Background: Evidence supports the effectiveness of shared book reading for promoting language and literacy development, but it is known that families experiencing vulnerability may have reduced access to books and are less likely to share books regularly at home. Community hubs often provide support to families experiencing vulnerability and may…

What is vision's role in driving early word production? To answer this, we assessed parent-report vocabulary questionnaires administered to congenitally blind children (N = 40, Mean age = 24 months [R: 7-57 months]) and compared the size and contents of their productive vocabulary to those of a large normative sample of sighted children (N =…

In this dissertation, I establish a research program that uses computational modeling as a testbed for theories of phonological learning. This dissertation focuses on a fundamental question: how do children acquire sound patterns from noisy, real-world data, especially in the presence of lexical exceptions that defy regular patterns? For instance,…

Children achieve better long-term language outcomes than adults. However, it remains unclear whether children actually learn language "more quickly" than adults during real-time exposure to input--indicative of true superior language learning abilities--or whether this advantage stems from other factors. To examine this issue, we…

Echolalia, a language phenomenon whereby individuals imitate the speech of others, is commonly used by children and adults with autism. Research into the underlying nature and meanings associated with this repetitive behaviour is characterised by a lack of conceptual definitions and conflicting opinions about the functions of echolalia. A scoping…

Research suggests that elements of the family environment may have significant associations with cognitive and language development outcomes. Less is known, however, about the family environment in peri-urban China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0-3 years are as high as 51% and 54%, respectively. Using data collected…

While America is becoming increasingly diverse, educational stakeholders seek programs that address varied language and cultural needs, which is reflected by the growing popularity of dual language immersion (DLI) programs in recent decades. The problem is an extensively persistent academic achievement gap between students with native English and…

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives, permeating every aspect. One area where technology has shown potential to enhance English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning is through the use of animated movies. Despite the growing significance of technology in education, research is scarce in this specific area. Therefore, the aim of…

Pointing plays a significant role in communication and language development. However, in spoken languages pointing has been viewed as a non-verbal gesture, whereas in sign languages, pointing is regarded to represent a linguistic unit of language. This study compared the use of pointing between seven bilingual hearing children of deaf parents…

Early exploratory behaviors have been proposed to facilitate children's learning, impacting motor, cognitive, language, and social development. This study related the performance of behaviors used to explore oneself to behaviors used to explore objects, and then related both types of exploratory behaviors to motor, language, and cognitive measures…

Studies on children's understanding of counting examine when and how children acquire the cardinal principle: the idea that the last word in a counted set reflects the cardinal value of the set. Using Wynn's (1990) Give-N Task, researchers classify children who can count to generate large sets as having acquired the cardinal principle…

In acquiring a native language, the input children receive, to an unneglectable extent, shapes the rate of acquisition and the ultimate achievement. This in turn has cascading effects on many aspects of later development, including but not limited to language. Providing optimal input for early language development, therefore, is of major interest…

This article presents a developmental pathway for the acquisition of morphosyntactic variation. Although there is abundant evidence that morphosyntactic variation is pervasive among adults, much less is known about how children acquire such variation. The literature thus far indicates that the pathway of development involves first producing only…

In "Emile," Rousseau advances significant ideas about language, language learning and teaching: He posits a universal natural language that develops as the child matures; focuses on 'private' words invented by children, on the challenge facing children in their understanding of exceptions to general rules of the mother tongue and on…

Despite attention by educators and researchers to the advancement of robotics research in education, little experimental research has been conducted on the use of robots in language education for young children. This paper reports on a study aimed at providing an improved English language development assessment questionnaire specifically for use…