In recent years, many children from Eastern European orphanages have been adopted by families in the United States. When children begin life with their new families, they experience an abrupt language shift in which the learning of their native language halts as the learning of the new language commences. Without the support of their native…

This article addresses the role of previously acquired languages in the acquisition of a third language (L3) in two experimental studies on object expression in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Participants were English-speaking learners of BP as L3 with knowledge of Spanish as a second language (L2) and Spanish-speaking learners of BP with knowledge of…

Although there have been many studies examining the acquisition of grammar in Japanese as a second language (L2) (e.g., Nagatomo, 1993; Noda, Sakoda, Shibuya, & Kobayashi, 2001), discourse analysis research on the L2 acquisition of Japanese discourse structure is still in its infancy. This study examines how L2 learners organize their spoken…

The present study assessed the effects of video modeling on acquisition and generalization of variation in the conversational speech of two boys with autism. A video was made showing several versions of several topics of conversation, thus providing multiple exemplars of each conversation. Video modeling consisted of showing each child a video…

In this paper we propose a method for characterizing development in large longitudinal corpora. The method has the following three features: (i) it suggests how to represent development without assuming predefined stages; (ii) it includes caregiver speech/child-directed speech; (iii) it uses statistical association measures for investigating…

This article examines how probability (lexical frequency and previous mention), speech style, and prosody affect word duration, and how these factors interact. Participants read controlled materials in clear and plain speech styles. As expected, more probable words (higher frequencies and second mentions) were significantly shorter than less…

This article seeks to recover a history of ideas about the role of signs in the development of mind that connects Vygotsky to major traditions in Enlightenment language studies. It offers historical perspectives on ideas about thinking and speaking that shed light on the scope and trajectory of Vygotsky's conception of signs as psychological…

Client speech in favor of change within motivational interviewing sessions has been linked to treatment outcomes, but a causal chain has not yet been demonstrated. Using a sequential behavioral coding system for client speech, the authors found that, at both the session and utterance levels, specific therapist behaviors predict client change talk.…

There is no consensus regarding the fundamental phonetic units that underlie speech production. There is, however, general agreement that the frequency of occurrence of these units is a significant factor. Investigators often use the effects of manipulating frequency to support the importance of particular units. Studies of pseudoword production…

Verbal repetition is conventionally considered to require motor-reproduction of only the phonologically relevant content of a perceived linguistic stimulus, while imitation of incidental acoustic properties of the stimulus is not an explicit part of this task. Exemplar-based theories of speech processing, however, would predict that imitation…

Selective mutism is a severe childhood disorder involving failure to speak in public situations in which speaking is expected. The present study examined 9 youths with selective mutism treated with child-focused, exposure-based practices and parent-focused contingency management via an alternating treatments design. Broadband measures of…

To understand the world around us, continuous streams of information including speech must be segmented into units that can be mapped onto stored representations. Recent evidence has shown that event-related potentials (ERPs) can index the online segmentation of sound streams. In the current study, listeners were trained to recognize sequences of…

This paper examined the fundamental frequency variation in the narratives of individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) and typical controls matched on age, IQ, and verbal abilities. Study 1 found increased fundamental frequency variation in the speech of 21 children and adolescents with HFA when compared to 21 typical controls. Study 2…

Our goal was to investigate auditory and speech perception abilities of children with and without reading disability (RD) and associations between auditory, speech perception, reading, and spelling skills. Participants were 9-year-old, Finnish-speaking children with RD (N = 30) and typically reading children (N = 30). Results showed significant…

We report on a study investigating 3-5-year-old children's use of gesture to resolve lexical ambiguity. Children were told three short stories that contained two homonym senses; for example, "bat" (flying mammal) and "bat" (sports equipment). They were then asked to re-tell these stories to a second experimenter. The data were coded for the means…