development, the specificity of phonological representations is important. The ability to build phonologically specific lexical representations predicts the number of words a child knows (vocabulary breadth), but it is not clear if it also fosters how well words are known (vocabulary depth). Sixty-six children were studied in…

Speaking about past events is an important part of a functional verbal repertoire. Social interactions, personal safety, and academic success may be enhanced by learning to speak about past events. Unfortunately, children with language delays may have deficiencies in their ability to tact past events. Despite the importance of this skill, few…

Vocabulary knowledge and speed of lexical access are early components of linguistic skill that co-develop rapidly in the first two years of life. Evidence suggests that these components are foundational for downstream linguistic and cognitive skills and that early individual differences set the stage for a developmental cascade throughout the…

Aims: This study investigated which specific socio-demographic characteristics of the family and child health service centre are associated with parents receiving a video guide. The video guide, intended to be offered universally, aimed at promoting language and literacy development. Methods: The video guide included language and literacy…

Few studies provide information on the reliability and validity of parental report instruments when assessing the language skills of pre-school-aged children. This study investigates the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the parental report instrument, the Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory III (FinCDI III),…

Background: Children with communication disorders experience difficulty in one or more areas of articulation and speech, language, fluency, voice and social communication, and they work with speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to improve their communication. With the rise of adoption and use for mobile applications among special education and…