Observed parental sensitivity during a parent-child teaching task and free-play task was tested as mediators of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child receptive language at 48 months, consistent with family investment theory. Parents (n = 881 mothers; 624 fathers, data collected between 2006-2008) and their 5-month-old…

Research suggests that girls acquire language faster than boys, with gender differences most pronounced in vocabulary acquisition during early childhood. This study examines the role of gender in the acquisition of vocabulary and morphosyntax in Palestinian Arabic-speaking children aged 18 to 36 months. Using the Palestinian Arabic Communicative…

This study examined how unimodal and bimodal learning conditions impact L2 vocabulary processing and learning, comparing reading only (RO) and reading while listening (RWL) groups. 119 high intermediate-advanced English learners read or read-while-listening a short story embedded with 25 target pseudowords, repeated 10 times each, and had their…

Domain-general Grit has been criticised as being indistinguishable from Conscientiousness and as a weaker predictor than Cognitive Ability. Given the recent rise of L2 Grit literature -- a domain-specific form of Grit in language learning -- we examine whether these criticisms of general Grit are also applicable to L2 Grit. Domain-general Grit, L2…

This study examines how multilingual caregivers use their linguistic resources to support their autistic children's language development, challenging historical narratives recommending therapists use only one language, English. Using a critical language socialization framework in which multilingualism is considered a practice that transcends…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to document speech sound development across early childhood from a dynamic assessment (DA) perspective that captures a breadth of linguistic environments using the Glaspey Dynamic Assessment of Phonology (Glaspey, 2019), as well as to provide normative data for speech-language pathologists to compare speech…

Many children grow up hearing multiple languages, learning words in each. How does the number of languages being learned affect multilinguals' vocabulary development? In a pre-registered study, we compared productive vocabularies of bilingual (n = 170) and trilingual (n = 20) toddlers aged 17-33 months growing up in a bilingual community where…

The Yucatec Maya language has a highly complex deictic system with interesting typological differences that in addition to demonstratives and locative adverbs also includes ostensive evidentials and modal adverbs. Given that deictic words are among the first that children produce, the aim of this study is to identify the early acquisition that…

This article reviews pretend play and its impact on and association with children's language. Studies have shown the significant relationship between the two domains; however, more intervention research needs conducting to validate the causal impact of pretend play. Nevertheless, several studies exploring its effects on early language reported…

The purpose of the study was to examine word learning in preschool children from families who differed in socioeconomic status (SES). Preschool children (N = 58) were assigned to SES groups based on maternal education and completed a dynamic assessment of explicit word learning 2 times. At the first administration, no SES-group differences were…

This paper draws on 3 years of ethnographic research with young children and their families in a northern English town, employing a more-than-human lens to pay attention to what, beyond humans, might be involved in the emergence of children's literacies. The paper focuses on the role of the body and place in the emergence of young children's…

This study compared mental state language (talk about emotions, thoughts, intentions, etc.) used by 6- to 11-year-old children with Down syndrome (DS) to a younger typically developing (TD) comparison group matched by nonverbal cognition. We aimed to determine (1) whether mental state language use is delayed in DS relative to developmental…

Here I shall write about the late Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) and contextualize this important philosopher's work with respect to the concrete, everyday pedagogical issue of language learning. To demonstrate Stiegler's applicability to education studies, I shall address the issue of character amnesia ([Chinese characters omitted], tibiwangzi in…

To learn new words, particularly verbs, child learners have been shown to benefit from the linguistic contexts in which the words appear. However, cross-linguistic differences affect how this process unfolds. One previous study found that children's abilities to learn a new verb differed across Korean and English as a function of the sentence in…

Purpose: Although autistic perspectives are paramount for evidence-based practice and the neurodiversity paradigm, they are often underrepresented in research and have only recently started to get attention from professionals in different fields, including communication sciences and disorders (CSD) and foreign language teaching (FLT). To alleviate…