There is consensus that the adult lexicon exhibits lexical competition. In particular, substantial evidence demonstrates that words with more phonologically similar neighbors are recognized less efficiently than words with fewer neighbors. How and when these effects emerge in the child's lexicon is less clear. In the current paper, we build on…

Children learn words in environments where there is considerable variability, both in terms of the number of possible referents for novel words, and the availability of cues to support word-referent mappings. How caregivers adapt their gestural cues to referential uncertainty has not yet been explored. We tested a computational model of…

Individual differences in episodic memory abilities have been linked to second language (L2) lexical development, both theoretically and empirically, but such empirical support has been limited to the earliest phases of word learning. However, the Episodic L2 Hypothesis predicts that L2 lexical representations in more advanced L2 speakers are…

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly linked to the developmental trajectory of vocabulary acquisition in young children. However, the nature of this relationship remains underspecified. In particular, despite an extensive literature documenting young children's reliance on a host of skills and strategies to learn new words, little…

Young children have an overall preference for child-directed speech (CDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS), and its structural features are thought to facilitate language learning. Many studies have supported these findings, but less is known about processing of CDS at short, sub-second timescales. How do the moment-to-moment dynamics of CDS…

Your students may recognize the words determine, explain, and summarize in the above standard, but would they understand and be able to apply these concepts? Students encounter these and other academic vocabulary words throughout their school years, but too often, they don't have a firm grasp of these words' meanings or what skills they require.…

Students with reading difficulties frequently struggle succeeding in middle school courses due to poor early reading and language skills. Research suggests that students with reading difficulties and comorbid behavioral concerns may have difficulties making appropriate gains when exposed to academic instruction. This study examined the extent to…

The role of children's verbal repetition of parents' utterances on vocabulary growth has been well documented (Masur, 1999). Nevertheless, few studies have analyzed adults' and children's spontaneous verbal repetition around the second birthday distinguishing between the types of repetition. We analyzed longitudinally Spanish-speaking parent-child…

Vocabulary knowledge has been largely viewed as an important component in language learning and language acquisition. Understanding how EFL learners approach vocabulary learning is also considered crucial for language teachers and researchers to develop an effective learning environment that may stimulate high-quality learning outcomes. Studies on…

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) served as a test case for determining the role of extant vocabulary knowledge, endogenous attention, and phonological working memory abilities in cross-situational word learning. First-graders (M[subscript age] = 7 years; 3 months), 44 with typical development (TD) and 28 with DLD, completed a…

In the present study, it was hypothesized that the proportion of open questions teachers ask during shared book reading would be directly and indirectly (through class aggregated mean length of utterance) related to children's vocabulary and would be directly and indirectly (through class aggregated mean length of children's utterance and…

Sixth-grade students who had been identified as gifted and talented participated in a literacy intervention designed and implemented by the first author as part of an action research project. These students were meeting the grade-level standards in literacy, so the project aimed to push their vocabulary knowledge further in order to prepare them…

The present study investigated the extent to which four pre-listening activities, "pre-teaching vocabulary", "content discussion", "pre-reading questions" and "topic discussion," assisted EFL learners with their performance on listening comprehension tests across two different proficiency groups (elementary…

Purpose: Both monolingual and bilingual children use learning constraints and heuristics to acquire new words from their environment. Overall, fast mapping abilities seem to be similar in both populations, but monolinguals rely more than bilinguals on the mutual exclusivity strategy. Our study probes the robustness of these results in a large…

This study aimed to determine the effect of vocabulary instruction integrated with writing exercises on vocabulary learning, retention, and awareness. The research was designed according to the sequential explanatory mixed-method design, in which quantitative and qualitative methods were used together. A quasi-experimental model with a…