Both the input directed to the child, and the child's ability to process that input, are likely to impact the child's language acquisition. We explore how these factors inter-relate by tracking the relationships among: (a) lexical properties of maternal child-directed speech to prelinguistic (7-month-old) infants (N = 121); (b) these infants' abilities to segment lexical targets from conversati...

Visual field extent along the four diagonal meridia was measured cross-sectionally in 180 normal children (infants and toddlers), and 22 adults. Infants were tested monocularly at 3.5, 7, or 9 months, and toddlers were tested binocularly at 11, 17, or 30 months. Adult control data were obtained under monocular viewing. Three testing methods were investigated: static and hybrid static-kinetic pe...

PURPOSE The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the impact of early intervention on speech and lexical measures for toddlers with cleft palate. METHOD Speech measures of ten 27-month-old toddlers with cleft palate who had been referred for therapy at 17 months of age were compared to those of 10 toddlers with cleft palate who had been referred but did not receive therapy. Both...

Infant bilingualism offers a unique opportunity to study the relative effects of language experience and maturation on brain development, with each child serving as his or her own control. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to words were examined in 19- to 22-month-old English-Spanish bilingual toddlers. The children's dominant vs. nondominant languages elicited different patterns of neural activi...

PURPOSE This study examined parent perception of early communication development before and after participation in language intervention. METHOD Fifty-three parents of toddlers with developmental delays and fewer than 10 spoken words completed the Parent Perception of Language Development, an experimental measure, before and after the children were randomly assigned to a language intervention...

This study sought to determine why American parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds communicate in different ways with their children. Forty-seven parent-child dyads were videotaped engaging in naturalistic interactions in the home for ninety minutes at child age 2;6. Transcripts of these interactions provided measures of child-directed speech. Children's vocabulary comprehension skill...

Although neurodevelopmental impairment is a risk factor for poor cognitive and behavioral outcomes, associations between early and later functioning are only moderate in magnitude, and it is likely that other factors intervene to modify this trajectory. The current study tested the hypothesis that sensitive, stimulating caregiving would promote positive behavioral and cognitive outcomes among c...

This study examined the validity of the Nursing Child Assessment of Feeding Scale (NCAFS) during toddlerhood, using a longitudinal design to assess the scale's convergence with the Toddler Snack Scale (TSS) between 12 and 36 months, and comparing videotaped interactions of 116 mother-toddler dyads. Differences between TSS mutuality classifications were found for the NCAFS subscales at each age....

The present study tested Abidin's (1992) parenting stress model in a sample of low-income African American fathers and their toddlers, specifically examining the mediation effect of fathers' engagement (self-report and observed) on the association between parenting stress and children's social competence and problem behavior. We found that fathers reported moderate levels of parenting stress, b...

This review sought to determine the evidence base of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) use with infants and toddlers with disabilities. The review identified 12 studies, involving 190 participants aged 36 months or younger. The majority of the studies investigated unaided AAC methods (e.g., gestures or sign language), with 42% of the studies also including aided AAC methods. Alth...