Relationship between Phonological Awareness and Related Factors in Korean First to Third Graders

The primary aim of the study was to measure the receptive and expressive vocabulary with respect to clinical parameters and selected socio-demographic variables and to assess whether the size of vocabulary could be predicted by certain variables in a consecutive series of children identified as having bilateral sensorineural hearing loss ("Göttinger Hör-Sprachregister"). All children aged between 2;6 to 6;3 years diagnosed in the Department of Phoniatrics/Pedaudiology of the University Göttingen as having a permanent bilateral sensorineural hearing impairment ("Göttinger Hör-Sprachregister") in a defined period (july 1995-september 2000) were examined with standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary tests as well as a nonverbal intelligence test (on average 5.5 months after diagnosis and 2.9 months after fitting with hearing aids). 37 children (20 boys, 17 girls). Mean age at diagnosis: 48.5 (SD 15.9; min. 18, max. 75) months, mean age at hearing aid fitting: 51 months (SD 15.2). Multiple handicapped children, children with additional conductive hearing impairment and those with postnatal losses were excluded. The sample as a whole demonstrated lexical deficits of varying severity that were greater in the expressive than in the receptive vocabulary, depending on the clinical parameter. Children with congenital hearing impairment, with severe-to-profound hearing impairment (> 70 dB) and bilingual children demonstrated on average the smallest receptive and expressive vocabulary. An early fitting with hearing aids did not correspond with a better lexical development when a severe-to-profound hearing impairment existed. Severity of a hearing impairment and nonverbal intelligence significantly predicted the average size of the receptive vocabulary. A moderate hearing impairment, high non-verbal intelligence, and gender (female) emerged as the strongest significant predictors of the expressive vocabulary. The vocabulary test result of a bilateral sensorineurally hearing-impaired child may be an indicator for early cognitive training.

Different language skills are considered fundamental for successful reading and spelling acquisition. Extensive evidence has highlighted the central role of phonological awareness in early literacy experiences. However, many orthographic systems also require the contribution of morphological awareness. The goal of this study was to examine the morphological and phonological awareness skills of preschool children as longitudinal predictors of reading and spelling ability by the end of first grade, controlling for the effects of receptive and expressive vocabulary skills. At Time 1 preschool children from kindergartens in the Greek regions of Attika, Crete, Macedonia, and Thessaly were assessed on tasks tapping receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness (syllable and phoneme), and morphological awareness (inflectional and derivational). Tasks were administered through an Android application for mobile devices (tablets) featuring automatic application of ceiling rules. At Time 2 one year later the same children attending first grade were assessed on measures of word and pseudoword reading, text reading fluency, text reading comprehension, and spelling. Complete data from 104 children are available. Hierarchical linear regression and commonality analyses were conducted for each outcome variable. Reading accuracy for both words and pseudowords was predicted not only by phonological awareness, as expected, but also by morphological awareness, suggesting that understanding the functional role of word parts supports the developing phonology–orthography mappings. However, only phonological awareness predicted text reading fluency at this age. Longitudinal prediction of reading comprehension by both receptive vocabulary and morphological awareness was already evident at this age, as expected. Finally, spelling was predicted by preschool phonological awareness, as expected, as well as by morphological awareness, the contribution of which is expected to increase due to the spelling demands of Greek inflectional and derivational suffixes introduced at later grades.

Objective: To investigate the development of receptive and expressive vocabulary in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CI) during the first year after CI activation. Methods: A total of 827 children (411 boys and 416 girls) who were implanted CI before 2.5 years of age from October 2019 to December 2022 in the Department of Auditory Implantation, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital were included in this study. The Infant Checklist of the Mandarin Early Vocabulary Inventory (EVI) was used to assess the quantity and content of receptive and expressive vocabulary at the time of CI activation and at the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th months post-activation. SPSS 22.0 was used to describe the receptive and expressive vocabulary of CI children at the first year after activation. Results: During the first year after CI activation, CI children's receptive and expressive vocabulary consistently increased with the CI usage. The average number of receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary respectively increased from 0 to 178, and from 0 to 97. At the first year of post-activation, the number of receptive and expressive vocabulary of CI children were superior to that of hearing-age matched typical-hearing children, but fell behind of that of chronological age matched typical-hearing children. In terms of lexical categories, receptive and expressive vocabulary was acquired in the following order: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. Among the top 50 words that CI children could express, nouns were the most common, then followed by verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. Father's education level can significantly and positively predictethe receptive vocabulary of CI children at the first year post-activation. At the first year after CI activation, the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles were 113, 149, 178, 202, 223 for the receptive vocabulary, and 9, 37, 97, 148, 188 for expressive vocabulary. Conclusion: For Mandarin speaking children with CI, the receptive and expression vocabulary continuely increased within the first year after CI activation. The ability to grasp receptive vocabulary precedes the ability to express expressive vocabulary. Compared to hearing-age matched typical-hearing children, CI children showed faster rate of the vocabulary growth, and earlier and more frequently verb expression. However, it still larged behind that of chronological age matched hearing normal children. CI children respectively understood and expressed nouns and verbs the first. In children with CI, the first concepts understood and expressed were nouns and verbs. Among the first 50 words expressed, nouns were the most numerous, and the age at which verbs were acquired was earlier than that for hearing-age matched typical-hearing children.

Language exposure is known to be a key factor influencing bilingual vocabulary development in typically developing (TD) children. There is, however, a lack of knowledge in terms of exposure effects in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and, especially, in interaction with age of onset (AoO) of second language acquisition. In the Helsinki longitudinal SLI study (HelSLI), we investigated the receptive and expressive second language (L2) vocabulary performance and cross-sectional vocabulary development of sequentially bilingual children with TD and DLD in order to resolve whether the groups could be differentiated based on their vocabulary performance. More importantly, we examined the effects of AoO and exposure in the vocabulary performance of these two bilingual groups. A total of 70 children with DLD from a hospital clinic and 82 with TD from kindergartens were recruited. Children were 3-7 years old with different AoOs for the L2 and varying degrees of language exposure. Multiple regression analysis was used to compare the groups in two receptive and three expressive vocabulary tests while considering the effects of AoO and language exposure. Children with TD outperformed children with DLD in both receptive and expressive vocabulary measures. Exposure predicted vocabulary but AoO did not. The effect of exposure was different in TD and DLD groups in receptive but not in expressive vocabulary. Additionally, the interaction of exposure and AoO was found for receptive vocabulary, but similarly in both groups. With increasing exposure, a difference in performance between the groups became more notable in receptive vocabulary compared with the expressive vocabulary. Bilingual children with TD and DLD can be differentiated by using L2 vocabulary tests when exposure is taken into consideration. Non-significant AoO effects in 3-7 year olds suggest flexibility in terms of when to start L2 immersion. However, exposure is important, and especially children with DLD would need a substantial amount of it relative to their TD peers, so that they would not fall even further behind over time. Differences in benefiting from exposure in receptive mode might offer clinicians and kindergarten personnel an insight for evaluating challenges in bilingual development. Severe challenges in vocabulary development in the DLD group also call for both individually targeted small-group activities for learning words as well as strategies for strengthening vocabulary in various environments and everyday life situations. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject Language exposure is often found to explain more of the variation compared with AoO in early L2 vocabulary. On the other hand, it has been suggested by some researchers, but not all, that AoO effects would be found. Exposure and AoO might also interact differently depending on the task and whether the development is typical or disordered. Contrary to the clinical observation, diagnostic value of receptive vocabulary has often been questioned. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study indicates that receptive vocabulary might be useful in differentiating bilingual TD and DLD. Language exposure effects differ between TD and DLD groups, but depending on task. Lower performance, but also slower cross-sectional development, is found in receptive vocabulary for children with DLD. Interaction between language exposure and AoO stresses the importance of taking both into consideration when studying bilingual development. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? L2 vocabulary tests can be used in differentiating bilingual children with TD and DLD when exposure is taken into consideration. Difficulties using exposure and, hence, slower development in children with DLD suggest that especially receptive vocabulary might be diagnostic by the accumulating exposure. Investing in ways of supporting vocabulary development through small-group activities and in everyday situations of bilingual children at risk of DLD is highly recommended. This is important to prevent them from incrementally falling further behind their TD peers over time. A limited AoO effect suggests that families have more flexibility in terms of when to place their child in L2 immersion in their early years.

Associations between receptive and expressive vocabulary and early literacy in young students with intellectual disabilities using AAC.

Objectives: This study examined which factors in the home literacy environment significantly predicted children’s receptive and expressive vocabulary skills.Methods: A total of 45 dyads of children and parents participated in this study. A questionnaire was used to investigate the home literacy environment (Greenberg & Weitzman, 2014), and standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary tests (Kim et al., 2009) were administered to assess the children’s vocabulary skills. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was calculated to examine the correlation between children’s vocabulary skills and home literacy sub-items, a stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted to verify the predicting factors for the children’s receptive and expressive vocabulary skills.Results: The results showed that receptive vocabulary scores were significantly correlated with the parents’ use of questions and child’s reading attitude during book reading; whereas expressive vocabulary scores were significantly correlated with the frequent and repetitive book reading, and children’s attentive reading attitude during book reading. Children’s positive and active participation was a significant factor explaining receptive vocabulary scores. There were no factors that significantly explained children’s expressive vocabulary scores.Conclusion: This study’s results suggest that children’s active participation in book reading was the most important factor predicting children’s receptive vocabulary skills, and confirmed that it is vital for parents to positively encourage children to participate actively while reading a book.

Purpose: to assess the expressive and receptive vocabulary of preschool children and trace the relationship with different socioeconomic factors. Methods: 108 children, aged between 4 and 6 years, were evaluated, 84 from a public preschool and 24 from a private preschool, using the following instruments: CMMS - Columbia Mental Maturity Scale; ABFW; Peabody Image Vocabulary Test (PPVT); CONFIAS - Phonological Awareness: Sequential Assessment Instrument; Rapid Automatic Naming Test (NAR); Questionnaires for the definition of economic classification, general health and family habits. For statistical analyses, the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test, Bonferroni post hoc corrections to check significant differences and Spearman correlation were used. Results: the results found showed a statistically significant relationship between factors such as salary range, mother's and father's education and performance on tests of receptive and expressive vocabulary and mental maturity. Conclusion: evidence showed the relationship of socioeconomic factors with language development in preschoolers.

This study employs the Specificity Principle to examine the relative impacts of external (input quantity at home and at school, number of books and reading frequency at home, teachers' degree and experience, language usage, socioeconomic status) and internal factors (children's working memory, nonverbal intelligence, learning-related social-skills, chronological age, gender) on children's English-language development in phonological awareness (PA), receptive vocabulary (RV), and word reading (WR). Altogether, 736 four- to five-year-old Singaporean Mandarin-English speaking kindergarteners were assessed twice longitudinally. Their English-language PA, RV, and WR development was predicted using the eight external factors and five internal factors with Bayesian least absolute shrinkage and selection operators. Internal factors explained more variance than external factors in all three language domains. External factors had their largest impact on RV.

This study examined the extent to which cognitive ability at 5 years of age predicted language development from 5 to 9 years of age in a population-based sample of children with hearing loss who participated in the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) study. The developmental outcomes of 81 children with hearing loss were evaluated at 5 and 9 years of age. Hearing loss ranged from mild to severe degrees, and all participants used hearing aids. They all used spoken language as the primary mode of communication and education. Nine-year-old language was assessed using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – 4th edition (CELF-4), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – 4th edition (PPVT-4), and the Expressive Vocabulary Test – 2nd edition (EVT-2). Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the extent to which children’s scores on these standardized assessments were predicted by their cognitive ability (non-verbal IQ and verbal working memory) measured at 5 years of age. The influence of early language scores at 5 years and a range of demographic characteristics on language scores at 9 years of age was evaluated. We found that 5-year-old digit span score was a significant predictor of receptive and expressive language, but not receptive or expressive vocabulary, at 9 years of age. Also, 5-year-old non-word repetition test score was a significant predictor of only expressive language and vocabulary, but not receptive language or vocabulary at 9 years of age. After allowing for the effects of non-verbal IQ and 5-year-old receptive vocabulary, early digit span score (but not non-word repetition score) was a significant predictor of expressive and receptive language scores at 9 years of age. The findings shed light on the unique role of early verbal working memory in predicting the development of receptive and expressive language skills and vocabulary skills in children who use hearing aids.

Introduction. According to the lexical restructuring model, the development of vocabulary initiates the development of phonological representations. Therefore, it can be predicted that children with developed vocabulary will possess very specific phonological representations of words. Aim. The aim of this research was to determine the significance of phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming as indicators of the development of expressive and receptive vocabulary in preschool children. Method. The research included 86 children of typical development. For the assessment of phonological awareness, verbal working memory, rapid automatic naming, expressive and receptive vocabulary, the subtests of Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals -Fourth Edition battery were used. Results. The results showed that the model containing age, phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming predicted 51% of the achievement variance on expressive vocabulary tasks (F = 7.73, df1 = 2, df2 = 75, p < .001) and 38% of the achievement variance on receptive vocabulary tasks (F = 4.65, df1 = 2, df2 = 75, p < .001). In the final model, only the tasks of phoneme identification, phoneme substitution, and rapid automatic naming (p < .05) stood out as statistically significant indicators of expressive vocabulary. On the other hand, statistically significant indicators of receptive vocabulary included analysis and synthesis of phonemes, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming (p < .05). Conclusion. The results showed that age, phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming significantly contributed to vocabulary development in children before reading acquisition.

Second language learners who are at-risk for reading disabilities: A growth mixture model study

Research Findings: The home literacy environment and particularly shared reading are central determinants of children’s emergent literacy skills and predictors of their later reading development. Although the importance of frequent shared reading is well established, there is little knowledge about the age at which reading to children starts having beneficial effects. Accordingly, we synthesize five experimental studies (N = 643) to estimate links between retrospectively reported shared-reading onset age, current shared-reading frequency, and a range of emergent literacy skills (expressive and receptive vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, phonological awareness, and oral narrative skill), controlling for child and family characteristics. Retrospective reports of shared-reading onset significantly correlated with current shared-reading frequency and emergent literacy skills. In hierarchical multiple regression analyses, shared-reading onset age predicted grammatical knowledge, receptive and expressive vocabulary, after controlling for child and family characteristics and current shared-reading frequency. However, incremental effects were generally small. Practice or Policy: Findings indicate that early book reading may help to develop emergent literacy skills, even when shared reading begins before the end of children’s first year of life. Thus, we encourage parents to engage in frequent, early book reading activities with their children.

This study investigated the effects of a 12-week language-enriched phonological awareness instruction on 76 Hong Kong young children who were learning English as a second language. The children were assigned randomly to receive the instruction on phonological awareness skills embedded in vocabulary learning activities or comparison instruction which consisted of vocabulary learning and writing tasks but no direct instruction in phonological awareness skills. They were tested on receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness at the syllable, rhyme and phoneme levels, reading, and spelling in English before and after the program implementation. The results indicated that children who received the phonological awareness instruction performed significantly better than the comparison group on English word reading, spelling, phonological awareness at all levels and expressive vocabulary on the posttest when age, general intelligence and the pretest scores were controlled statistically. The findings suggest that phonological awareness instruction embedded in vocabulary learning activities might be beneficial to kindergarteners learning English as a second language.

Objective: The objective of this longitudinal study is to longitudinally monitor the lexical development and language proficiency of Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CI) over a three-year post-implantation period while also investigating whether early receptive and expressive vocabulary skills can serve as predictors for later language abilities in CI recipients. Methods: In this study, 42 children with CIs were selected as participants, including 19 males and 23 females, and with a mean age at CI activation of 16.6±4.9 months. Receptive and expressive vocabulary skills were assessed using the Infant Checklist of the Early Vocabulary Inventory for Mandarin Chinese (EVI) at one-year post-activation (T1). Additionally, expressive vocabulary sizes were evaluated using the EVI-Toddler Checklist, while syntactic ability was measured by the Grammatical Complexity test of the Mandarin-Chinese Communicative Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers at two years post-activation (T2). The comprehensive language development level of preschool children, including language comprehension, expression, and grammar ability, was examined during the third year post-activation (T3) using the Revised Scale for Assessment of Language Disorders in Preschool Children. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 22.0. Results: One year after CI activation, children exhibited a mean receptive vocabulary size of 155.7±52.8 and an expressive vocabulary size of 85.1±63.9. T2's expressive vocabulary size was 455.7±167.7, while the Grammatical Complexity score was 36.5±13.0. The original language development score was determined to be 53.6±14.2 at T3. Correlation analysis revealed significant positive associations between T1's receptive and expressive vocabulary with tests conducted at T2 and subsequent language development measured at T3 (P<0.01). Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between expressive vocabulary at T1 and both tests conducted at T2 (P<0.01), but no significant correlation with subsequent language development measured at T3. Regression analysis showed that T1 receptive vocabulary significantly predicted T2 expressive vocabulary and Grammatical Complexity scores and T3 language development scores. Moreover, the syntactic ability assessed during T2 independently predicted subsequent language proficiency measured at T3. Conclusions: Early receptive vocabulary and grammar ability two years post CI activation significantly predict later language proficiency in children with cochlear implants. Thus, during rehabilitation, emphasis should be placed on enhancing vocabulary and grammar comprehension.

The relationship between amount of bilingual exposure and performance in receptive and expressive vocabulary in French and English was examined in 5-year-old Montreal children acquiring French and English simultaneously as well as in monolingual children. The children were equated on age, socio-economic status, nonverbal cognition, and on minority/majority language status (both languages have equal status), but differed in the amount of exposure they had received to each language spanning the continuum of bilingual exposure levels. A strong relationship was found between amount of exposure to a language and performance in that language. This relationship was different for receptive and expressive vocabulary. Children having been exposed to both languages equally scored comparably to monolingual children in receptive vocabulary, but greater exposure was required to match monolingual standards in expressive vocabulary. Contrary to many previous studies, the bilingual children were not found to exhibit a significant gap relative to monolingual children in receptive vocabulary. This was attributed to the favorable language-learning environment for French and English in Montreal and might also be related to the fact the two languages are fairly closely related. Children with early and late onset (before 6 months and after 20 months) of bilingual exposure who were equated on overall amount of exposure to each language did not differ significantly on any vocabulary measure.