PURPOSE This study examined the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on the early lexical performance of African American children. METHOD Thirty African American toddlers (30 to 40 months old) from low-SES (n = 15) and middle-SES (n = 15) backgrounds participated in the study. Their lexical-semantic performance was examined on 2 norm-referenced standardized tests of vocabulary, a measure of ...

Two studies examined relationships between infants' early speech processing performance and later language and cognitive outcomes. Study 1 found that performance on speech segmentation tasks before 12 months of age related to expressive vocabulary at 24 months. However, performance on other tasks was not related to 2-year vocabulary. Study 2 assessed linguistic and cognitive skills at 4-6 years...

To explore how online speech processing efficiency relates to vocabulary growth in the 2nd year, the authors longitudinally observed 59 English-learning children at 15, 18, 21, and 25 months as they looked at pictures while listening to speech naming one of the pictures. The time course of eye movements in response to speech revealed significant increases in the efficiency of comprehension over...

It has been suggested that children who are early or frequent users of gestures also develop expressive language at an early age. This assumption has been questioned on the grounds that studies performed under controlled laboratory conditions in which gestures are elicited in the absence of contextual support (e.g. in relation to a new object) have shown to correlate positively to vocabulary si...

the current study is an attempt to investigate the particular role learners' vocabulary knowledge plays in their reading comprehension performance. it intends to determine whether breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are related to efl learners' reading comprehension, and to investigate which one of these variables, that is, depth or breadth of vocabulary knowledge, makes a more important ...

BACKGROUND expressive vocabulary and auditory processing in children with phonological disorder. AIM to compare the performance of children with phonological disorder in a vocabulary test with the parameters indicated by the same test and to verify a possible relationship between this performance and auditory processing deficits. METHOD participants were 12 children diagnosed with phonologi...

PURPOSE To examine the role of phonotactic probabilities at the onset of language development, in a new language (Dutch), while controlling for word position. METHOD Using a nonword imitation task, 64 Dutch-learning children (age 2;2-2;8 [years;months]) were tested on how they imitated segments in low- and high-phonotactic probability environments, in word-initial and word-final position. The...

L-Carnosine, a dipeptide, can enhance frontal lobe function or be neuroprotective. It can also correlate with gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-homocarnosine interaction, with possible anticonvulsive effects. We investigated 31 children with autistic spectrum disorders in an 8-week, double-blinded study to determine if 800 mg L-carnosine daily would result in observable changes versus placebo. Out...

BACKGROUND This study evaluates the effects of a language and literacy intervention for children with Down syndrome. METHODS Teaching assistants (TAs) were trained to deliver a reading and language intervention to children in individual daily 40-min sessions. We used a waiting list control design, in which half the sample received the intervention immediately, whereas the remaining children r...