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Purpose: We propose that implicit learning, including syntactic priming, has therapeutic promise to enhance the syntactic knowledge of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Method: We review the chunk-based learning framework of syntactic learning, the developmental evidence in support of it, and the developmental literature on syntactic priming as an instance of chunk-based statistical learning. We use this framework to help understand the nature of the syntactic learning difficulties of children with DLD. We then briefly review the available explicit treatments for syntactic deficits and end by proposing an implicit training activity that integrates syntactic priming with the principles of statistical learning. Results: Statistically induced chunk-based learning is a powerful driver of syntactic learning, and syntactic priming is a form of this learning. Repeated priming episodes during everyday language interactions lead children to create abstract and global syntactic representations in long-term memory. We offer some thoughts on an implicit language intervention approach with syntactic priming at its center. Conclusions: Children's learning of syntactic structures is influenced by repeated syntactic priming experiences. Including a syntactic priming activity in our language intervention toolbox has the promise to enhance children's syntactic knowledge and sentence comprehension and production abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demonstrating the differential effectiveness of instructional approaches for learners is difficult because learners differ on multiple dimensions. The present study tests a person-centered approach to investigating differential effectiveness, in this case of reading instruction. In N = 517 German third-grade students, latent profile analysis identified four subgroups that differed across multiple characteristics consistent with the simple view of reading: poor decoders, poor comprehenders, poor readers, and good readers. Over a school year, different instructional foci showed differential effectiveness for students in these different profiles. An instructional focus on vocabulary primarily benefited good readers at the expense of poor decoders and poor comprehenders, while a focus on advanced reading abilities benefitted poor comprehenders at the expense of poor decoders and good readers. These findings are in contrast to those obtained by multiple regression, which, focusing on only one learner characteristic at a time, would have suggested different and potentially misleading implications for instruction. This study provides initial evidence for the advantages of a person-centered approach to examining differential effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the strongest predictors of student reading outcomes, and these disparities have persisted for decades. Relatedly, two underlying skills that are required for successful reading—oral language and executive function (EF)—are also the two neurocognitive domains most affected by SES. In this review, we summarize current knowledge on how SES influences the neurobiology of language, EF, and their intersection, including the proximal factors that drive these relationships. We then consider the burgeoning evidence that SES systematically moderates certain brain–behavior relationships for language and EF, underscoring the importance of considering context in investigations of the neurobiological underpinnings of reading development. Finally, we discuss how disparities in reading may be conceptualized as neurobiological adaptations to adversity rather than deficit models. We conclude that by harnessing children's stress‐adapted relative strengths to support reading development, we may address opportunity gaps both ethically and efficaciously. Children growing up in lower socioeconomic environments tend to perform worse on common measures of reading, language, and executive function. We review the current evidence of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these disparities and contributing experiential factors. We argue that it is critical to consider these differences as biological adaptations to early adverse contexts. This reconceptualization may help reform education to reduce disparities in academic achievement while also highlighting children's contextually relevant strengths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between decontextualized talk (DT; i.e., talk extending beyond immediate context) and child language outcomes is well‐attested but not well‐understood. This study tested the hypothesis that DT is more linguistically complex than contextualized talk (CT). Thirty‐eight Norwegian children (Mage = 5.5 years; 25 girls; 30 Norwegian‐speaking monolinguals and eight multilinguals) and their teachers were videotaped during picture book reading, story card conversations and toy play (collected 2010–2011 and 2017). Results show that DT was more complex than CT among children and teachers. Both types of talk were more complex during book reading and story conversations than during play. The conversational context should be accounted for when theorizing about the role of DT in language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Speech perception is a probabilistic process, integrating bottom-up and top-down sources of information, and the frequency and phonological neighborhood of a word can predict how well it is perceived. In addition to asking how intelligible speakers are, it is important to ask how intelligible individual words are. We examined whether lexical features of words influenced intelligibility in young children. In particular, we applied the neighborhood activation model, which posits that a word's frequency and the overall frequency of a word's phonological competitors jointly affect the intelligibility of a word. Method: We measured the intelligibility of 165 children between 30 and 47 months in age on 38 different single words. We performed an item response analysis using generalized mixed-effects logistic regression, adding word-level characteristics (target frequency, neighborhood competition, motor complexity, and phonotactic probability) as predictors of intelligibility. Results: There was considerable variation among the words and the children, but between-word variability was larger in magnitude than between-child variability. There was a clear positive effect of target word frequency and a negative effect of neighborhood competition. We did not find a clear negative effect of motor complexity, and phonotactic probability did not have any effect on intelligibility. Conclusion: Word frequency and neighborhood competition both had an effect on intelligibility in young children's speech, so listener expectations are an important factor in the selection of items for children's intelligibility assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of its history, categorical perception was treated as a foundational theory of speech perception, which suggested that quasi-discrete categorization was a goal of speech perception. This had a profound impact on bilingualism research which adopted similar tasks to use as measures of nativeness or native-like processing, implicitly assuming that any deviation from discreteness was a deficit. This is particularly problematic for listeners like heritage speakers whose language proficiency, both in their heritage language and their majority language, is questioned. However, we now know that in the monolingual listener, speech perception is gradient and listeners use this gradiency to adjust subphonetic details, recover from ambiguity, and aid learning and adaptation. This calls for new theoretical and methodological approaches to bilingualism. We present the Visual Analogue Scaling task which avoids the discrete and binary assumptions of categorical perception and can capture gradiency more precisely than other measures. Our goal is to provide bilingualism researchers new conceptual and empirical tools that can help examine speech categorization in different bilingual communities without the necessity of forcing their speech categorization into discrete units and without assuming a deficit model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's early life experiences of language and parenting are thought to have pervasive, long‐term influence on their cognitive and behavioural development. However, studies are scarce that collected naturalistic observations to broadly assess children's early life experiences and test their associations with developmental outcomes in middle childhood. Here, we used digital audio‐recorders to collect three full days of naturalistic observations from 107 British families with children (46 boys) aged 2–4 years, of whom 89 participated in a follow‐up assessment four years later when the children were 5–8 years old. We found that children's early life experiences of language and parenting were not significantly associated with their later language ability, academic performance and behavioural outcomes. We explore differences in methodology, sample characteristics and the role of developmental periods as possible explanations for the discrepancy in findings between the current and previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to grasp relevant patterns from a continuous stream of environmental information is called statistical learning. Although the representations that emerge during visual statistical learning (VSL) are well characterized, little is known about how they are formed. We developed a sensitive behavioral design to characterize the VSL trajectory during ongoing task performance. In sequential categorization tasks, we assessed two previously identified VSL markers: priming of the second predictable image in a pair manifested by a reduced reaction time (RT) and greater accuracy, and the anticipatory effect on the first image revealed by a longer RT. First, in Experiment 1A, we used an adapted paradigm and replicated these VSL markers; however, they appeared to be confounded by motor learning. Next, in Experiment 1B, we confirmed the confounding influence of motor learning. To assess VSL without motor learning, in Experiment 2 we (1) simplified the categorization task, (2) raised the number of subjects and image repetitions, and (3) increased the number of single unpaired images. Using linear mixed-effect modeling and estimated marginal means of linear trends, we found that the RT curves differed significantly between predictable paired and control single images. Further, the VSL curve fitted a logarithmic model, suggesting a rapid learning process. These results suggest that our paradigm in Experiment 2 seems to be a viable online tool to monitor the behavioral correlates of unsupervised implicit VSL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An individual participant data meta-analysis was conducted to test pre-registered hypotheses about how the configuration of attachment relationships to mothers and fathers predicts children's language competence. Data from seven studies (published between 1985 and 2014) including 719 children (M age : 19.84 months; 51% female; 87% White) were included in the linear mixed effects analyses. Mean language competence scores exceeded the population average across children with different attachment configurations. Children with two secure attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one or no secure attachment relationships (d = .26). Children with two organized attachment relationships had higher language competence scores compared to those with one organized attachment relationship (d = .23), and this difference was observed in older versus younger children in exploratory analyses. Mother-child and father-child attachment quality did not differentially predict language competence, supporting the comparable importance of attachment to both parents in predicting developmental outcomes., (© 2023 The Authors. Child Development © 2023 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is related to disparities in the development of both language and executive functioning (EF) skills. Emerging evidence suggests that language development may precede and provide necessary scaffolding for EF development in early childhood. The present preregistered study investigates how these skills co‐develop longitudinally in early childhood and whether language development explains the relationship between SES and EF development. A socioeconomically diverse sample of 305 children completed repeated assessments of language (sentence comprehension) and EF (cognitive flexibility, behavioral inhibition, and cognitive inhibition) at four waves spaced 9 months apart from ages 3 to 5 years. Bivariate latent curve models with structured residuals were estimated to disaggregate between‐person and within‐person components of stability and change. Results revealed bidirectional relationships between language and EF across all waves. However, at 3 years, language comprehension more strongly predicted EF than the reverse; yet by 5 years, the bidirectional effects across domains did not significantly differ. Children from higher‐SES backgrounds exhibited higher initial language and EF skills than children from lower‐SES families, though SES was not associated with either rate of growth. Finally, early language‐mediated the association between SES and early EF skills, and this model outperformed a reverse direction mediation. Together, results suggest that EF development is driven by early language development, and that SES disparities in EF are explained, at least in part, by early differences in language comprehension. These findings have implications for early interventions to support children's language skills as a potential pathway to improving early EF development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to examine word learning in preschool children from families who differed in socioeconomic status (SES). Preschool children (N = 58) were assigned to SES groups based on maternal education and completed a dynamic assessment of explicit word learning 2 times. At the first administration, no SES-group differences were observed. At the second administration, children from high-SES homes had significantly higher scores than children from low-SES homes on the production probe with a large effect size (d = 1.01). Descriptively, children in both groups responded more frequently at more difficult prompting levels at the second session, but children in the low-SES group had more incorrect responses than children in the high-SES group. Additional research using sensitive measures of word-learning proficiency is necessary to better understand the way in which SES and early language experiences are related to word learning in young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study is to explore the effect of early neuro-psychomotor therapy to improve theory of mind skills and emotion recognition in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. A pilot study was set up, consisting of in-group training activities based on the neuro-psychomotor approach. Children were evaluated using Neuropsychological Assessment for Child (Nepsy-II), Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), and Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ). For data analysis, one-sample Wilcoxon signed rank test was used with a significance of p < 0.05. Two children with a developmental language disorder and four children with autism spectrum disorders participated in a 3-month training program. Our findings revealed significant improvement in emotion recognition, as measured with Nepsy-II (p = 0.04), while no statistical improvement was found for theory of mind. Despite the limited sample, early neuro-psychomotor therapy improves emotion recognition skills in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. However, considering the explorative nature of the study, findings should be interpreted with caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental Dyslexia (DD) is a condition in which reading accuracy and/or fluency falls substantially below what is expected based on the individuals age, general level of cognitive ability, and educational opportunities. The procedural circuit deficit hypothesis (PDH) proposes that DD may be largely explained in terms of alterations of the cortico‐basal ganglia procedural memory system (in particular of the striatum) whereas the (hippocampus‐dependent) declarative memory system is intact, and may serve a compensatory role in the condition. The present study was designed to test this hypothesis. Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, we examined the functional and structural brain correlates of sequence‐specific procedural learning (SL) on the serial reaction time task, in 17 children with DD and 18 typically developing (TD) children. The study was performed over 2 days with a 24‐h interval between sessions. In line with the PDH, the DD group showed less activation of the striatum during the processing of sequential statistical regularities. These alterations predicted the amount of SL at day 2, which in turn explained variance in children's reading fluency. Additionally, reduced hippocampal activation predicted larger SL gains between day 1 and day 2 in the TD group, but not in the DD group. At the structural level, caudate nucleus volume predicted the amount of acquired SL at day 2 in the TD group, but not in the DD group. The findings encourage further research into factors that promote learning in children with DD, including through compensatory mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we examine reading outcomes and socioeconomic status (SES) using a developmental cognitive and educational neuroscience perspective. Our focus is on reading achievement and intervention outcomes for students from lower SES backgrounds who struggle with reading. Socioeconomic disadvantage is a specific type of vulnerability students experience, which is often narrowly defined based on parental income, education level, and/or occupational prestige. However, implications of socioeconomic status extend broadly to a suite of areas relevant for reading outcomes including a student's access to resources, experiences, language exposure, academic outcomes, and psychological correlates. Underlying this constellation of factors are brain systems supporting the processing of oral and written language as well as stress‐related factors. We review the implications of SES and reading achievement, and their intersectionality, for the science and practice of reading instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first 2 years of life, an infant's vocabulary grows at an impressive rate. In the current study, we investigated the impact of three challenges that infants need to overcome to learn new words and expand the size of their vocabulary. We used longitudinal eye‐tracking data (n = 118) to assess sequence learning, associative learning, and probability processing abilities at ages 6, 10, and 18 months. Infants' ability to efficiently solve these tasks was used to predict vocabulary size at age 18 months. We demonstrate that the ability to make audio–visual associations and to predict sequences of visual events predicts vocabulary size in toddlers (accounting for 20% of the variance). Our results indicate that statistical learning in some, but not all, domains have a role in vocabulary development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visually situated spoken words activate phonological, visual, and semantic representations guiding overt attention during visual exploration. We compared the activation of these representations in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across four eye-tracking experiments, with a particular focus on visual (shape) representations. Two types of trials were presented in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants heard a word while seeing (1) an object visually associated with the spoken word (i.e., shape competitor) together with a phonologically related object (i.e., cohort competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 2 and 3, participants heard a word while seeing (1) a shape competitor with an object semantically related to the spoken word (i.e., semantic competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 4, children heard a word while seeing a semantic competitor with (1) the visual referent of the spoken or (2) with an unrelated object. The visual context was previewed for three seconds before the spoken word, except for Experiment 2, where it appeared at the onset of the spoken word (i.e., no preview). The results showed that when a preview was provided both groups were equally attracted by cohort and semantic competitors and preferred the shape competitors over the unrelated objects. However, shape preference disappeared in the DLD group when no preview was provided and when the shape competitor was presented with a semantic competitor. Our results indicate that children with DLD have a less efficient retrieval of shape representation during word recognition compared to typically developing children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary reflects on the discussions of Whitall et al.'s paper "Motor Development Research: II. The First Two Decades of the 21st Century Shaping Our Future." Comments focus on (a) the emergence and importance of the Developmental Systems approach to motor development, (b) the perceived ambiguity between Dynamic and Developmental Systems approaches, and (c) a case for the evolution of Developmental Motor Neuroscience from the field of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Procedural memory functioning in developmental language disorder (DLD) has largely been investigated by examining implicit sequence learning by the manual motor system. This study examined whether poor sequence learning in DLD is present in the oculomotor domain. Twenty children with DLD and 20 age‐matched typically developing (TD) children were presented with a serial reaction time (SRT) task. On the task, a visual stimulus repeatedly appears in different positions on a computer display which prompts a manual response. The children were unaware that on the first three blocks and final block of trials, the visual stimulus followed a sequence. On the fourth block, the stimulus appeared in random positions. Manual reaction times (RT) and saccadic amplitudes were recorded, which assessed sequence learning in the manual and oculomotor domains, respectively. Manual RT were sensitive to sequence learning for the TD group, but not the DLD group. For the TD group, manual RT increased when the random block was presented. This was not the case for the DLD group. In the oculomotor domain, sequence learning was present in both groups. Specifically, sequence learning was found to modulate saccadic amplitudes resulting in both DLD and TD children being able to anticipate the location of the visual stimulus. Overall, the study indicates that not all aspects of the procedural memory system are equally impaired in DLD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of disabled survivors of prematurity has increased dramatically in the past 3 decades. These survivors, especially, very preterm infants (VPIs), born ≤ 32 weeks gestational age, are at high risk for neurodevelopmental impairments. Early and clinically effective personalized prediction of outcomes, which forms the basis for early treatment decisions, is urgently needed during the peak neuroplasticity window—the first couple of years after birth—for at-risk infants, when intervention is likely to be most effective. Advances in MRI enable the noninvasive visualization of infants' brains through acquired multimodal images, which are more informative than unimodal MRI data by providing complementary/supplementary depicting of brain tissue characteristics and pathology. Thus, analyzing quantitative multimodal MRI features affords unique opportunities to study early postnatal brain development and neurodevelopmental outcome prediction in VPIs. In this study, we investigated the predictive power of multimodal MRI data, including T2-weighted anatomical MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, resting-state functional MRI, and clinical data for the prediction of neurodevelopmental deficits. We hypothesize that integrating multimodal MRI and clinical data improves the prediction over using each individual data modality. Employing the aforementioned multimodal data, we proposed novel end-to-end deep multimodal models to predict neurodevelopmental (i.e., cognitive, language, and motor) deficits independently at 2 years corrected age. We found that the proposed models can predict cognitive, language, and motor deficits at 2 years corrected age with an accuracy of 88.4, 87.2, and 86.7%, respectively, significantly better than using individual data modalities. This current study can be considered as proof-of-concept. A larger study with external validation is important to validate our approach to further assess its clinical utility and overall generalizability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reconfigurable hearing aid is a generic type that can be used for various hearing disabilities without modifying the device hardware. This requires several trials to identify the best matching with the impaired person's audiogram. The objective of this paper is to propose a novel reconfigurable hearing aid of low complexity with auto-adapting capability which makes it suitable for different types of hearing disabilities ranging from mild to severe intensities. The audio spectrum is divided into three regions and for each region, four different schemes are proposed. An automatic selection of the optimum scheme is proposed for all the regions based on hearing thresholds. Octave and fractional interpolation techniques are performed on a Parks-McClellan based prototype filter to generate the various sub-bands in the reconfigurable filter bank structure. The proposed structure uses only 18 coefficient multipliers which save up to 92% of multipliers when compared to other designs. The delay and matching errors are within the globally accepted limits. The hardware implementation executed on Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA development board has reaffirmed that the structure is compact and power-efficient. The proposed auto-reconfigurable structure can be used for various types of hearing impairments and can avoid the manual interventions for the selection of schemes in audiogram matching. This in turn minimizes the time to establish the best match with the audiogram. Since the proposed structure has minimal complexity, cost-effective implementation of the device is also possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The heritability of language and literacy skills increases from early‐childhood to adolescence. The underlying mechanisms are little understood and may involve (a) the amplification of genetic influences contributing to early language abilities, and/or (b) the emergence of novel genetic factors (innovation). Here, we investigate the developmental origins of genetic factors influencing mid‐childhood/early‐adolescent language and literacy. We evaluate evidence for the amplification of early‐childhood genetic factors for vocabulary, in addition to genetic innovation processes. Methods: Expressive and receptive vocabulary scores at 38 months, thirteen language‐ and literacy‐related abilities and nonverbal cognition (7–13 years) were assessed in unrelated children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC, Nindividuals ≤ 6,092). We investigated the multivariate genetic architecture underlying early‐childhood expressive and receptive vocabulary, and each of 14 mid‐childhood/early‐adolescent language, literacy or cognitive skills with trivariate structural equation (Cholesky) models as captured by genome‐wide genetic relationship matrices. The individual path coefficients of the resulting structural models were finally meta‐analysed to evaluate evidence for overarching patterns. Results: We observed little support for the emergence of novel genetic sources for language, literacy or cognitive abilities during mid‐childhood or early adolescence. Instead, genetic factors of early‐childhood vocabulary, especially those unique to receptive skills, were amplified and represented the majority of genetic variance underlying many of these later complex skills (≤99%). The most predictive early genetic factor accounted for 29.4%(SE = 12.9%) to 45.1%(SE = 7.6%) of the phenotypic variation in verbal intelligence and literacy skills, but also for 25.7%(SE = 6.4%) in performance intelligence, while explaining only a fraction of the phenotypic variation in receptive vocabulary (3.9%(SE = 1.8%)). Conclusions: Genetic factors contributing to many complex skills during mid‐childhood and early adolescence, including literacy, verbal cognition and nonverbal cognition, originate developmentally in early‐childhood and are captured by receptive vocabulary. This suggests developmental genetic stability and overarching aetiological mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feeling thinking talking (FTT) intervention was designed because early childhood seems to be a prime time for fostering young children's language skills. This intervention involved teaching teachers from N = 28 kindergarten groups in N = 13 German kindergartens language support strategies (LSS) to be used in everyday conversations with the children in their care. The FTT intervention was evaluated in a business-as-usual control group design with N = 281 children (mean age = 49.82 months, range = 33-66 months at T1, mixed SES) who were individually tested using objective tests on grammar, vocabulary and working memory before (T1) and after the FTT intervention (T2), and in a follow-up about one year after T1 (T3). After propensity matching was applied, multilevel models demonstrated that the children taught by the intervention group teachers made faster progress in their understanding of sentences, their application of morphological rules, and their memory for sentences when numerous covariates (child age, gender, behavioral self-regulation, multilingual upbringing, and family SES) were controlled. Results suggest that complex language processing abilities in young children can be promoted by a teacher-led intervention in early childhood education. Improved language skills will further all children's academic and social success in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Children with Language Disorders (LDs) can exhibit increased levels of social withdrawal, aggression and problems managing social conflicts. The reasons underlying this pattern of social interaction profiles remain unclear. This qualitative study aimed to document the nature of social interactions between children with LDs and their peers, and to evaluate explanations for their social behaviour, as understood by parents and practitioners. Methods: This study focused on children with LDs who spend school hours with other children with LDs. Three parent focus groups (n = 8) and three practitioner focus groups (n = 10) were conducted with parents of children aged 4–12 attending specialist language schools and practitioners working at these schools. This was a mixed clinical sample. All children of participating parents had LD as their primary area of need, which was the reason they required specialist schooling. Focus groups were conducted across two specialist schools in the UK between March and June 2018. Results: An inductive reflective thematic analysis of the data identified three themes; social knowledge, coping strategies, and emotional competence. Parents and school staff reported that children with LDs experience difficulties managing peer interactions due to a combination of challenges including difficulties with understanding and regulating emotions, and difficulties understanding social situations. Some of the children with LDs were described as having developed strategies to cope with their challenges, for example imposing structure on their social interactions to manage uncertainty, which has implications for their social interactions with peers. Conclusions: Children with LDs have difficulties understanding emotions, difficulties understanding their peer's intentions and difficulties resolving conflict situations independently according to their parents and practitioners working with these children. Participants proposed a novel explanation that social withdrawal may be used adaptively by children with LDs to process information. This study demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between Language Disorders and peer interaction profiles. Implications: Suggestions are offered regarding future research directions, such as investigating the specific contribution language skills make to children's emotion understanding, to better understand the reasons for peer interaction difficulties in children with Language Disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word learning is critical for the development of reading and language comprehension skills. Although previous studies have indicated that word learning is compromised in children with reading disability (RD) or developmental language disorder (DLD), it is less clear how word learning difficulties manifest in children with comorbid RD and DLD. Furthermore, it is unclear whether word learning deficits in RD or DLD include difficulties with offline consolidation of newly learned words. In the current study, we employed an artificial lexicon learning paradigm with an overnight design to investigate how typically developing (TD) children (N = 25), children with only RD (N = 93), and children with both RD and DLD (N = 34) learned and remembered a set of phonologically similar pseudowords. Results showed that compared to TD children, children with RD exhibited: (i) slower growth in discrimination accuracy for cohort item pairs sharing an onset (e.g. pibu‐pibo), but not for rhyming item pairs (e.g. pibu‐dibu); and (ii) lower discrimination accuracy for both cohort and rhyme item pairs on Day 2, even when accounting for differences in Day 1 learning. Moreover, children with comorbid RD and DLD showed learning and retention deficits that extended to unrelated item pairs that were phonologically dissimilar (e.g. pibu‐tupa), suggestive of broader impairments compared to children with only RD. These findings provide insights into the specific learning deficits underlying RD and DLD and motivate future research concerning how children use phonological similarity to guide the organization of new word knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior evidence supports that the home environment is related to children's development of school readiness skills. However, it remains unclear how construct- and timing-specific aspects of the home environment are related to children's school readiness skills, unique from overall, stable aspects of home quality. Unpacking associations due to specific constructs and timing of the home environment may provide insights on the theoretical processes that connect the home environment to school readiness. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,364), the current study examines how timing (36 and 54 months) and constructs (educational stimulation and socio-emotional responsivity) of the home environment, relative to overall levels across time, relate to children's language skills, math skills, and externalizing behaviors. The overall, stable aspects of the home environment were significantly associated with children's language skills and externalizing problems. Additionally, there were significant paths from the stimulation construct at 54 months to math skills, language skills, and externalizing problems. These findings provide evidence that although the overall home environment is predictive of school readiness, the stimulation construct of the home environment at 54 months has additional concurrent relations to children's school readiness. Implications for the role of the home environment and children's school readiness are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversational fluency is important to form meaningful connections and relationships with the people around us but is understudied in children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH). Communication breakdowns reduce conversational fluency. They occur when a speaker says something that interrupts the flow of conversation requiring a request for clarification or confirmation from their listener to repair the misunderstanding. Young children who are D/HH are at risk of more frequent communication breakdowns and fewer successful repairs than children with typical hearing (The missing link in language development of deaf and hard of hearing children: Pragmatic language development. Seminars in Speech and Language, 33 (04) , 297–309). About 14 children who were D/HH aged 7–12 year and 15 children with typical hearing were matched on chronological age. Comparisons of the number and duration of communication breakdowns, requests for repair, and responses to requests used by children in a 10-min conversation with an adult were completed. Results showed that while children who were D/HH demonstrated some differences, they were more similar to their typically hearing peers in communication breakdowns and repairs than previously reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of P300 research from infancy through adolescence. First, a brief historical overview is provided highlighting seminal studies that began exploration of the P300 component in developmental groups. Overall, these studies suggest that the P300 can be detected in children and appears to reflect similar cognitive processes to those in adults; however, it is significantly delayed in its latency to peak. Second, two striking findings from developmental research are the lack of a clear P300 component in infancy and differential electrophysiological responses to novel, unexpected stimuli in children, adolescents, and adults. Third, contemporary questions are described, which include P300‐like components in infancy, alteration of P300 in atypically developing groups, relations between P300 and behavior, individual differences of P300, and neural substrates of P300 across development. Finally, we conclude with comments regarding the power of a developmental perspective and suggestions for important issues that should be addressed in the next 50 years of P300 research. This article is the first to provide an overview of P300 research from infancy through adolescence. Given the vast amount of research on P300 during typical and atypical development, this article will serve as a useful summary of previous work and guide for future investigations. It includes a brief historical review of seminal studies and a summary of the most striking findings from developmental research. Contemporary questions are described and suggestions for future research are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language processing involves the ability to master supra-regular grammars, that go beyond the level of complexity of regular grammars. This ability has been hypothesized to be a uniquely human capacity. Our study probed baboons' capacity to learn two supra-regular grammars of different levels of complexity: a context-free grammar generating sequences following a mirror structure (e.g., AB | BA, ABC | CBA) and a context-sensitive grammar generating sequences following a repeat structure (e.g., AB | AB, ABC | ABC), the latter requiring greater computational power to be processed. Fourteen baboons were tested in a prediction task, requiring them to track a moving target on a touchscreen. In distinct experiments, sequences of target locations followed one of the above two grammars, with rare violations. Baboons showed slower response times when violations occurred in mirror sequences, but did not react to violations in repeat sequences, suggesting that they learned the context-free (mirror) but not the context-sensitive (repeat) grammar. By contrast, humans tested with the same task learned both grammars. These data suggest a difference in sensitivity in baboons between a context-free and a context-sensitive grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic review aimed to investigate procedural learning across the lifespan in typical and atypical development. Procedural learning is essential for the development of everyday skills, including language and communication skills. Although procedural learning efficiency has been extensively studied, there is no consensus yet on potential procedural learning changes during development and ageing. Currently, three conflicting models regarding this trajectory exist: (1) a model of age invariance; (2a) a model with a peak in young adulthood; and (2b) a model with a plateau in childhood followed by a decline. The aims of this study were (1) to investigate this debate on procedural learning across the lifespan by systematically reviewing evidence for each model from studies using the serial reaction time task; and (2) to review procedural learning in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI), two developmental disorders characterized by deficits in communication skills, in the light of these models. Our findings on typical development strongly support a model of age‐related changes (Model 2a or 2b) and show that mixed findings regarding the developmental trajectory during childhood can be explained by methodological differences across studies. Applying these conclusions to systematic reviews of studies of ASD and SLI makes it clear that there is a strong need for the inclusion of multiple age groups in these clinical studies to model procedural learning in atypical development. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed. Future research should focus on the role of declarative learning in both typical and atypical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Human and non‐human primates share the ability to extract adjacent dependencies and, under certain conditions, non‐adjacent dependencies (i.e., predictive relationships between elements that are separated by one or several intervening elements in a sequence). In this study, we explore the online extraction dynamics of non‐adjacent dependencies in humans and baboons using a serial reaction time task. Participants had to produce three‐target sequences containing deterministic relationships between the first and last target locations. In Experiment 1, participants from the two species could extract these non‐adjacent dependencies, but humans required less exposure than baboons. In Experiment 2, the data show for the first time in a non‐human primate species the successful generalization of sequential non‐adjacent dependencies over novel intervening items. These findings provide new evidence to further constrain current theories about the nature and the evolutionary origins of the learning mechanisms allowing the extraction of non‐adjacent dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When trained to associate Stimulus A to Stimulus B, humans can derive the untrained symmetrical B to A relation while nonhuman animals have much more difficulties. Urcuioli (2008, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 90, 257--282; 2015, Conductal, 3, 4--25) proposed that the apparent difficulty of animals in symmetry testing reflects their double encoding of the information on the stimuli (identity and relation) and their positional (i.e., spatial and temporal/ordinal) characteristics. This comparative study tested the emergence of symmetry in humans and baboons in a task in which the position of the stimuli was manipulated independently of their relation. Humans and baboons initially learned to associate pairs of visual shapes on a touch screen in a specific order. Three pairs of (A-B, C-D, and E-F) stimuli were used in training. After training, the two species were tested with the B-A, F-C, and E-D pairs. The B-A pairs preserved the association initially learned with A-B but reversed the positional information relative to training. The F-C pair neither preserved the association nor the positional information of the training pairs, and positional information were the only cues preserved in the E-D pair. Humans showed a response time advantage for B-A, suggesting symmetry, but also for E-D, suggesting that they also process positional information. In baboons, the advantage was found only for E-D, suggesting that they only process positional information. These results confirm that the processing of stimulus pairs differ between nonhuman animals to humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To investigate the influence of home nurture environment on language development and social emotion in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Methods The 1-3 Years Child Home Nurture Environment Scale, Gesell Developmental Scale, and Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment Scale were used for the evaluation of 125 children with DLD. A total of 130 children with normal language development matched for age and sex were enrolled as control group. Results Compared with the control group, the DLD group had a significantly higher proportion of children in a bad home nurture environment and significantly lower scores of all domains of home nurture environment (P<0.05). In children with DLD, the home nurture environment score was positively correlated with the level of language development (r=0.536, P<0.01) and the score of ability domain in social emotion (r=0.397, P<0.01) and was negatively correlated with the scores of the domains of explicit behavior, covert behavior, and imbalance in social emotion (r=-0.455, -0.438, and -0.390 respectively, P<0.01). Home nurture environment had direct influence on language development in children with DLD and affected their language development via the mediating effect of social emotion. Conclusions Home nurture environment influences language development and social emotion in children with DLD, and social emotion has a partial mediating effect between home nurture environment and language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recent research has begun to explore individual differences in statistical learning, and how those differences may be related to other cognitive abilities, particularly their effects on language learning. In this research, we explored a different type of relationship between language learning and statistical learning: the possibility that learning a new language may also influence statistical learning by changing the regularities to which learners are sensitive. We tested two groups of participants, Mandarin Learners and Naïve Controls, at two time points, 6 months apart. At each time point, participants performed two different statistical learning tasks: an artificial tonal language statistical learning task and a visual statistical learning task. Only the Mandarin‐learning group showed significant improvement on the linguistic task, whereas both groups improved equally on the visual task. These results support the view that there are multiple influences on statistical learning. Domain‐relevant experiences may affect the regularities that learners can discover when presented with novel stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musicians' brains are considered to be a functional model of neuroplasticity due to the structural and functional changes associated with long-term musical training. In this study, we examined implicit extraction of statistical regularities from a continuous stream of stimuli-statistical learning (SL). We investigated whether long-term musical training is associated with better extraction of statistical cues in an auditory SL (aSL) task and a visual SL (vSL) task-both using the embedded triplet paradigm. Online measures, characterized by event related potentials (ERPs), were recorded during a familiarization phase while participants were exposed to a continuous stream of individually presented pure tones in the aSL task or individually presented cartoon figures in the vSL task. Unbeknown to participants, the stream was composed of triplets. Musicians showed advantages when compared to non-musicians in the online measure (early N1 and N400 triplet onset effects) during the aSL task. However, there were no differences between musicians and non-musicians for the vSL task. Results from the current study show that musical training is associated with enhancements in extraction of statistical cues only in the auditory domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a neurocognitive perspective to discuss the contribution of learning letter-speech sound (L-SS) associations and visual specialization in the initial phases of reading in dyslexic children. We review findings from associative learning studies on related cognitive skills important for establishing and consolidating L-SS associations. Then we review brain potential studies, including our own, that yielded two markers associated with reading fluency. Here we show that the marker related to visual specialization (N170) predicts word and pseudoword reading fluency in children who received additional practice in the processing of morphological word structure. Conversely, L-SS integration (indexed by mismatch negativity (MMN)) may only remain important when direct orthography to semantic conversion is not possible, such as in pseudoword reading. In addition, the correlation between these two markers supports the notion that multisensory integration facilitates visual specialization. Finally, we review the role of implicit learning and executive functions in audiovisual learning in dyslexia. Implications for remedial research are discussed and suggestions for future studies are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the assumption that educational software addressing Primary school learners must comprise a set of features to encourage children's creativity and development, the appropriate design of second language hypermedia adaptive games for Primary School children can pose a wide range of challenges both for the language teacher and computer specialist alike. Factors such as the educational context, cognitive abilities, linguistic constraints, conceptual and psychomotor restrictions, and so on, contribute to challenging professionals. This means they must deal with linguistic, content and technology adaptation queries. Based on the results from multi-factorial analysis, this paper aims firstly to demonstrate that the design of hypermedia tasks can be optimally implemented by following previous phases of data collection on preferred items. In this sense, the questioning approach for the creation of a hypermedia system has led us to analyze learning factors in order to deal with the possible linguistic, conceptual and technological demands in the children's learning environment. General results in the preliminary phases of the study show the need to steer the learning path towards an effective adaptation to children's cognitive abilities. These are the findings from which we have devised a set of hypermedia tasks which provide the adaptation of the information presented to the student according to individual objectives, interests and/or knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although speech and language deficits are common in children and strongly associated with poor educational and social outcomes, little attention has been paid to the antecedents. In this study we used the information from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to examine preconception and prenatal environmental risk factors that were related to communication difficulties in children using the Children’s Communication Checklist (CCC). We used an exposome-wide approach to identify environmental factors univariably associated with the CCC. Taking account of the False Discovery rate, we used a P value of 0.000157 to identify 621 of 3855 items tested. These were then subjected to a series of stepwise linear regression analyses, firstly within 10 domains: personal characteristics, health, development, education, socio-economic variables, lifestyle, home and social environments, life events and chemical and other exposures; and then with the predictive variables from each domain. The final model consisted of 19 variables independently associated with the communication scale. These variables suggested 6 possible mechanisms: stressors primarily associated with socio-economic disadvantage although other lifestyle choices such as a social network of family or friends can ameliorate these effects; indicators of future parenting skills primarily associated with aspects of parental personality; aspects of the home environment; poor maternal health with a novel finding concerning maternal hearing loss; and maternal education which was partially mediated by the child’s IQ. Finally, there may be a mechanism via the maternal diet in pregnancy in particular the consumption of fatty or processed foods. This is the subject of ongoing investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a developmental disorder linked to deficient auditory processing. In this magnetoencephalography (MEG) study we investigated a specific prolonged auditory response (N250m) that has been reported predominantly in children and is associated with level of language skills. We recorded auditory responses evoked by sine-wave tones presented alternately to the right and left ear of 9–10-year-old children with SLI (n = 10) and children with typical language development (n = 10). Source analysis was used to isolate the N250m response in the left and right hemisphere. In children with language impairment left-hemisphere N250m responses were enhanced compared to those of controls, while no group difference was found in the right hemisphere. Consequently, language impaired children lacked the typical right-ward asymmetry that was found in control children. Furthermore, left but not right hemisphere N250m responses correlated positively with performance on a phonological processing task in the SLI group exclusively, possibly signifying a compensatory mechanism for delayed maturation of language processing. These results suggest that enhanced left-hemisphere auditory activation reflects a core neurophysiological manifestation of developmental language disorders, and emphasize the relevance of this developmentally specific activation pattern for competent language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: There is a paucity of literature investigating health-related quality of life in neurodevelopmental populations including children with developmental language disorders and children with autism spectrum disorder. Health-related quality of life in these two groups remains poorly understood. Furthermore, studies have typically relied on reports from caregivers and teachers rather than using self-report measures. The aim of the current study is to compare the levels and profiles of self-reported health-related quality of life of children with developmental language disorders and children with autism spectrum disorder. Methods: Participants comprised 114 7-to-13-year-old children with developmental language disorders (n = 63) and children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 51) attending mainstream school. Self-reported health-related quality of life was measured using the KIDSCREEN-52. We also collected standardised measures of receptive language, autism spectrum disorder symptoms, nonverbal IQ and emotional and behavioural problems. Results: Children with developmental language disorders reported health-related quality of life commensurate with normative ranges, except for 2 of the 10 dimensions; the Moods and Emotions domain and the Social acceptance/bullying domain, which were below norms. Children with autism spectrum disorder reported significantly lower health-related quality of life compared to norms and the developmental language disorders group. However, when the effects of non-verbal ability and language – on which the groups were not matched – were covaried most group differences fell to non-significance or disappeared. Child characteristics showed few associations with dimensions of health-related quality of life across groups. Conclusions: Children with autism spectrum disorder may be particularly vulnerable to poorer health-related quality of life and the relevant professionals need to be aware of this. Children with developmental language disorders exhibit a profile of health-related quality of life more in-line with average ranges. However, certain domains warrant monitoring and may benefit from intervention. Many of the between-group differences in self-reported health-related quality of life disappeared when non-verbal and language ability were covaried, though neither of the covariates was systematically related to scores. Other within-child factors such as emotional understanding and competence should be explored in future studies. Implications: Further research into child and contextual factors may elucidate risk or protective factors for health-related quality of life in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: There is a paucity of literature investigating health-related quality of life in neurodevelopmental populations including children with developmental language disorders and children with autism spectrum disorder. Health-related quality of life in these two groups remains poorly understood. Furthermore, studies have typically relied on reports from caregivers and teachers rather than using self-report measures. The aim of the current study is to compare the levels and profiles of self-reported health-related quality of life of children with developmental language disorders and children with autism spectrum disorder. Methods: Participants comprised 114 7-to-13-year-old children with developmental language disorders (n = 63) and children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 51) attending mainstream school. Self-reported health-related quality of life was measured using the KIDSCREEN-52. We also collected standardised measures of receptive language, autism spectrum disorder symptoms, nonverbal IQ and emotional and behavioural problems. Results: Children with developmental language disorders reported health-related quality of life commensurate with normative ranges, except for 2 of the 10 dimensions; the Moods and Emotions domain and the Social acceptance/bullying domain, which were below norms. Children with autism spectrum disorder reported significantly lower health-related quality of life compared to norms and the developmental language disorders group. However, when the effects of non-verbal ability and language – on which the groups were not matched – were covaried most group differences fell to non-significance or disappeared. Child characteristics showed few associations with dimensions of health-related quality of life across groups. Conclusions: Children with autism spectrum disorder may be particularly vulnerable to poorer health-related quality of life and the relevant professionals need to be aware of this. Children with developmental language disorders exhibit a profile of health-related quality of life more in-line with average ranges. However, certain domains warrant monitoring and may benefit from intervention. Many of the between-group differences in self-reported health-related quality of life disappeared when non-verbal and language ability were covaried, though neither of the covariates was systematically related to scores. Other within-child factors such as emotional understanding and competence should be explored in future studies. Implications: Further research into child and contextual factors may elucidate risk or protective factors for health-related quality of life in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, most behavioral studies of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have used standardized assessments as a means to probe etiology and to characterize phenotypes. Over the past decade, however, tasks originally developed to investigate learning processes in typical development have been brought to bear on developmental processes in children with IDD. This brief review will focus on one learning process in particular—statistical learning—and will provide an overview of what has been learned thus far from studies using statistical learning tasks with different groups of children with IDD conditions. While a full picture is not yet available, results to date suggest that studies of learning are both feasible and informative about learning processes that may differ across diagnostic groups, particularly as they relate to language acquisition. More generally, studies focused on learning processes may be highly informative about different developmental trajectories both across groups and within groups of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: There is a long-standing debate about how written words are recognized. Central to this debate is the role of phonology. The objective of this study is to contribute to our collective understanding regarding the role of phonology in written word recognition. Method: A total of 30 monolingual adults were tested using a novel written word version of the visual world paradigm (VWP). We compared activation of phonological anadromes (words that are matched for sounds but not letters, e.g., JAB-BADGE) and orthographic anadromes (words that are matched for letters but not sounds, e.g., LEG-GEL) to determine the relative role of phonology and orthography in familiar single-word reading. Results: We found that activation for phonological anadromes is earlier, more robust, and sustained longer than orthographic anadromes. Conclusions: These results are most consistent with strong phonological theories of single-word reading that posit an early and robust role of phonology. This study has broad implications for larger debates regarding reading instruction., Written word recognition is a fundamental component of reading. To support fluent reading, visual word forms must be identified with remarkable speed and accuracy. Historically, most research on written word [...]