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Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have a vocabulary deficit. One of the most effective interventions for increasing children's lexicon size is the semantic and phonological approach, an approach that has been used mainly with adolescents. The goals of our study are (1) to test whether the semantic-phonological approach coupled with rich vocabulary instruction is effective with younger children with DLD on words learned during the training and (2) to check whether the gains can be maintained over the long term. A group of eight French-speaking children (aged 6 to 10), with a diagnosis of DLD, underwent a phonological-semantic group intervention over 5 months. Four lists (vegetables, animals, school materials, and sports) of words were trained, each category involving 3-hour sessions. Five-word lists (L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5) corresponded to the four trained categories and one served as control. When L1 words were trained, L2 served as the control list; then when L2 words were trained, L3 was the control list, and so on. The group results indicated significant improvement on the four trained lists once intervention was introduced, and no improvement on the control lists. All effects were maintained over the long term at the delayed posttest. Individual outcomes were dependent on children's cognitive and language profiles. Vocabulary training thus allowed young French-speaking children with DLD to enrich their vocabulary on specific measures. The implications of the results are discussed at the group and individual level.

Children with developmental dyslexia (DD) display partially preserved morphology skills which they rely upon for reading and spelling. Therefore, we conducted explicit and intensive training of derivational morphology in French and Swiss individuals with DD, ages 9 to 14 years, in order to assess its effect on: morphological awareness, reading (speed and accuracy), and spelling. Our pre–posttest design included a group trained in derivational morphology and a group of children who continued their business-as-usual rehabilitation program with their speech-language therapist. Results showed effects on morphological awareness and on the spelling of complex words, with a large between-group effect size for trained items and a large to moderate effect size for untrained items. All these gains tended to be maintained over time on the delayed posttest, 2 months later. For reading, the results were more contrasted, with large between-group effect sizes for accuracy and speed for trained items, reducing to a small effect for accuracy on the delayed posttest. For untrained items, small effects were observed on accuracy (at both posttests) but not on speed. These results are very promising and argue in favor of using derivational morphology as a medium to improve literacy skills in French-speaking children and adolescents with DD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the very first moments of their lives, infants selectively attend to the visible orofacial movements of their social partners and apply their exquisite speech perception skills to the service of lexical learning. Here we explore how early bilingual experience modulates children's ability to use visible speech as they form new lexical representations. Using a cross-modal word-learning task, bilingual children aged 30 months were tested on their ability to learn new lexical mappings in either the auditory or the visual modality. Lexical recognition was assessed either in the same modality as the one used at learning ('same modality' condition: auditory test after auditory learning, visual test after visual learning) or in the other modality ('cross-modality' condition: visual test after auditory learning, auditory test after visual learning). The results revealed that like their monolingual peers, bilingual children successfully learn new words in either the auditory or the visual modality and show cross-modal recognition of words following auditory learning. Interestingly, as opposed to monolinguals, they also demonstrate cross-modal recognition of words upon visual learning. Collectively, these findings indicate a bilingual edge in visual word learning, expressed in the capacity to form a recoverable cross-modal representation of visually learned words.

Purpose: This study examines the influence of lexical and phonological factors on expressive lexicon size in 40 French-speaking children tested longitudinally from 22 to 48 months. The factors include those based on the lexical and phonological properties of words in the children's lexicons (phonetic complexity, word length, neighborhood density [ND], and word frequency [WF]) as well as variables measuring phonological production (percent consonants correct and phonetic inventory size). Specifically, we investigate the relative influence of these factors at individual ages, namely, 22, 29, 36, and 48 months, and which factors measured at 22 and 29 months influence lexicon size at 36 and 48 months. Method: Children were selected based on parent-reported vocabulary size. We included children with low, medium, and high vocabulary scores. The children's lexicons were coded in terms of phonetic complexity, word length, ND, and WF, and their phonological production skills were based on measures of percent consonants correct and phonetic inventory size extracted from spontaneous speech samples at 29, 36, and 48 months. In the case of ND and WF, we focused on one- and two-syllable nouns. Results: Across the age range, the most important factor that explained variance in lexicon size was the WF of nouns. Children who selected low-frequency nouns had larger vocabularies across all ages (22-48 months). The WF of two-syllable nouns and phonological production measured at 29 months influenced lexicon size at 36 months, whereas the WF (of one- and two-syllable words) influenced lexicon size at 48 months. Conclusions: The findings support the role of WF and phonological production in explaining expressive vocabulary development. Children enlarge their vocabularies by adding nouns of increasingly lower frequency. Phonological production plays a role in accounting for vocabulary size up until the age of 36 months.

The present research extends recent work on the prediction of preschool language skills by exploring prediction from decontextualized vocabulary comprehension. Vocabulary comprehension was a stronger predictor than parent-reported production, yielding a quadrupling of variance accounted for relative to prior studies. Parallel studies (Studies 1 and 2) are reported for two linguistically and geographically distinct samples. In both samples, decontextualized vocabulary comprehension late in the second year provided the best balance between model fit and parsimony in predicting language skills at age three. In Study 3, vocabulary comprehension prospectively identified children with low language status 2 years earlier than other prospective studies but with similar sensitivity and specificity. The present paper provides evidence on three questions of practical and theoretical significance: the relation between decontextualized vocabulary prior to 30 months of age and language outcomes, how prediction from decontextualized vocabulary compares with parent-reported vocabulary, and finally how early stable predictions to language outcomes can be made.

Recent studies demonstrate that emerging literacy depends on earlier language achievement. Importantly, most extant work focuses on "parent-reported production" prior to 30 months of age. Of interest is whether and how "directly assessed vocabulary comprehension" in the 2nd year of life supports vocabulary and kindergarten readiness in the 4th year. We first contrasted orthogonal indices of parent-reported production and directly assessed vocabulary comprehension and found that comprehension was a stronger predictor of child outcomes. We then assessed prediction from vocabulary comprehension controlling for maternal education, preschool attendance, and child sex. In 3 studies early, decontextualized vocabulary comprehension emerged as a significant predictor of 4th year language and kindergarten readiness accounting for unique variance above demographic control variables. Further we found that the effect of early vocabulary on 4th year kindergarten readiness was not mediated by 4th year vocabulary. This pattern of results emerged in English monolingual children (N = 48) and replicated in French monolingual (N = 58) and French-English bilingual children (N = 34). Our findings suggest that early, decontextualized vocabulary may provide a platform for the establishment of a conceptual system that supports both later vocabulary and kindergarten readiness, including the acquisition of a wide range of concepts including print and number. Differences between parent-reported and directly assessed vocabulary and the mechanisms by which decontextualized vocabulary may contribute to conceptual development are discussed.

In order to address gaps in the literature surrounding the acquisition of translation equivalents (TEs) in young bilinguals, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, TEs were measured in the expressive vocabularies of thirty-four French-English bilinguals at 1;4, 1;10, and 2;6 using the MacArthur Bates CDI. Children's acquisition of TEs occurred gradually, with more balanced ratios of exposure and vocabulary associated with larger proportions of TEs at each wave. Experiment 2 compared a direct measure of TE comprehension with parent report of the same set of words. Results showed that parents may over-report children's TE comprehension, as our sample of two-year-old French-English bilinguals (n = 20) comprehended fewer TEs on a direct measure of receptive vocabulary than parents reported on the vocabulary checklist. The present study provides an original contribution to the literature on bilingual vocabulary development by employing both a longitudinal design and a direct measure of TE comprehension.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop the Language Exposure Assessment Tool (LEAT) and to examine its cross-linguistic validity, reliability, and utility. The LEAT is a computerized interview-style assessment that requests parents to estimate language exposure. The LEAT yields an automatic calculation of relative language exposure and captures qualitative aspects of early language experience. Method: Relative language exposure as reported on the LEAT and vocabulary size at 17 months of age were measured in a group of bilingual language learners with varying levels of exposure to French and English or Spanish and English. Results: The LEAT demonstrates high internal consistency and criterion validity. In addition, the LEAT's calculation of relative language exposure explains variability in vocabulary size above a single overall parent estimate. Conclusions: The LEAT is a valid and efficient tool for characterizing early language experience across cultural settings and levels of language exposure. The LEAT could be a useful tool in clinical contexts to aid in determining whether assessment and intervention should be conducted in one or more languages.

Using a preferential looking paradigm, the current study examined the role that grammatical gender plays when preschool French-speaking toddlers process role nouns in the masculine form (e.g., "chanteurs"[subscript "masculine"] "singers"). While being auditorily prompted with "Look at the 'a role noun'!", two- and three-year-olds were presented with two pictures of two characters ("boy- boy" versus "girl-boy") with attributes of the given role noun (e.g., singers with microphone and music notes). All role nouns were presented in the masculine plural form, which, despite its use to refer to mixed-gender groups, can be interpreted as referring to men. We expected toddlers to be biased by stereotypes, yet when non-stereotypical role nouns were presented, toddlers were not infuenced by grammatical gender, but by their own sex (even more so for three-year-old toddlers). The absence of sensitivity to grammatical cues for either age group is discussed in terms of the developmental awareness of grammatical gender.

The present study examined early vocabulary development in fifty-nine French monolingual and fifty French-English bilingual infants (1;4-1;6). Vocabulary comprehension was assessed using both parental report (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory; CDI) and the Computerized Comprehension Task (CCT). When assessing receptive vocabulary development using parental report, the bilinguals knew more words in their L1 versus their L2. However, young bilinguals were as accurate in L1 as they were in L2 on the CCT, and exhibited no difference in speed of word comprehension across languages. The proportion of translation equivalents in comprehension varied widely within this sample of young bilinguals and was linked to both measures of vocabulary size but not to speed of word retrieval or exposure to L2. Interestingly, the monolinguals outperformed the bilinguals with respect to accuracy but not reaction time in their L1 and L2. These results highlight the importance of using multiple measures to assess early vocabulary development.

The present study examined the links between haptic word processing speed, vocabulary, and inhibitory control among bilingual children. Three main hypotheses were tested: faster haptic processing speed, measured by the Computerized Comprehension Task at age 1;11, would be associated with larger concurrent vocabulary and greater longitudinal vocabulary growth. Second, early vocabulary size would be associated with greater vocabulary growth at 3;0 and 5;0. Finally, faster haptic processing speed would be associated with greater concurrent inhibitory control, as measured by the Shape Stroop Task. The results revealed that haptic processing speed was associated with concurrent vocabulary, but not predictive of later language skills. Also, early decontextualized vocabulary was predictive of vocabulary at 3;0. Finally, haptic processing speed measured in the non-dominant language was associated with inhibitory control. These results provide insight on the mechanisms of lexical retrieval in young bilinguals and expand previous research on haptic word processing and vocabulary development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature reports some contradictory results on the degree of phonological specificity of infants' early lexical representations in the Romance language, French, and Germanic languages. It is not clear whether these discrepancies are because of differences in method, in language characteristics, or in participants' age. In this study, we examined whether 12- and 17-month-old French-speaking infants are able to distinguish well-pronounced from mispronounced words (one or two features of their initial consonant). To this end, 46 infants participated in a preferential looking experiment in which they were presented with pairs of pictures together with a spoken word well pronounced or mispronounced. The results show that both 12- and 17-month-old infants look longer at the pictures corresponding to well-pronounced words than to mispronounced words, but show no difference between the two mispronunciation types. These results suggest that, as early as 12 months, French-speaking infants, like those exposed to Germanic languages, already possess detailed phonological representations of familiar words. (Contains 4 footnotes, 2 figures and 1 table.)

This study examines syntactic and morphological aspects of the production and comprehension of pronouns by 99 typically developing French-speaking children aged 3 years, 5 months to 6 years, 5 months. A fine structural analysis of subject, object, and reflexive clitics suggests that whereas the object clitic chain crosses the subject chain, the reflexive clitic chain is nested within it. We argue that this structural difference introduces differences in processing complexity, chain crossing being more complex than nesting. In support of this analysis, both production and comprehension experiments show that children have more difficulty with object than with reflexive clitics (with more omissions in production and more erroneous judgments in sentences involving Principle B in comprehension). Concerning the morphological aspect, French subject and object pronouns agree in gender with their referent. We report serious difficulties with pronoun gender both in production and comprehension in children around the age of 4 (with nearly 30% errors in production and chance level judgments in comprehension), which tend to disappear by age 6. The distribution of errors further suggests that the masculine gender is processed as the default value. These findings provide further insights into the relationship between comprehension and production in the acquisition process.

Two experiments used a digitizing tablet to analyse the temporal, spatial, and kinematic characteristics of handwritten production of arabic numbers. They addressed a specific issue of the numerical domain: Does the lexical and syntactic structure of verbal numerals influence the production of arabic numerals (Experiments 1 and 2), even after enforced semantic processing in a comparison task (Experiment 2)? Subjects had to write multi-digit arabic numerals (e.g., 1200) presented in two different verbal structures: a multiplicative one (e.g., teen-hundred, douze cents (twelve hundred)) or an additive one (e.g., thousand-unit-hundred, mille deux cents (one thousand two hundred)). Results show differences in the inter-digit jumps that reflect the influence of the structure of verbal numerals, even after the semantic task. This finding is discussed with regard to different models of number transcoding (McCloskey, Caramazza, & Basili, 1985; Power & Dal Martello, 1990, 1997).

The current study explored bilingual parent and child code-switching patterns over time. Concurrent and predictive models of code-switching behaviour on executive function outcomes were also examined in a sample of 29 French–English bilinguals at 36 (Wave 1) and 61 (Wave 2) months of age. We investigated whether code-switching typology in a single-language context predicted executive function performance at each wave independently, and whether growth in code-switching frequency across waves predicted executive function performance at Wave 2. At both waves, parents and children participated in two free play sessions (in English and French), followed by a battery of executive function tasks administered in the dominant language. Results indicate more frequent code-switching from the non-dominant to the dominant language in children, and that children code-switch to fill lexical gaps. Results also suggest that less frequent code-switching in a single-language context is associated with better inhibitory control skills during the preschool period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relation between lexical and phonological variables in 40 French-speaking children, aged 2;5. Specifically, it examines the influence of phonetic complexity, phonological production, phonological memory and neighbourhood density (ND) on vocabulary size. Children were divided into four groups on the basis of their scores on the French version of the Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI): late1 (< 10%ile), late2 (15-25%ile), middle (40-60%ile) and precocious (> 90%ile). The children’s lexicons were coded in terms of phonetic complexity and ND (one-and two-syllable words), and their production capacities were determined from measuring percent consonants correct (PCC) and the number of syllable-initial (CSI) and -final (CSF) consonants in their phonetic inventories. The children also took part in a non-word repetition (NWR) task. Results indicated significant group differences in all four sets of variables. Children with larger vocabularies selected words with greater phonetic complexity and with lower ND values. They had superior PCC, CSI and NWR scores compared to children with smaller vocabularies. Linear regression analyses indicated that 76% of variance in vocabulary size could be accounted for by ND in combination with phonetic complexity and CSI. Our findings are consistent with previous studies which show that ND plays an important role in accounting for variance in vocabulary size. They also indicate that phonetic complexity and phonological production influence lexical acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the impact of translation equivalents (TE) on lexical processing in a sample of 36 French–English bilingual toddlers at 22-months of age. Children were administered the Computerized Comprehension Task (CCT; Friend & Keplinger, 2003) in each language and parents completed the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) in both English and French across two visits (one language per visit). Correct trials on the CCT were identified and classified into one of two categories: words with a known TE as reported on the CDI and words without a known TE on the CDI. Reaction times for correct trials were averaged and compared for each of the bilinguals’ languages. Interestingly, children were faster to retrieve words with a known TE on the CDI than words with no known TE. The present findings suggest that the translation facilitation effects reported in adult bilinguals are also present in very young bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established that vocabulary size is related to efficiency in auditory processing, such that children with larger vocabularies recognize words faster than children with smaller vocabularies. The present study evaluates whether this relation is specific to the language being assessed, or related to general language or cognitive processes. Speed of word processing was measured longitudinally in Spanish- and English-learning monolinguals and bilinguals at 16 and 22 months of age. Speed of processing in bilinguals was similar to monolinguals, suggesting that the number of languages to which children are exposed does not influence word recognition. Further, cross-language associations in bilinguals suggest that the dominant language supports processing in the non-dominant language. These cross-language associations are consistent with general language and cognitive efficiency accounts in which the relation between word processing and knowledge relies on experience within a language as well as on general and cognitive properties of language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers appearing in this double special issue were presented at the Latsis Colloque 'Early Language Development and Disorders' (ELDD). This conference which took place from January 26 28, 2006, [...]

Reading predictors evolve through age: phonological awareness is the best predictor of reading abilities at the beginning of reading acquisition while Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) becomes the best reading predictor in more experienced readers (around 9-10 years old). Those developmental changes in the relationship between RAN and reading have so far been explained in term of participants' age. However, it should be noted that in the previous experiments age always co-vary with participants reading level. It is thus not clear whether RAN-reading relationship is developmental in nature or related to the reading system itself. This study investigates whether the behavioral changes in the relationship between RAN and reading and their electrophysiological correlates are related to the chronological age or to the reading level of the participants. Thirty two French-speaking children aged 7-10 years took part to the experiment: they were divided into groups contrasted on age but with similar reading levels and the other way round. Participants performed two reading tasks and four RAN tasks. EEG/ERP was recorded during discrete letter and picture RAN. Behavioral results revealed that alphanumeric RAN is more sensitive to age variations than reading level differences. The inverse profile was revealed for picture RAN, which discriminate poor and good readers among typically developed children within the same age-group. ERPs of both letter and picture RAN differed across age groups whereas only for the picture RAN ERPs differed across reading levels. Taken together, these results suggest that picture RAN is a particularly good indicator of reading level variance independently of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longitudinal study of lexical development in very young French–English bilinguals is reported. The Computerized Comprehension Test (CCT) was used to directly assess receptive vocabulary and processing efficiency, and parental report (CDI) was used to measure expressive vocabulary in monolingual and bilingual infants at 16 months, and six months later, at 22 months. All infants increased their comprehension and production of words over the six-month period, and bilingual infants acquired approximately as many new words in each of their languages as the monolinguals did. Speed of online word processing was also equivalent in both groups at each wave of data collection, and increased significantly across waves. Importantly, significant relations emerged between language exposure, vocabulary size, and processing speed, with proportion of language exposure predicting vocabulary size at each time point. This study extends previous findings by utilizing a direct measure of receptive vocabulary development and online word processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated motor and cognitive procedural learning in typically developing children aged 8–12 years with a serial reaction time (SRT) task and a probabilistic classification learning (PCL) task. The aims were to replicate and extend the results of previous SRT studies, to investigate PCL in school-aged children, to explore the contribution of declarative knowledge to SRT and PCL performance, to explore the strategies used by children in the PCL task via a mathematical model, and to see whether performances obtained in motor and cognitive tasks correlated. The results showed similar learning effects in the three age groups in the SRT and in the first half of the PCL tasks. Participants did not develop explicit knowledge in the SRT task whereas declarative knowledge of the cue–outcome associations correlated with the performances in the second half of the PCL task, suggesting a participation of explicit knowledge after some time of exposure in PCL. An increasing proportion of the optimal strategy use with increasing age was observed in the PCL task. Finally, no correlation appeared between cognitive and motor performance. In conclusion, we extended the hypothesis of age invariance from motor to cognitive procedural learning, which had not been done previously. The ability to adopt more efficient learning strategies with age may rely on the maturation of the fronto-striatal loops. The lack of correlation between performance in the SRT task and the first part of the PCL task suggests dissociable developmental trajectories within the procedural memory system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although the extant literature provides robust evidence of the influence of language exposure and socioeconomic status (SES) on language acquisition, it is unknown how sensitive the early receptive vocabulary system is to these factors. The current study investigates effects of minimal second language exposure and SES on the comprehension vocabulary of 16-month-old children in the language in which they receive the greatest exposure. Study 1 revealed minimal second language exposure and SES exert significant and independent effects on a direct measure of vocabulary comprehension in English-dominant and English monolingual children (N = 72). In Study 2, we replicated the effect of minimal second language exposure in Spanish-dominant and Spanish monolingual children (N = 86), however no effect of SES on vocabulary was obtained. Our results emphasize the sensitivity of the language system to minimal changes in the environment in early development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The goal of the current study is to assess the temporal dynamics of vision and action to evaluate the underlying word representations that guide infants' responses. Sixteen-month-old infants participated in a two-alternative forced-choice word-picture matching task. We conducted a moment-by-moment analysis of looking and reaching behaviors as they occurred in tandem to assess the speed with which a prompted word was processed (visual reaction time) as a function of the type of haptic response: Target, Distractor, or No Touch. Visual reaction times (visual RTs) were significantly slower during No Touches compared to Distractor and Target Touches, which were statistically indistinguishable. The finding that visual RTs were significantly faster during Distractor Touches compared to No Touches suggests that incorrect and absent haptic responses appear to index distinct knowledge states: incorrect responses are associated with partial knowledge whereas absent responses appear to reflect a true failure to map lexical items to their target referents. Further, we found that those children who were faster at processing words were also those children who exhibited better haptic performance. This research provides a methodological clarification on knowledge measured by the visual and haptic modalities and new evidence for a continuum of word knowledge in the second year of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A male presenting with benign partial epilepsy with rolandic spikes from the age of 7 years was evaluated at age 11 years for worsening of his epilepsy associated with a specific regression of graphomotor skills. A longitudinal study over nearly 2 years showed an improvement in handwriting to an almost normal level under modified antiepileptic therapy. A detailed analysis with a computer-monitored graphics table showed at first a rapid improvement of skills followed by protracted slower progress. We argue that the initial rapid recovery of skills was directly linked to the improvement of his epilepsy. The slower late acquisition of motor programmes that had never been fully established was due to long-standing interference by his epilepsy. The specificity of the deficit within the graphomotor system and its possible neurobiological basis are also discussed. The analytical method and approach used in a single patient might provide an example for other patients in whom epilepsy can interfere in the acquisition, progress, and maintenance of new skills and can be responsible for selective deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]