Both walking abilities and pointing gestures in infants are associated with later language skills. Within this longitudinal study we investigate the relationship between walk onset and first observed index-finger points and their respectively predictive value for later language skills. We assume that pointing as a motor as well as a communicative…

Previous theoretical research has revealed conceptual similarities among a number of mathematical learning theories and theories regarding language acquisition. This intersection of ideas led to a novel framework defining four stages of mathematical learning: Receiving, Replicating, Negotiating Meaning, and Producing. Through qualitative research…

Previous research has highlighted the difficulty that infants have in learning to use color words. Even after acquiring the words themselves, infants are reported to use them incorrectly, or overextend their usage. We tested 146 infants from 5 different age groups on their knowledge of 6 basic color words, "red", "green",…

The present study was motivated to introduce a new concept named "language learner immunity". In doing so, we defined the concept of immunity in the language learning context by paralleling the biological tendency of humans to be immune to the immune system of language learners. The psychological aspects of this study relied heavily on…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the time course of vocal development in infants and toddlers with bilateral cochlear implants (CIs; bilateral CI group) who are acquiring Finnish and to compare their progress to that of infants with normal hearing and typical development (TD group). Method: Five thousand nine hundred…

Associative word learning, the ability to pair a concept to a word, is an essential mechanism for early language development. One common method by which researchers measure this ability is the Switch task (Werker, Cohen, Lloyd, Casasola, & Stager, 1998), wherein infants are habituated to 2 word-object pairings and then tested on their ability…

Emerging evidence suggests domain-general processes, including working memory, may contribute to reduced speech production skills in young children. This study compared the phonological short-term (pSTM) and phonological working memory (pWM) abilities of 50 monolingual English-speaking children between 3;6 and 5;11 with typical speech production…

In typical development, listeners can use semantic content of verbs to facilitate incremental language processing--a skill that is associated with existing language skills. Studies of children with ASD have not identified an association between incremental language processing in semantically-constraining contexts and language skills, perhaps…

Vocabulary differences early in development are highly predictive of later language learning as well as achievement in school. Early word learning emerges in the context of tightly coupled social interactions between the early learner and a mature partner. In the present study, we develop and apply a novel paradigm--dual head-mounted eye…

Data from elicited language tasks can add to the literature on the development of the complex syntax structures of embedded complement clauses in typically developing children. In the current study, preschool-age children (n = 27) participated in two elicited language tasks focusing on three types of embedded complement clauses: infinitival…

Two studies assess French-speaking children's comprehension of object filler-gap dependencies, with the goal of investigating whether the degree of specificity/set-restriction of the fronted object or the intervening subject modulates comprehension. We tease apart the predictions of various accounts attributing children's difficulties to (i)…

Babies think differently than adults, and understanding how they think can help us see their explosive brain growth in everyday behavior. Infants learn language faster than adults do, use statistics to understand how the world works, and even reason about the minds of others. But these achievements can be hidden by their poor self-regulatory…

The present study explores the development of academic language and social studies discourse norms among a diverse sample of middle school students, as well as how language development aids rhetorical choices in students' writing. Over the course of 1 semester, students (n = 37) made statistically and practically significant gains in academic…

Natural language contains many examples of sound-symbolism, where the form of the word carries information about its meaning. Such systematicity is more prevalent in the words children acquire first, but arbitrariness dominates during later vocabulary development. Furthermore, systematicity appears to promote learning category distinctions, which…

Adults and toddlers systematically associate pseudowords such as "bouba" and "kiki" with round and spiky shapes, respectively, a sound symbolic phenomenon known as the "bouba-kiki effect." To date, whether this sound symbolic effect is a property of the infant brain present at birth or is a learned aspect of language…