An important component of reading comprehension is the reader's capacity to make inferences that can maintain the coherence between propositions within the text. However, the cognitive and linguistic skills that underlie online inference making remain elusive. The authors aimed to clarify the effects of vocabulary and text comprehension on…

Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager & Werker [1997] "Nature," 388, 381-382) has found that 14-month-old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation-switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in…

High phonological neighborhood density has been associated with both advantages and disadvantages in early word learning. High density may support the formation and fine-tuning of new word sound memories--a process termed lexical configuration (e.g., Storkel, 2004). However, new high-density words are also more likely to be misunderstood as…

The shape bias, a preference for mapping new word labels onto the shape rather than the color or texture of referents, has been postulated as a word-learning mechanism. Previous research has shown deficits in the shape bias in children with autism even though they acquire sizeable lexicons. While previous explanations have suggested the atypical…

The ability to make inferences is essential for effective language comprehension. While inferencing training benefits reading comprehension in school-aged children (see Elleman, 2017, for a review), we do not yet know whether it is beneficial to support the development of these skills prior to school entry. In a pre-registered randomised…

Background: The Language Development Survey (LDS) and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) are two parental report forms that have been productive in providing data on early child language during the past 30 years. The instruments have been used both in studies relating to typical developing children and in screening…

Vocabulary learning is vital for second language development, and the use of technology has greatly changed how second language vocabulary can be acquired. Some adventure video games were found to be beneficial for vocabulary learning. These games offer engaging plots, rich input, and immersive learning context. Despite these advantages, many…

We studied English-learning children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words from sentences containing truth-functional negation (Exp1) and to use the semantics of negation to inform word meaning (Exp2). In Exp1, 22-month-olds (n = 21) heard dialogues introducing a novel verb in either negative-transitive "("Mary didn't blick the…

We report on a meta-analysis designed to test the theory that instruction that involves direct teaching of academic vocabulary and teaching strategies to determine the meaning of unknown words develops students' abilities to infer new words' meanings and builds students' overall vocabulary knowledge. We meta-analyzed 39 experimental and…

The current study examined the use of electronic textbooks designed as mobile applications for learning vocabulary in English among Iranian university students. To this end, 95 university students in an experimental (N = 50) and a control group (N = 45) participated in the study. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was employed and over…

Although computer-assisted vocabulary acquisition tools have been widely applied to English as a foreign language learning, the kinesthetic and tactile potential of such tools has not been fully utilized. Embodied cognition suggested that the change of practice modality (from handwriting to keyboarding), involves different sensory-motor…

Storytelling is a well-established literary practice in language classrooms. However, approaches influencing its effectiveness and efficiency have rarely been investigated. This study compared the effects of three storytelling approaches on the vocabulary acquisition and response patterns of third-grade students of English as a foreign language…

Technology integration in second language acquisition (SLA) has become prevalent and prominent in the modern age. Quizlet has emerged as a vocabulary learning tool integrated not only into computers (CALL) but also into mobile phones (MALL), over the years; its effectiveness has already been proved via several quasi-experimental studies. However,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which teachers use language to promote vocabulary development (i.e., vocabulary talk moves) during science instruction in early-elementary classrooms. Twenty-four total science lessons were recorded by eight teachers, providing 894.27 min of observational data across three timepoints. Discourse…

This study examined incremental change for several reading component skills while adolescents were actively learning a word-level intervention and measured pre-/postintervention change in skills. Six ninth graders in two different classes participated during the 2019-2020 academic year. Primary analysis was based on an A-B single-case design…