BACKGROUND The facilitating role of sleep for language learning is well-attested in adults and to a lesser extent in infants and toddlers. However, the longitudinal relationship between sleep patterns and early vocabulary development is not well understood. METHODS This study investigates how measures of sleep are related to the development of vocabulary size in infants and toddlers. Day and ...

Various studies have shown that bilingual children need a certain degree of proficiency in both languages before their bilingual experiences enhance their executive functioning (EF). In the current study, we investigated if degree of bilingualism in Frisian-Dutch children influenced EF and if this effect was sustained over a 3-year period. To this end, longitudinal data were analyzed from 120 F...

PURPOSE The extant literature suggests that exposure to novel vocabulary words through repeated readings of storybooks influences children's word learning, and that adult elaboration of words in context can accelerate vocabulary growth. This study examined the influence of small-group storybook reading sessions on the acquisition of vocabulary words for at-risk kindergartners, and the impact of...

Statistical learning (SL) is believed to enable language acquisition by allowing individuals to learn regularities within linguistic input. However, neural evidence supporting a direct relationship between SL and language ability is scarce. We investigated whether there are associations between event-related potential (ERP) correlates of SL and language abilities while controlling for the gener...

Although it is well documented that children undergo a productive vocabulary spurt late in the second year, it is unclear whether this development is accompanied by equally significant advances in receptive word processing. In the present study, we tested an electrophysiological procedure for assessing receptive word learning in young children, and the impact of productive vocabulary size for p...

Language input is crucial for language acquisition and especially for children's vocabulary size. Bilingual children receive reduced input in each of their languages, compared to monolinguals, and are reported to have smaller vocabularies, at least in one of their languages. Vocabulary acquisition in trilingual children has been largely understudied; only a few case studies have been published ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among variables that may contribute to poor phonological awareness (PA) skills in preschool-aged children with speech sound disorders (SSD). METHOD Ninety-five 4- and 5-year-old children with SSD were assessed during the spring of their prekindergarten year. Linear structural equation modeling was used to compare the fit of 2 ...

PURPOSE The current study investigated finiteness marking (e.g., he walk s, he walk ed) in boys with fragile X syndrome (FXS); the boys were grouped based on receptive vocabulary (i.e., borderline, impaired). METHOD Twenty-one boys with the full mutation of fragile X, between the ages of 8 and 16 years participated. The boys completed probes from the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TE...

OBJECTIVE Permanent hearing impairment has a life-long impact on children and its early identification is important for language development. A newborn hearing screening (NHS) program has started in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, in 1999 to detect hearing impairment immediately after birth. We aim to examine the effect of this screening program on vocabulary development in pre-school children in a ...

As rates of prematurity continue to rise, identifying which preterm children are at increased risk for learning disabilities is a public health imperative. Identifying continuities between early and later skills in this vulnerable population can also illuminate fundamental neuropsychological processes that support learning in all children. At 18 months adjusted age, we used socioeconomic status...