To achieve language proficiency, infants must find the building blocks of speech and master the rules governing their legal combinations. However, these problems are linked: words are also built according to rules. Here, we explored early morphosyntactic sensitivity by testing when and how infants could find either words or within-word structure…

Research with adults has shown that spoken language processing is improved when listeners are familiar with talkers' voices, known as the familiar talker advantage. The current study explored whether this ability extends to school-age children, who are still acquiring language. Children were familiarized with the voices of three German-English…

This study investigates how eight public, centre-based preschool teachers working with low-income children are using different activity settings and content foci to support one aspect of academic language: vocabulary development. Findings indicate that, on average, when teachers engaged children in teacher-led, whole group activities, read-alouds,…

Latino children constitute a large and growing segment of the U.S. population. By 2060, it is estimated that they will comprise one-third (32%) of the three-to-four-year-old population. More than four million children enrolled in preschool programs in the United States are dual language learners (DLLs), and more than 75% of Latina/o children over…

Media use is a pervasive aspect of children's home experiences but is often not considered in studies of the home learning environment. Media use could be detrimental to children's language and literacy skills because it may displace other literacy-enhancing activities like shared reading and decrease the quantity and quality of caregiver-child…

Infants from low-socioeconomic status (SES) households hear a projected 30 million fewer words than their higher-SES peers. In a recent study, Hirsh-Pasek et al. (Psychological Science, 2015; 26: 1071) found that in a low-income sample, fluency and connectedness in exchanges between caregivers and toddlers predicted child language a year later…

Speech and language therapists (SLT) frequently operate in an integrated manner, working with other professionals in the delivery of services to children. Since the end of the 1990s within the UK SLTs have developed integrated services within the field of public health. This study reports an evaluation of an integrated model of service delivery…

This study investigates the knowledge of unaccusativity in Japanese native, heritage, and second/foreign language speakers with respect to licensing of floating numeral quantifiers (FNQs) by unaccusative and unergative subjects (the "FNQ diagnostic"). Two acceptability judgment experiments were conducted to examine (i) whether and how…

This article proposes that second language learners can use indirect positive evidence (IPE) to acquire a phonological grammar that is a subset of their L1 grammar. IPE is evidence from errors in the learner's L1 made by native speakers of the learner's L2. It has been assumed that subset grammars may be acquired using direct or indirect negative…

Although caregiver narrative elaboration is seen as a critical dimension for children's development of narrative skills, research has yet to show a predictive relation between caregiver elaboration and child outcomes for low-income Latino children. The present study explored whether specific types of narrative elaboration were predicted by and…

This article analyses how a set of psycholinguistic factors may account for children's lexical development. Age of acquisition is compared to a measure of lexical development based on vocabulary size rather than age, and robust regression models are used to assess the individual and joint effects of word class, frequency, imageability and…

The study of second language acquisition (SLA) can benefit from the same process of datasharing that has proven effective in areas such as first language acquisition and aphasiology. Researchers can work together to construct a shared platform that combines data from spoken and written corpora, online tutors, and Web-based experimentation. Many of…

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to test the predictions that lower self-esteem and higher shyness in individuals with a history of language impairment (LI) would continue from adolescence into early adulthood and that those with LI would have lower social self-efficacy in early adulthood. Method: Participants were young people with a…

Pre-service teacher preparation in the United States is becoming progressively more challenging with respect to the demands on teachers. This study examined the impact of tutoring approach on pre-service teachers? skills to work with English language learners through a qualitative research design. Content analysis was used at the thematic level on…

Twenty-three preschool-age children, 3;6 (years; months) to 4;1, were videotaped separately with their mothers and fathers while each mother and father read a different unfamiliar storybook to them. The text from the unfamiliar storybooks was parsed and coded into story grammar elements and all parental extratextual utterances were transcribed and…