Early language environments are considered to support children's language development; however, it is unclear to what extent early language environments relate to skills other than language abilities. We examined (1) whether the preschool language environment (measured as adult words heard and conversational turns) is associated with children's…

Introduction: Effective parenting can stimulate the development of children with visual impairments. However, there is limited research on the specific parenting behaviors that contribute to these developmental outcomes. The current research investigated the relationship between parenting behavior and developmental outcomes--specifically in…

Second language (L2) viewing with captions (i.e., L2 on-screen text) is now a proliferating as well as promising area of L2 acquisition research. The goal of the present meta-analysis was to examine (a) the relationship between captioned viewing and incidental vocabulary learning and (b) what variables related to learners, treatment, methodology,…

This study investigates the production of Italian subject anaphoric devices by monolinguals (L1s), second language speakers (L2s), and heritage language speakers (HLs) with Belgian Dutch as their first or dominant language. Extensive research has shown that bilinguals tend to overuse explicit anaphoric devices compared to monolinguals. While this…

It is assumed that in order to acquire a language, children must be exposed to a language during the critical period, which generally lasts until puberty. Here, we report on Cena, an emergent sign language that has developed among a small group of deaf people in an isolated town in the state of Piauí, Brazil. Starting three generations ago, it has…

This longitudinal study - conducted in the Midwestern United States - examines the child-level factors that promote Spanish-English bilingual toddlers' (n = 47; M[subscript age] = 18.80 months; SD[subscript age] = 0.57) productive vocabulary skills from 18 to 30 months of age. At 6-month intervals, caregivers reported on toddlers' Spanish and…

Adolescent mothers (AMs) often experience limited academic and financial attainment and higher rates of mental health disorders, which may affect their relationships with their children. Although children of AMs are at higher risk for developmental delays, there is no clear evidence of the relationships between mother characteristics and child…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine if 2.5-year-olds with language delay would learn verbs ("spill") when presented with varying syntactic structure ("The woman is spilling the milk"/"The milk is spilling"; "milk" = patient or theme) in a therapeutic context. Children with language delay have…

Most children across the world learn to read and write in non-alphabetic orthographies such as abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas (e.g., Ethiopic Ge'ez), and morphosyllabaries (e.g., Chinese). However, most theories of reading, reading development, and dyslexia derive from a relatively narrow empirical base of research in English--an outlier…

Make-believe play (MBP) provides kindergarteners with an authentic form of engagement that is particularly favourable to the development of oral and written language. As part of an action research study, an activity-oriented professional development (PD) program incorporating video was established to provide kindergarten teachers with guidance on…

In low- and middle-income countries, urbanization has spurred the expansion of peri-urban communities, or urban communities of formerly rural residents with low socioeconomic status. The growth of these communities offers researchers an opportunity to measure the associations between the level of urbanization and the home language environment…

Background: Early identification and intervention for hearing loss is important for supporting language development. Despite this, parents are required to overcome barriers to access hearing assessments for their children. Aims: To identify the enablers and barriers to accessing hearing assessments for Australian children identified by their…

Maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child clean-up task at 18 months and maternal sensitivity during an observed mother-child free-play task at 18 months were tested as independent predictors of child internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, social competence, and language development at 24 months. Participants (n = 292 mothers)…

For both adults and children, learning from one's mistakes (error-based learning) has been shown to be advantageous over avoiding errors altogether (errorless learning) in pedagogical settings. However, it remains unclear whether this advantage carries over to nonpedagogical settings in children, who mostly learn language in such settings. Using…

The dynamic nature of multilingual families and their language policies has been touched upon by numerous studies. Adding to the field, the present study assesses the stability of family language policy in a standardised and quantitative manner. To this end, a linguistically heterogenous sample consisting of 488 multilingual families raising young…