Search

Background and Aims: This study examined how parenting styles influence children's language skills and reading comprehension. Materials and Methods: Six hundred and eighty‐five Chinese‐speaking third graders (Mage = 9.23 years, SD =.66; 341 girls) were randomly recruited from eight primary schools. We measured students' primary caregivers' parenting styles, parental education, family income, migration status, number of children's extracurricular books in the home and family cohesion at Wave 1 (i.e. grade 3). We also assessed students' reading motivation, language skills (i.e. vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness) and reading comprehension at Wave 2 (i.e. grade 4). Results: The structural equation model analysis revealed that parenting styles indirectly affect language and reading comprehension development, with authoritative and authoritarian parenting exerting different influences on the two outcomes. Specifically, authoritative parenting was positively related to the number of children's books, which in turn was directly, or indirectly through reading motivation, associated with children's language skills and reading comprehension. In contrast, authoritarian parenting was negatively related to family cohesion, which was associated with children's reading motivation, and consequently, their language skills and reading comprehension. The multigroup analysis showed that the indirect pathways varied slightly across parental migration statuses. Discussion and Conclusion: These findings enhance the global understanding of the pathways linking parenting styles to children's language skills and reading comprehension, suggesting that educators and researchers should not overly emphasize the direct role of parenting styles in children's academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the field of figurative language processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has demonstrated that autistic individuals experience systematic difficulties in the comprehension of different types of metaphors. However, there is scarce evidence regarding metaphor production skills in ASD. Importantly, the exact source of metaphor processing difficulties in ASD remains largely controversial. The debate has mainly focused on the mediating role of structural language skills (i.e., lexical knowledge) and cognitive abilities (i.e., Theory of Mind and executive functions) in ASD individuals' ability to comprehend and generate metaphors. The present study examines metaphor comprehension and production in 18 Greek‐speaking verbally able children with ASD and 31 typically‐developing (TD) controls. Participants completed two tasks, namely, a low‐verbal multiple‐choice sentence‐picture matching task that tested their ability to comprehend conventional predicate metaphors, and a sentence continuation task that assessed their ability to generate metaphors. The study also included measures of fluid intelligence, expressive vocabulary, and working memory within the sample. The results show that the ASD group had significantly lower performance than the TD group in both metaphor comprehension and production. The findings also reveal that expressive vocabulary skills were a key factor in the metaphor comprehension and production performance of the children with ASD. Working memory capacity was also found to correlate significantly with metaphor comprehension performance in the ASD group. Conversely, no correlations were found in the TD group with neither of the above factors. Of note, children with ASD generated significantly more inappropriate responses and no‐responses to the metaphor production task compared with the control group. The overall results reveal that children with ASD had difficulty with both comprehending and using metaphorical language. The findings also indicate that TD children may employ diverse cognitive strategies or rely on different underlying skills when processing metaphors compared with children with ASD. Lay Summary: Difficulties related to metaphor comprehension are commonly observed in ASD individuals. However, less is known about metaphor production abilities in ASD. In this study, we compared metaphor comprehension and production skills in 18 verbally able Greek‐speaking children with ASD and 31 TD children, and also examined the role of vocabulary knowledge and working memory in metaphor processing. The overall results show that both metaphor comprehension and production were more challenging for the children with ASD as compared with their TD peers. Furthermore, we found that vocabulary knowledge is a factor that significantly influences both metaphor comprehension and production performance of ASD participants. The study also reveals that metaphor comprehension abilities in children with ASD are based on working memory skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the influence of the dynamic assessment of human–computer interactive games on children's language potential. Thirty‐seven special children aged 3–7 years were selected to participate in the study. They were divided into three groups according to their scores on the Autism Behaviour Checklist: (1) a non‐autism group, (2) a suspected autism group and (3) an autism group. In two stages of static and dynamic assessment, all three groups of children completed language tests under the conditions of no mediated prompt and mediated prompts, and the data generated in the game interactions were processed and analysed. The findings suggest the following: (1) static assessment may ignore children's language potential, while dynamic assessment can measure and differentiate children's potential language development ability; (2) children with ASD need more mediation prompts and are more likely to complete tasks with explicit mediation prompts; (3) children with ASD have weaker language potential, and children with suspected ASD or non‐ASD children have homogeneous language potential; and (4) assessors should pay timely attention to and maintain children's learning status and psychological changes. This study demonstrates the importance of human–computer interactive games as a dynamic assessment tool to tap into children's language potential and to determine their proximal developmental zone, which has important implications for teachers in understanding groups with different language abilities. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about the topic? The traditional language assessment paradigm (static assessment) can only evaluate the learners' current language development ability, while the short‐term development potential may not be observed.Different prompts in the mediation strategy can be used as a quantitative assessment paradigm in dynamic assessment.Much of the dynamic assessment in children with ASD focuses on language vocabulary learning outcomes and lacks measurement or quantification of language potential.What this paper adds? Presents a method for the dynamic assessment of a human–computer interactive language game suitable for children aged 3–7 years with ASD.Quantifies the potential level of language skills in children with varying degrees of ASD.Objectively and dynamically compares differences in language development potential between different groups.In dynamic assessment, children's learning status and psychological changes should be paid attention to and maintained in time.Implications for practice, research or policy This paper provides a concrete example of how human–computer interactive games can be used to dynamically assess the language potential of children with ASD.These findings highlight the importance of progressive scaffolds (mediated prompts) in children's language learning, which can help children identify and solve problems in a timely manner.For educational developers, language intervention materials should be prepared in a way that encompasses the different levels of language skills of children with different disabilities, that is, within the individual's zone of proximal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impairments in the broader domain of pragmatics are considered to be a defining feature of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A challenging aspect of pragmatic competence is the ability to process nonliteral language. Interestingly, previous studies in figurative language comprehension in ASD have demonstrated conflicting results regarding participants' performance. The main scientific debate focuses on the underlying skills which facilitate processing of nonliteral speech in ASD. Namely, Theory of Mind (ToM), language abilities and Executive functions (EFs) are regarded as factors affecting autistic individuals' performance. This review addresses figurative language comprehension in ASD in light of the above three interpretive accounts. We reviewed data from recent studies in this field concluding that autistic children indeed encounter systematic difficulties in the processing of non‐literal language. Moreover, only ToM and verbal skills were found to correlate the most with figurative language comprehension in ASD. Notably, we found that differences related to research methodology and tasks' properties may have led to discrepancies between studies' results. Finally, we argue that future studies should encompass in their experimental design figurative comprehension tasks with minimal linguistic demands and also measures of ToM, verbal ability and EFs in order to shed more light in the independent contribution of those skills to the processing of nonliteral language in ASD. Lay Summary: Difficulties related to figurative language processing are commonly observed among autistic individuals. However both the extent and the exact source of these difficulties remain controversial. We reviewed studies from the last decade examining the processing of different subtypes of nonliteral language in ASD, including metaphors, idioms and verbal irony with a focus on the role of ToM, language abilities, and EFs in figurative language comprehension. This review highlights the importance of using low‐verbal nonliteral language tasks and argues that ToM, language skills, and EFs may have independent contributions to autistic individuals' ability to process nonliteral forms of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a field experiment, we study the causal effects of previous experience and language skills when newly arrived Syrian refugees in Sweden apply for low‐skilled jobs. We find no evidence of sizable effects from previous experience or completed language classes on the probability of receiving a callback from employers. However, female applicants were more likely than males to receive a positive response. As a complement to the experiment, we interview a select number of employers, which provides additional insights into how they judge candidates for low‐skilled jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To assess the dose–response association between the duration of any breastfeeding and cognitive skills in children from 5 to 15 years of age. Methods: The data from the longitudinal cohort study Growing up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (children born in 1999–2000 and 2003–2004) were accessed. Language skills were assessed via Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at 5, 7 and 9 years of age (N = 8643), and non‐verbal intelligence was assessed via Matrix Reasoning subtest from Wechsler Intelligence Scale at 7, 9 and 11 years of age (N = 8560) and executive functions were examined via Cogstate Cognitive Testing battery in 15 years old (N = 6213). Breastfeeding was assessed via maternal questionnaires, partly prospective. Results: A longer duration of breastfeeding was significantly associated with greater language skills from 5 to 9 (0.05 [95% CI, 0.03–0.08], p < 0.0001) and greater non‐verbal intelligence from 7 to 11 years of age (0.02 [95% CI, 0.01–0.04], p < 0.001). No significant relation was found between the breastfeeding duration and executive functions in 15 years old. Conclusion: These results support a dose–response relationship between breastfeeding duration and language skills and non‐verbal intelligence during childhood and early adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the role of linguistic skills in the process of defining professional classifications in Spain during 1919–1980. The aim is to determine the social evaluation of the skills involved. To retrace the classifications, a total of 114 official documents were examined, establishing a chronological division into three major stages: 1920–1940, 1940–1960 and 1960–1980. The first period (1920–1940) shows efforts toward the initial objectification of working conditions and salary scales, revealing social prejudices and tacit conventions shaping the employment hierarchy, while the second one (1940–1960) indicates the extent to which office work stood out over manual work. Finally, the third stage (1960–1980) shows processes of language rationalisation, which entailed attempts to standardise positions based on required skill sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of 1,117 families living in low‐wealth rural areas, the current study focused on how home literacy practices for 3‐year‐old children were related to the children's language skills at ages 3 and 4. Three types of home literacy practices were explored: parent‐to‐child literacy practices, child literacy practices, and parent literacy practices. Results indicated that a variety of parent‐to‐child and child literacy practices frequently took place. Regression analyses showed that only child literacy practices were positively associated with language outcomes concurrently at age 3 and later at age 4. Findings have implications for early childhood educators and policy makers who may use this information to support literacy practices among families residing in low‐wealth rural areas. Highlights: Home literacy practices in rural families were explored in relation to children's language skills.Home literacy practices at age 3 included parent‐to‐child literacy practices, child literacy practices, and parent literacy practices.Only child literacy practices were significantly associated with children's language skills at ages 3 and 4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audio‐visual associative learning – at least when linguistic stimuli are employed – is known to rely on core linguistic skills such as phonological awareness. Here we ask whether this would also be the case in a task that does not manipulate linguistic information. Another question of interest is whether executive skills, often found to support learning, may play a larger role in a non‐linguistic audio‐visual associative task compared to a linguistic one. We present a new task that measures learning when having to associate non‐linguistic auditory signals with novel visual shapes. Importantly, our novel task shares with linguistic processes such as reading acquisition the need to associate sounds with arbitrary shapes. Yet, rather than phonemes or syllables, it uses novel environmental sounds – therefore limiting direct reliance on linguistic abilities. Five‐year‐old French‐speaking children (N = 76, 39 girls) were assessed individually in our novel audio‐visual associative task, as well as in a number of other cognitive tasks evaluating linguistic abilities and executive functions. We found phonological awareness and language comprehension to be related to scores in the audio‐visual associative task, while no correlation with executive functions was observed. These results underscore a key relation between foundational language competencies and audio‐visual associative learning, even in the absence of linguistic input in the associative task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate whether regular moderate intensity exercise during pregnancy had adverse effect on neurodevelopment of offspring at 7 years of age.Design: Follow up of a multicentre randomised controlled trial.Setting: St Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital and Stavanger University Hospital, Norway (2007-09).Population: Women randomised to follow a 12-week structured exercise protocol or standard antenatal care during pregnancy.Methods: At 7 years of age, neurodevelopmental outcome was assessed by the parent questionnaire Five-To-Fifteen (FTF), including motor skills, executive functions, perception, memory, language, social skills and possible emotional/behavioural problems.Main Outcome Measure: Continuous and dichotomised (cut-off 90th centile) FTF scores.Results: A total of 855 women were randomised to exercise (n = 429) or standard antenatal care (n = 426) during pregnancy. At follow up, 164 (38.2%) children born to mothers in the intervention group and 115 (27.0%) children born to mothers in the control group participated. We found no group differences in FTF scores or in the proportion of children with scores ≥90th centile. Stratified analyses by sex, subgroup analyses of women who adhered to the exercise protocol or sensitivity analyses excluding preterm children and/or children who had been admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit did not change the results.Conclusions: In the present randomised controlled trial follow-up study, regular moderate intensity exercise during pregnancy did not have adverse effect on neurodevelopment of offspring at 7 years of age.Tweetable Abstract: Moderate intensity exercise during pregnancy had no adverse effect on neurodevelopment of offspring at 7 years of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows how linguistic criteria have become central when defining job categories in the outsourced call centre sector in Spain. Language occupies a central role in the production processes of informational capitalism: in call centres, language functions as the raw material, scripts as tools and conversations as a product. Yet the ways in which linguistic production affects key elements of job categories have received little attention. Drawing on in‐depth interviews in the call centre sector, the analysis of scripts and collective agreements, this article shows how trade unions and workers are pushing to adapt Fordist arguments based on job autonomy to informational production, arguing that job categories may depend on linguistic autonomy from the scripts during the labour process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: health equity; language skills; language-concordant care EN health equity language skills language-concordant care 399 400 2 04/04/23 20230401 NES 230401 I If you talk to someone in a language they understand, you speak to their head. Language-discordant care goes beyond threats to informed consent (which regrettably persist particularly in areas with limited clinician-patient language concordance), it threatens health outcomes and perpetuates health inequity for diverse populations. Health equity, language skills, language-concordant care. [Extracted from the article]

This study, using a mixed methods design, examined the use of a photograph-based model to improve students' language and writing skills. Classes were assigned to receive the photograph-based intervention (experimental) or to receive the regular language-based curriculum (control). Both second and fifth grade students in the experimental group significantly improved their language and writing skills compared to the control group. Second grade students improved significantly more than fifth grade students. The findings also enabled the research team to identify deficiencies that required specific modifications in language curriculum design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Reading disorder (RD) and mathematics disorder (MD) frequently co‐occur. However, the exact comorbidity rates differ largely between studies. Given that MD is characterised by high heterogeneity on the symptom level, differences in comorbidity rates may result from different mathematical subskills used to define MD. Comorbidity rates with RD are likely to be higher when MD is measured by mathematical subskills that do not only build on number processing, but also require language (i.e. arithmetic fluency), than when measured by magnitude processing skills. Methods: The association between literacy, arithmetic fluency and magnitude processing as well as the overlap between deficits in these domains were assessed in a representative sample of 1,454 third Graders. Results: Associations were significantly higher between literacy and arithmetic, than between literacy and magnitude processing. This was also reflected in comorbidity rates: comorbidity rates between literacy and arithmetic deficits were four times higher than expected by chance, whereas comorbidity rates between literacy and magnitude processing deficits did not exceed chance rate. Deficits in the two mathematical subskills showed some overlap, but also revealed dissociations, corroborating the high heterogeneity of MD. Results are interpreted within a multiple‐deficit framework and implications for diagnosis and intervention are discussed. Conclusions: The overlap between RD and MD depends on the subskills used to define MD. Due to shared domain‐general factors mathematical subskills that draw on language skills are more strongly associated with literacy than those that do not require language. The findings further indicate that the same symptom, such as deficits in arithmetic, can be associated with different cognitive deficits, a deficit in language skills or a deficit in number processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learners' ability to infer unknown words' meanings (lexical inferencing) plays a key role in word knowledge development for second language (L2) learners. It has recently been acknowledged that learners' sensitivity to word‐internal structures (morphological awareness) makes an important contribution to L2 lexical inferencing. However, it remains unclear whether the contribution of morphological awareness to lexical inferencing is affected by L2 learner‐related factors (e.g., language skills). Data obtained from five paper‐pencil tasks in Chinese for 73 L2 learners who studied Chinese for two semesters in China showed that (1) for more‐skilled learners, morphological awareness significantly contributed to lexical inferencing with and without contextual cues, whereas no significant relationships existed between morphological awareness and lexical inferencing for less‐skilled learners; and (2) L2 learners' morphological awareness does not equally facilitate lexical inferencing due to a possible threshold of linguistic knowledge. The findings have implications for learners' success in inferring the meanings of unknown words The Challenge: A number of language‐universal features, including learners' sensitivity to the internal structure of words (morphological awareness), contribute to an understanding of second/foreign language reading development. 1. How does morphological awareness help demystify L2 word incident learning? 2. How does the mechanism underlying Chinese word‐learning ability inform instruction and learning among a wider L2 learner population? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of language deficiency on the health status of childhood migrants to Australia. Our identification strategy relies on a quasi-experiment comparing immigrants arriving at different ages and from different linguistic origins. In the presence of considerable non-classical measurement error in self-reported language proficiency, our results provide lower and upper bounds for a strong negative effect of English deficiency on health of between one half and a full standard deviation in the health score. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the cognitive (first language [L1] and foreign language [FL]), linguistic (L1 and FL), and motivational characteristics of weak FL readers in contrast to strong readers in 3 groups of L1 Finnish-speaking learners of English, aged 10, 14, and 17 years. This cross-sectional study covered a wide range of potential correlates, and therefore predictors, of FL reading based on previous research on reading in first, second (L2), and foreign languages. The weakest and strongest FL readers (1 standard deviation below or above the mean reading score) in each age group were selected for the comparisons reported in this article. The FL (English) skills other than reading were found to be the clearest distinguishing feature between weak and strong FL readers. However, L1 and cognitive skills in L1 and FL, as well as certain dimensions of motivation to use and learn the FL, were also found to separate the 2 reading groups. The implications of the findings for 2 different hypotheses about the nature of FL reading-the Threshold Hypothesis and the Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis-are discussed, as well as the implications for the diagnosis of strengths and weaknesses in reading in an FL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: As new standardized tests become commercially available, it is critical that clinicians have access to the information about a test's psychometric properties, including aspects of reliability. Aims: The purpose of the three studies reported in this article was to investigate the reliability of a new test, the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS), with consideration of both internal and external sources of measurement error. Methods & Procedures: The TILLS was administered to children aged 6;0-18;11 years. The participants varied in terms of their language and literacy skills and included children with typical language development as well as those diagnosed with language or learning disability. The sample of children also varied in terms of their racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Study 1 (N = 1056) assessed the internal consistency of TILLS calculating the coefficient omega for each subtest. Study 2 (N = 103) and Study 3 (N = 39) used the intra-class correlation coefficients to report on test-retest and inter-rater reliability respectively. Outcomes & Results: The results indicate strong internal consistency and inter-rater reliability for all subtests of TILLS. The test-retest reliability was strong for all but one subtest, for which the intra-class correlation coefficient was in the acceptable range. Conclusion & Implications: This article provides clinicians with essential scientific information that supports the internal and external reliability of a new test of oral and written language skills, the TILLS. Information about reliability is critical for guiding the selection of an appropriate diagnostic tool amongst a number of options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using visual analysis by means of scatterplots, correlational analysis, and linear regressions, the authors explored the skills of individuals with Down syndrome in the areas of self-help, language, academics, and computer skills. By combining data of several Dutch studies, they obtained 1,252 different observations made by parents on 862 individuals, aged <1-35 years. Research shows advancement in language skills up to the age of 12, with plateauing afterward. In contrast, self-help skills still increase in adolescence and young adulthood. Academics and computer skills improve up to the age of 14. However, less developed academic skills (and computer skills) of adolescents and young adults appear to be a generational difference, rather than a loss of acquired skills. In their analysis, the authors differentiated between students with a primarily regular school career vs. those with a primarily special school career. In addition, in both groups, the studies were differentiated between students with an IQ >50 vs. an IQ between 35 and 50. The comparison between the various subgroups revealed that children with special education backgrounds in the higher IQ range demonstrated less advanced academic skills than children with regular education backgrounds in the lower IQ range. This suggests that regular education is more stimulating for academic skill development. Using age, 'school career,' and IQ (<35; 35-50; 50-60; 60-70; >70) as predictors, regressions confirmed this conclusion. The authors conclude that their analyses show that the shift in the early 1990s in the Netherlands toward more inclusion in education for students with Down syndrome has led to better outcomes in academic skill development for these students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The developmental relationships between executive functions ( EF) and early language skills are unclear. This study explores the longitudinal relationships between children's early EF and language skills in a sample of children with a wide range of language abilities including children at risk of dyslexia. In addition, we investigated whether these skills independently predict children's attention/behaviour skills. Method Data are presented from 243 children at four time points. Children were selected for being at risk of reading difficulties either because of a family history of dyslexia ( FR; N = 90) or because of concerns regarding their language development ( LI; N = 79) or as typically developing controls ( TD; N = 74). The children completed tasks to assess their executive function and language skills at ages 4, 5 and 6 years. At 6 (T4) and 7 years (T5) parents and teachers rated the children's attention/behaviour skills. Results There was a strong concurrent relationship between language and EF at each assessment. Longitudinal analyses indicated a considerable degree of stability in children's language and EF skills: the influence of language on later EF skills (and vice versa) was weak and not significant in the current sample. Children's EF, but not language, skills at T3 predicted attention/behaviour ratings at T4/T5. Conclusions There is a strong concurrent association between language and EF skills during the preschool and early school years, when children with language impairment show persistent EF deficits. Latent variables measuring language and EF show high longitudinal stability with little evidence of significant or strong reciprocal influences between these constructs. EF, but not language, skills predict later ratings of children's attention and behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

See, Say, Write is an adaptable classroom writing routine that teachers can use across a range of activities in the preschool classroom. This preschool writing routine offers an opportunity for teachers to build on a shared experience through engagement in rich conversation and writing. After a shared experience, teachers will provide a visual reminder of the experience ( SEE). Through the use of open-ended questioning, the teacher will facilitate a rich conversation with the group of children ( SAY). Finally, the teacher will offer an opportunity for children to write individually or participate in a group writing experience ( WRITE). See, Say, Write is a writing routine that can be implemented in combination with other activities, for enhancing content knowledge building and promoting language and literacy skill growth. A science related content example is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Causal theories of dyslexia suggest that it is a heritable disorder, which is the outcome of multiple risk factors. However, whether early screening for dyslexia is viable is not yet known. Methods The study followed children at high risk of dyslexia from preschool through the early primary years assessing them from age 3 years and 6 months (T1) at approximately annual intervals on tasks tapping cognitive, language, and executive-motor skills. The children were recruited to three groups: children at family risk of dyslexia, children with concerns regarding speech, and language development at 3;06 years and controls considered to be typically developing. At 8 years, children were classified as 'dyslexic' or not. Logistic regression models were used to predict the individual risk of dyslexia and to investigate how risk factors accumulate to predict poor literacy outcomes. Results Family-risk status was a stronger predictor of dyslexia at 8 years than low language in preschool. Additional predictors in the preschool years include letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and executive skills. At the time of school entry, language skills become significant predictors, and motor skills add a small but significant increase to the prediction probability. We present classification accuracy using different probability cutoffs for logistic regression models and ROC curves to highlight the accumulation of risk factors at the individual level. Conclusions Dyslexia is the outcome of multiple risk factors and children with language difficulties at school entry are at high risk. Family history of dyslexia is a predictor of literacy outcome from the preschool years. However, screening does not reach an acceptable clinical level until close to school entry when letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and RAN, rather than family risk, together provide good sensitivity and specificity as a screening battery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim Current U.S. guidelines suggest that pregnant women should exercise regularly during pregnancy, and we examined the neurodevelopment of the children whose mothers had taken that advice. Methods This Norwegian study included 188 children whose mothers had followed a structured exercise protocol and 148 control children whose mothers had not. Their cognitive, language and motor skills were assessed at 18 months of age by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-III and daily life functioning with the Ages and Stages Questionnaire. Results No significant differences were found between the two groups. Subgroup analyses revealed that the children whose mothers had exercised had a slightly lower motor composite score (mean: 97.6, 95% CI: 96.0-99.2) than the control group (mean: 100.0, 95% CI: 98.6-101.5) (p = 0.03). Boys in the intervention group had lower fine motor scores (mean: 10.6, 95% CI: 10.3-11.0) than boys in the control group (mean: 11.5, 95% CI: 11.0-11.9) (p = 0.01). Conclusion Our main finding was that regular moderate exercise during pregnancy does not adversely affect neurodevelopment in children. The lower motor scores in the subgroup analyses are probably clinically insignificant, but the lower fine motor scores for boys in the intervention group warrant further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Parent questionnaires of child motor and language skills are useful in many contexts. This study validates one such measure, the Preschool Child Development Inventory (PCDI), a mother-answered standardized measure of motor (fine and gross) and language (expression and comprehension) skills of 3-6-year-old children. Methods Eighty-one mothers answered the inventory and their children were concurrently tested on six verbal subtests of WPPSI-RIS. Results The six language and motor subtests of the PCDI revealed the predicted convergent and divergent correlations with the verbal subtests of the WPPSI-RIS. As predicted, the motor subtests diverged and the language subtests converged with the expected WPPSI-RIS subtests. Principal components analysis of all the measures (the PCDI and the WPPSI-RIS subtests) revealed two components, verbal and motor in content. Conclusions The findings support the validity of a mother-answered inventory to assess language and motor development. It is pointed out that such inventories are a viable brief and cost effective alternative to individual testing, both to supplement such measures in clinical practice and as main information in research, for example on determinants of development. Some suggestions are made for future research and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with poorer language skills are more likely to show externalizing behavior problems, as well as to become rejected by their peers. Peer rejection has also been found to affect the development of externalizing behavior. This study explored the role of peer rejection in the link between language skills and the development of externalizing behavior. Six hundred and fifteen (615) children were followed from kindergarten to grade 4. Receptive language skills were measured with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test in grade 2. Teachers reported externalizing behavior and peer reports of social rejection were measured annually. Children with poorer receptive language skills showed increasing externalizing behavior, while children with better receptive language skills showed decreases in externalizing behavior. Children with poorer receptive language skills experienced peer rejection most frequently. The link between receptive language skills and the development of externalizing behavior was mediated by the development of peer rejection. Findings suggested that this mediational link applied mostly to boys. Children with poorer language skills are at increased risk of becoming rejected by mainstream peers, which adds to the development of externalizing behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how bilingualism affects the wages of Asian and Hispanic workers using 2000 Census data. In contradiction to the general belief that bilingualism can provide a competitive advantage in the labor market, we find no evidence that 1.5-generation and U.S.-born Asian and Hispanic bilingual workers generally have higher wages than their English monolingual co-ethnics; in some cases, in fact, their wages are significantly lower. In search of specific circumstances under which bilingualism might provide an economic advantage, we also examine interactions of language with such variables as education, employment in the public rather than the private sector, and the size of the population of mother-tongue speakers. With limited exceptions, we find no sign of greater economic returns to bilingualism. Since bilingualism requires considerable effort to maintain across generations in the United States, we conclude that the virtual absence of economic rewards for it creates pressure for linguistic assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years after research on children's‘theory of mind’ began, this field continues to be a leading influence in the study of developmental psychology and psychopathology. In this review we examine the contribution of research on children's theories of mind to our understanding of children's developing social relationships. Evidence shows that for both typical and atypical populations this relationship is neither uniform nor unidirectional. Theory-of-mind skills are multifaceted and the nature of the developmental relationship between different aspects is not yet known, and there is evidence that theory-of-mind skills both transform and are transformed by interpersonal and family relationships and by language communities. To understand the multifaceted and complex nature of development in this area, we need clearer definitions of the skills under investigation, as well as research designs that capture the transactional nature of the relationship between theory of mind and social relations. Addressing these issues should help to clarify (i) the processes by which children's developing understanding of others is influenced by the social environment, and (ii) issues concerning the specificity of theory-of-mind impairments in atypical populations and the processes by which these impairments develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although shy children speak less in social situations, the extent to which their language skills fall behind those of their more outgoing peers remains unclear. We selected 22 temperamentally shy and 22 non-shy children from a larger group of 400 4-year-old children who were prescreened for temperamental shyness by maternal report, using the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory (CCTI). We then compared the two groups on widely used measures that index expressive and receptive language skills. We found that, although the temperamentally shy children scored lower on both expressive and receptive language skills compared with their non-shy counterparts, they were nonetheless performing at their age equivalency. The non-shy children, however, were performing significantly above their age level on expressive and receptive language skills. These findings suggest that the development of normal language skills is not compromised in temperamentally shy preschoolers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to determine (1) whether adolescent females with a conduct disorder (CD) demonstrate inferior language skills and lower executive cognitive functioning (ECF) compared with controls and (2) whether the relations between language abilities and different forms of antisocial behavior (ASB) are mediated by ECF. Language skills were measured using the Test of Language Competence–Expanded, ECF was measured using multiple neuropsychological tests, and ASB was assessed using various self-report and psychiatric interview indices reflecting mild delinquency to severe violence. Subjects were 223 adolescent females with a CD and 97 normal controls ranging between 14 and 18 years of age (N = 320). The CD group demonstrated significantly poorer language skills and lower ECF compared with the controls. Moreover, even when controlling for chronological age and socioeconomic status, ECF still fully mediated the relations between language competence and each measure of ASB. The results are discussed in relation to a neurobehavioral model of ASB. Aggr. Behav. 26:359–375, 2000. © 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shared reading represents a unique context for language learning. Little is known, however, about the quality of shared reading and its developmental implications in families with reading disabilities. In the present study, these questions were addressed in the context of a longitudinal follow-up. Maternal interactional behaviors and children's participation in a book reading situation were analyzed at 14 months of age in a subsample involving 39 mothers who were diagnosed as reading disabled and had a familial background of reading difficulties (the RD group) and 89 normally reading mothers (the NR group) and their children. Information on the children's concurrent and subsequent vocabulary comprehension and production was obtained at 14 and 18 months. The results indicated that the children who displayed a high interest and engagement in shared reading at 14 months had more advanced language skills 4 months later. Also found was support for a link between maternal strategies and children's subsequent vocabulary comprehension and production. In accordance with the literature, maternal activation was more strongly related to the children's language development than the mere describing of the elements in the book. No differences emerged between the NR and RD groups in the frequencies of maternal interactional behaviors, children's participation in shared reading, or their language skills at this early age; maternal orienting of the children's attention was, however, found to be positively related to later language development in the NR group, while in the RD group the association was negative. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most cognitive tests administered during sleep loss are well rehearsed to remove practice effects. This can introduce tedium and a loss of novelty, which may be the key to the test's subsequent sensitivity to sleep loss, and why it may need only a few minutes administration before sleep loss effects are apparent. There is little evidence to show that any of these tests are actually affected by sleep loss if given de novo, without practice, but using a non-sleep deprived control group. Although the sleep deprivation literature advocates that short, novel and stimulating tests would not be expected to be sensitive to sleep loss, recent sleep loss findings using neuropsychological tests focussing on the prefrontal cortex, indicate that such tests may challenge this maxim. Twenty healthy young adults were randomly assigned to two groups: nil sleep deprivation (control), and 36h continuous sleep deprivation (SD). Two, novel, interesting and short (6 min) language tests, known (by brain imaging) to have predominantly a PFC focus, were given, once, towards the end of SD: (i) the Haylings test – which measures the capacity to inhibit strong associations in favour of novel responses, and (ii) a variant of the word fluency test – innovation in a verb-to-noun association. Subjects were exhorted to do their best. Compared with control subjects both tasks were significantly impaired by SD. As a check on the effects on the Haylings test, a repeat study was undertaken with 30 more subjects randomly divided as before. The outcome was similar. Linguistically, sleep loss appears to interfere with novel responses and the ability to suppress routine answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To most people it seems incontrovertible that when a child's development appears to be lagging, the earlier we intervene the better. This commonly held belief drives a considerable research effort to identify 'biomarkers' of disorder at ever younger ages, so that treatment can be made available to infants, before overt signs of disorder are apparent and difficulties become entrenched. Although much of this work has focused on early interventions for autism spectrum disorder, similar efforts have been directed at remediating early language delays. If we could reliably predict in infancy which children would have persistent language learning impairments, early intervention would of course have potentially wide ranging benefits. In fact, the promise of early intervention is such that in times of austerity, some speech-language therapy providers are prioritising services to the under-fives, with little or no direct intervention to school-aged children. And services to pupils in secondary school are almost non-existent, much to the frustration of parents and school staff who see the language demands of the curriculum and the social environment increasing exponentially during adolescence. This Editorial focuses on the evidence for early intervention for children presenting with language delays, in the context of articles published in this issue of JCPP that focus on early language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]