OBJECTIVE To test the independent association of adult language input, television viewing, and adult-child conversations on language acquisition among infants and toddlers. METHODS Two hundred seventy-five families of children aged 2 to 48 months who were representative of the US census were enrolled in a cross-sectional study of the home language environment and child language development (p...

Neural networks provide a basis for studying child language development in that such networks emphasise learning. We report a simulation of some key aspects of child language development during infancy. We argue that in order to simulate the uniquely human language learning, it is important to use a ‘conglomerate’ neural network architecture that integrates the collective strengths of a variety...

We designed a parent-directed home-visiting intervention targeting socioeconomic status (SES) disparities in children's early language environments. A randomized controlled trial was used to evaluate whether the intervention improved parents' knowledge of child language development and increased the amount and diversity of parent talk. Twenty-three mother-child dyads (12 experimental, 11 contro...

Although child maltreatment has often been described as leading to language deficits, the few well-controlled investigations of language acquisition in maltreated children have focused on language content rather than form, or have used qualitative rather than quantitative measures. This study examines syntactic complexity in 19 maltreated and 14 nonmaltreated preschool-aged children. Mother-chi...

MEGHAN D. NIX The Relationship Between Parental Stress, Parent-Child Interaction Quality, and Child Language Outcomes (Under the direction of SHANNON SELF-BROWN) Language skills developed in early childhood are important for literacy and communication in childhood as well as future adult literacy skills and health. Certain demographic characteristics and parent-child interaction skills have bee...

This paper compares the language of child bilinguals and adult unbalanced bilinguals (heritage speakers) against that of bilingual native speakers of their home language (baseline). We identify four major vectors of correspondence across the language spoken by these three groups. First, all varieties may represent a given linguistic property in a similar way (child bilinguals = adult heritage s...

Word forms in early child language  Word forms in child language productions often deviate from their target adult forms.

The current study examined the effect of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a parent-training intervention for child behavior problems, on child language production. Participants were 46 children (ages 20-70 months) with externalizing behavior problems and with or at risk for developmental delay. Parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to a waitlist control or immediate treatment group....

This is a longitudinal case study of two Farsi-speaking children learning English: ‘Bernard’ and ‘Melissa’, who were 7;4 and 8;4 at the start of data collection. The research deals with the initial state and further development in the child second language (L2) acquisition of syntax regarding the presence or absence of copula as a functional category, as well as the role and degree of L1 influe...