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Purpose This study investigates the acoustic environment of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and the relationship between exposure to speech, in noise and in quiet, and the children's lexical production up to 1 year after CI activation, while controlling for the effect of early individual differences in receptive vocabulary growth. Method Eighteen children with CIs were observed at 3, 6, and 12 months after CI activation. Children's spontaneous word production during interaction with their mothers (types and tokens) and their expressive and receptive vocabulary size were considered. The characteristics of the acoustic environments in terms of acoustic scenes (speech in noise or in quiet, quiet, noise, music, and other) and of loudness ranges were assessed using data logging of the children's devices. Results Data analysis showed that both the number of tokens and the number of types produced 1 year after CI activation were affected by the children's exposure to speech in quiet with a loudness range between 40 and 69 dB. Expressive vocabulary size and types were affected by the receptive vocabulary knowledge that the children achieved over the first 3 months after CI activation. Conclusions Our data support the role of speech environment and individual differences in early comprehension on lexical production. The importance of exposure to speech with particular characteristics for the lexical development of children with CIs and the implications for clinical practice are discussed.

The Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) measures a wide range of self-reported musical abilities and behaviors in the Western adult general population, regardless of musical expertise. This instrument has been validated in various languages, but an Italian version is lacking. The present study describes the Italian validation and adaptation of the Gold-MSI (Gold-MSI-IT) and investigates the effects of socio-demographic variables on scores of musical sophistication. Analyses of factor structure and internal reliability on an Italian sample (N = 429; mean age = 31.08; SD = 11.68; 75.5% female) and analyses of test-retest reliability on a smaller sample (N = 57; mean age = 34.68; SD = 10.80; 75% female) show that the Gold-MSI-IT confirms the bi-factor model of the original version, including an underlying General Musical Sophistication factor and five subfactors, and that our instrument has good internal consistency and good test-retest reliability. Additional tests showed gender differences in musical sophistication and that musical sophistication correlated with education but not with age. The study provides a reliable and stable tool to investigate individual differences in the Italian context and adds to our knowledge of musicality in the general population across countries.

Many studies have reported that early interventions on language and early literacy skills are important for preventing later reading difficulties at primary school. The aim of the study is to asses...

Background Studies have reported a strong association between children's early literacy skills at preschool and their reading and writing skills at primary school. However, it is unclear whether this association is affected by language and curriculum practices. Objective The study investigates (i) whether early literacy skills are influenced by orthographic consistency and by preschool curriculum, and (ii) how early skills are related to later literacy skills across countries. Method Three countries, Italy (n = 73), Romania (n = 65), and Belgium (n = 109) were involved in the study, for a total of 247 children. Language and early literacy in preschool were assessed using a novel assessment tool (the ‘Talk’). Early visual-phonological and manual aspects integration were investigated using rapid automatized naming and grapho-motor tasks. The children’s reading and writing skills nine months later were assessed using standardized tests. Results Results showed higher early literacy scores for the groups of children speaking languages with more transparent orthographic systems and for the group taking part in preschool activities designed to enhance literacy acquisition. Later reading and writing skills were predicted by early competences, albeit with differences across countries. Conclusions Findings suggest that literacy acquisition trajectories are not only associated with early skills but are also influenced by language characteristics and curriculum practices. The study also presents preliminary findings relative to the ‘Talk’, an assessment tool that may have important implications for early identification and intervention of language and literacy difficulties, as well as for improving cross-country curriculum practices.

The present study aimed to investigate the communicative characteristics of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and their mothers in interaction, whether and how they differ from those of mother–child dyads with normal hearing, and whether mother and child influence each other over the first year after implantation. Eighteen Italian-speaking children with CIs were assessed longitudinally across four time points, from before implantation (ages: 10–33 months) to 1 year after implantation. Two groups of normally-hearing children matched for age or lexical production level were used as comparison groups. The language used by mothers in semi-structured play sessions with their children was analyzed for use of specific techniques aimed at eliciting language in children with CIs (or Facilitating Language Techniques [FLTs]: questions, labeling, comments, parallel talk, reformulations, and directives); children’s language was analyzed for communicative functions (initiatives and adequate responses). Results showed delayed communicative development for children with CIs with respect to both control groups and different use of FLTs such as directives between mothers of children with or without normal hearing. Findings also highlighted an effect of the interlocutor’s communicative behavior for both children and mothers: In the group of children with CIs, children’s initiatives were hindered by a higher use of questions; mothers’ labeling was negatively affected by children’s responsivity. Findings may have important implications for language development support programs, families, and professionals.

Individual differences in rhythm perception skills play an important role in predicting individual differences in spoken grammar abilities, arguably because both music and language are hierarchically organized structures. Based on the idea that neural entrainment establishes regular attentional fluctuations that facilitate hierarchical processing in both domains, we hypothesized that individual differences in syntactic (grammatical) skills will be predicted by patterns of neural responses to musical rhythm. To test this hypothesis, we recorded neural activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while children (N = 25) listened passively to rhythmic patterns that differed in the placement of an accent, using a paradigm that had previously shown to generate beat percepts and to modulate beta and gamma band responses in adults. Analysis of evoked activity in these frequency bands showed that individual differences in the magnitude of neural responses to rhythm predicted variance in six-year-olds’ expressive grammar abilities, beyond and complementarily to the contribution of their behavioral rhythm perception task performance. Variance in beta and gamma during rhythmic listening was predictive of children’s performance on language items with complex structural dependencies, i.e., for which more refined grammatical abilities are required. These results reinforce the idea that mechanisms of neural beat entrainment may be a shared neural resource supporting hierarchical processing across music and language, and suggest a relevant brain marker of the relationship between rhythm processing and grammar abilities in elementary-school-age children, previously observed only behaviorally. These findings add to the literature on individual differences in music ability as predictors of child language development.

Although a growing literature points to substantial variation in speech/language abilities related to individual differences in musical abilities, mainstream models of communication sciences and disorders have not yet incorporated these individual differences into childhood speech/language development. This article reviews three sources of evidence in a comprehensive body of research aligning with three main themes: (a) associations between musical rhythm and speech/language processing, (b) musical rhythm in children with developmental speech/language disorders and common comorbid attentional and motor disorders, and (c) individual differences in mechanisms underlying rhythm processing in infants and their relationship with later speech/language development. In light of converging evidence on associations between musical rhythm and speech/language processing, we propose the Atypical Rhythm Risk Hypothesis, which posits that individuals with atypical rhythm are at higher risk for developmental speech/language disorders. The hypothesis is framed within the larger epidemiological literature in which recent methodological advances allow for large-scale testing of shared underlying biology across clinically distinct disorders. A series of predictions for future work testing the Atypical Rhythm Risk Hypothesis are outlined. We suggest that if a significant body of evidence is found to support this hypothesis, we can envision new risk factor models that incorporate atypical rhythm to predict the risk of developing speech/language disorders. Given the high prevalence of speech/language disorders in the population and the negative long-term social and economic consequences of gaps in identifying children at-risk, these new lines of research could potentially positively impact access to early identification and treatment. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain Neuroscience > Development Linguistics > Language Acquisition.

Using a picture–auditory word recognition task, we examined how early child bilinguals access their languages and how the languages affect one another. Accuracy and response times in “false friends” (i.e., words with similar form but unrelated meanings) and semantically related words were compared with control conditions within and across languages and grades. Study 1 tested the performance of school-age children with balanced versus unbalanced knowledge of first-language (L1) Italian and second-language (L2) German. Study 2 compared unbalanced bilingual children with L1 Italian and L2 French or German to investigate the effect of lexical similarity in the children’s languages. Children were found to activate both languages on receiving an auditory stimulus; performance in each language was affected by proficiency in the other language, degree of between-language similarity, and length of experience with each language. The BLINCS (Bilingual Language Interactive Network for Comprehension of Speech) model was invoked as a plausible framework for conceptualizing the nature of bilingual phonolexical representation and its effect on word recognition.