Children's Vocabulary Development Research Articles

Longitudinal Effects of the Family Support Program Chancenreich on Parental Involvement and the Language Skills of Preschool Children.

When they enter primary school children already vary significantly in their language skills, depending at least in part on their family’s social background. In particular, the home learning environment plays a significant role in children’s development. For that reason, early intervention programs have been developed to obviate learning difficulties and to promote health, children’s development, and educational equality. The family support program Chancenreich aims to encourage the interaction and relationship between parents and children through two different course formats. The present study examines the longitudinal effects of attending the Chancenreich program and different course formats on (a) parents attending further educational services for children after completing the program, (b) children’s vocabulary and level of grammar development at the age of 5 and (c) the children’s vocabulary development between the ages of 3 and 5. Furthermore, we examine the relationship between family characteristics and the attendance rates of different course formats of the Chancenreich program at the first and second point of measurement. The study follows a longitudinal design with two points of measurements (T1: Mage = 41 months, T2: Mage = 68 months), and a sample size of 121 parents and their children at T2 in the intervention group and 41 parents and their children in the comparison group. Findings indicate that attendance of the Chancenreich program’s courses is related to child and family characteristics and to later patterns of course participation after completing the program. Further, both children’s level of vocabulary skills (PPVT) at the age of 5 and their development between the ages of 3 and 5 benefit from the parental participation in parenting skills training at the age of 3. Implications and future research on the effectiveness of family support programs are discussed.

Child, family, and school factors in bilingual preschoolers' vocabulary development in heritage languages.

Child characteristics, family factors, and preschool factors are all found to affect the rate of bilingual children's vocabulary development in heritage language (HL). However, what remains unknown is the relative importance of these three sets of factors in HL vocabulary growth. The current study explored the complex issue with 457 Singaporean preschool children who are speaking either Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their HL. A series of internal factors (e.g., non-verbal intelligence) and external factors (e.g., maternal educational level) were used to predict children's HL vocabulary growth over a year at preschool with linear mixed effects models.The results demonstrated that external factors (i.e., family and preschool factors) are relatively more important than child characteristics in enhancing bilingual children's HL vocabulary growth. Specifically, children's language input quantity (i.e., home language dominance), input quality (e.g., number of books in HL), and HL input quantity at school (i.e., the time between two waves of tests at preschool) predict the participants' HL vocabulary growth, with initial vocabulary controlled. The relative importance of external factors in bilingual children's HL vocabulary development is attributed to the general bilingual setting in Singapore, where HL is taken as a subject to learn at preschool and children have fairly limited exposure to HL in general. The limited amount of input might not suffice to trigger the full expression of internal resources. Our findings suggest the crucial roles that caregivers and preschools play in early HL education, and the necessity of more parental involvement in early HL learning in particular.

Дидактические игры как средство формирования словаря у детей младшего дошкольного возраста в условиях дошкольного образовательного учреждения

In this article, features of vocabulary development in younger preschool children are considered, and resource capabilities of pedagogical conditions for its development in the conditions of a preschool institution are discussed. The directions for the successful vocabulary development in children of primary preschool age are determined.

The effect of linguistic comprehension instruction on generalized language and reading comprehension skills: A systematic review.

The effect of linguistic comprehension instruction on generalized language and reading comprehension skills: A systematic review.

Going beyond defining: Preschool educators' use of knowledge in their pedagogical reasoning about vocabulary instruction.

Previous research investigating both the knowledge of early childhood educators and the support for vocabulary development present in early childhood settings has indicated that both educator knowledge and enacted practice are less than optimal, which has grave implications for children's early vocabulary learning and later reading achievement. Further, the nature of the relationship between educators' knowledge and practice is unclear, making it difficult to discern the best path towards improved knowledge, practice, and children's vocabulary outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to add to the existing literature by using stimulated recall interviews and a grounded approach to examine how 10 preschool educators used their knowledge to made decisions about their moment-to-moment instruction in support of children's vocabulary development. Results indicate that educators were thinking in highly context-specific ways about their goals and strategies for supporting vocabulary learning, taking into account important knowledge of their instructional history with children and of the children themselves to inform their decision making in the moment. In addition, they reported thinking about research-based goals and strategies for supporting vocabulary learning that went beyond simply defining words for children. Implications for research and professional development are discussed.

Longitudinal Development of Receptive Vocabulary in Children with Cerebral Palsy and Anarthria: Use of the MacArthur-Bates CDI

ABSTRACT Objective To examine receptive language growth in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and anarthria using a parent-reported measure of vocabulary. Method Scores from 47 children (29 males) with CP and anarthria were obtained from the vocabulary checklists on the MacArthur-Bates Communication Development Inventories (MCDI) and analyzed to examine the distribution of receptive language growth. Linear trajectories of word composite scores were created using a linear-mixed model, incorporating between two and ten data points per child. Results Three different growth trajectories emerged: approximately 23% grew by 100 or more words per year, 13% grew by 50–100 words per year, and 64% grew by 50 words per year or less. Age-four vocabulary was strongly correlated with rate of increase in vocabulary. Conclusion Receptive vocabulary scores from the MCDI are increasing at a reduced pace for most children with CP and anarthria. More sensitive measures of language assessment are necessary to gain a complete picture of their language ability levels.

Lapseen ja lähiympäristöön liittyvien taustatekijöiden yhteys sanaston kehitykseen 24 ja 30 kuukauden iässä

Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää, onko 18 kuukauden iässä kartoitetuilla lapseen ja lähiympäristöön liittyvillä taustatekijöillä yhteyttä sanastollisiin taitoihin 24 ja 30 kuukauden iässä. Tutkimukseen osallistui 37 suomenkielistä tervettä ja täysiaikaisena syntynyttä lasta (16 poikaa ja 21 tyttöä). Tulosten mukaan sukupuoli oli yhteydessä ymmärtävän ja tuottavan sanaston tasoon 24 ja 30 kuukauden iässä sekä tuotettujen sanojen määrään 24 kuukauden iässä. Tytöt saivat korkeampia testipisteitä kuin pojat. Yhden tai useamman korvatulehduksen sairastaminen oli negatiivisesti yhteydessä sekä ymmärtävän että tuottavan sanaston tasoon 30 kuukauden iässä, muttei vielä 24 kuukauden iässä. Lapsilla, joilla oli vähintään yksi sisarus, oli heikompi pistemäärä ymmärtävän sanaston mittauksessa 30 kuukauden iässä kuin perheen ainokaisilla. Lähisukulaisilla esiintyvät kielelliset vaikeudet olivat yhteydessä ymmärtävän sanaston tasoon 24 kuukauden iässä. Esikoisuus ei ollut yhteydessä sanaston kehitykseen, eikä myöskään vanhempien koulutustaso. Aihetta on syytä tutkia lisää suuremmalla otoskoolla, sillä käytännön puheterapiatyössä tarvitaan tietoa piirteistä, jotka lisäävät riskiä kielellisille vaikeuksille.

When Children Are Not Read to at Home: The Million Word Gap.

In the United States, there are numerous ongoing efforts to remedy the Word Gap: massive differences in heard vocabulary for poor versus advantaged children during the first 5 years of life. One potentially important resource for vocabulary exposure is children's book reading sessions, which are more lexically diverse than standard caregiver-child conversations and have demonstrated significant correlational and causal influences on children's vocabulary development. Yet, nationally representative data suggest that around 25% of caregivers never read with their children. This study uses data from 60 commonly read children's books to estimate the number of words that children are exposed to during book reading sessions. We estimated the total cumulative word exposure for children who are read to at varying frequencies corresponding to nationally representative benchmarks across the first 5 years of life. Parents who read 1 picture book with their children every day provide their children with exposure to an estimated 78,000 words each a year. Cumulatively, over the 5 years before kindergarten entry, we estimate that children from literacy-rich homes hear a cumulative 1.4 million more words during storybook reading than children who are never read to. Home-based shared book reading represents an important resource for closing the Word Gap.

Vocabulary Development and Trajectories of Behavioral and Emotional Difficulties Via Academic Ability and Peer Problems.

This study investigates associations between trajectories of children's vocabulary development and subsequent behavioral and emotional difficulties via two potential mediating mechanisms; literacy and peer problems. Nationally representative data from 4,983 Australian children were used to examine trajectories of receptive vocabulary (4-5, 6-7, and 8-9years) and hyperactivity-inattention, conduct problems and emotional symptoms (8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15years), and literacy and peer problems (8-9years). Lower growth in vocabulary was related to trajectories of hyperactivity-inattention, conduct problems, and emotional symptoms. Literacy was a key mediator explaining these associations. Results were consistent for children below the 50th percentile for vocabulary at 4-5years compared to the full sample. These findings suggest that early literacy-based interventions may alleviate declining academic, emotional and behavioral functioning in adolescence.

Differences in the relation between temperament and vocabulary based on children’s stuttering trajectories

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to assess the relation between temperament and vocabulary development for children who stutter and persist, children who stutter and recover and children who do not stutter. MethodsParticipants, aged 3;0–4;11 at the start of the study, were followed for two years. They were classified as persisting (n = 10), recovered (n = 26), and non-stuttering (n = 24) based on multiple assessments of stuttering spaced across study participation. Groups were balanced for age and gender ratios. At each visit, participants completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, 4th edition, and the Expressive Vocabulary Test, 2nd edition; caregivers completed the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire. ResultsFor both persisting and recovered groups, higher negative emotionality was associated with lower receptive vocabulary. These associations were both significantly more negative than the non-stuttering group’s association. ConclusionThese findings suggest that receptive vocabulary development is differentially linked to temperament based on a child’s stuttering status. As others have speculated (Conture & Walden, 2012), it appears as though there are salient associations between temperament, speech-language development, and childhood stuttering.

Domain‐General Cognitive Ability Predicts Bilingual Children's Receptive Vocabulary in the Majority Language

AbstractThis study investigated the influence of cognitive ability on bilingual children's vocabulary development in both their languages. Sixty‐nine bilingual immigrant children participated, with data collected at three annual intervals. At Time 1, the participants were 5 or 6 years old. Receptive vocabulary was tested in the minority (Turkish, Tarifit) and majority (Dutch) languages. Cognitive measures targeted working memory, selective attention, and executive attention. Cross‐lagged correlations were computed to establish the directionality of relationships. Significant partial correlations were followed by stepwise multiple regression analyses in which further control was exerted. Results showed that cognitive ability predicted receptive vocabulary 1 year later. Sequential relationships were found for the majority language only, and attention was more important than working memory. The differential patterns for the two languages set the stage for future research comparing the impact of context, timing, and type of learning on the relationship between cognition and vocabulary development.

Auditory-visual misalignment: A theoretical perspective on vocabulary delays in children with ASD.

In this commentary, we describe a novel theoretical perspective on vocabulary delays in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-a perspective we refer to as auditory-visual misalignment. We synthesize empirical evidence that: (a) as a result of differences in both social and nonsocial visual attention, the auditory-visual statistics available to children with ASD for early word learning are misaligned; (b) this auditory-visual misalignment disrupts word learning and contributes to the vocabulary delays shown by children with ASD; and (c) adopting a perspective of auditory-visual misalignment has important theoretical and clinical implications for understanding and supporting vocabulary development in children with ASD. Theoretically, the auditory-visual misalignment perspective advances our understanding of how attentional differences impact vocabulary development in children with ASD in several ways. By adopting the point of view of the child, we provide a framework that brings together research on social and domain-general visual attention differences in children with ASD. In addition, the auditory-visual misalignment perspective moves current thinking beyond how misalignment disrupts vocabulary development in the moment, and considers the likely consequences of misalignment over developmental time. Finally, considering auditory-visual misalignment may assist in identifying active ingredients of existing language interventions or in developing new interventions that deliver high quality, aligned input. Future research is needed to determine how manipulating auditory-visual alignment changes word learning in ASD and whether the effects of auditory-visual misalignment are unique to ASD or shared with other neurodevelopmental disorders or sources of language impairment. Autism Research 2018, 11: 1621-1628. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: This article describes a new way of thinking about vocabulary delays in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We suggest that children with ASD may have difficulty learning words because their attention is not tuned in to what is most important for learning, creating a mismatch between what they see and what they hear. This perspective brings together research on different types of attentional differences in people with ASD. It may also help us to understand how language interventions work.

Enchantment in storytelling: Co-operation and participation in children's aesthetic experience

In early childhood education, storytelling has traditionally been seen as a learning activity that lays the groundwork for children's vocabulary and literacy development. The present study uses video-recorded storytelling events to examine young children's emotional involvement and aesthetic experiences during adult storytelling in a regular Swedish preschool for 1- to 3.5-year-olds. By adopting a multimodal interactional perspective on human sense-making, socialization, and literacy (Goodwin, 2017), it contributes to research examining multimodality in early childhood literacy (Kyratzis & Johnson, 2017). The analytical focus is on co-operation in aesthetic experience: the teachers’ ways of organizing an entertaining, affectively valorized and ‘enchanting’ storytelling, and the children audience's verbal and nonverbal participation (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004).The study shows that teachers used ‘lighthouse’ gaze, props, marked prosody and pauses to invite the child audience to participate, join the attentive multiparty participation frameworks and share the affective layering of story. The young children exploited the recognizability of the story and contributed by co-participating through bodily repetitions, choral completions, elaborating or volunteering anticipatory contributions, and pre-empting the upcoming story segment. The study suggests that through adult-child co-operation, the embodied telling becomes a site for children's affective and aesthetic literacy socialization.

The Relationship between Imitation, Play, Gestures and Vocabulary in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Otizm spektrum bozukluğu olan çocuklar, sözel olmayan iletişim becerilerinde ve dil gelişiminde sınırlılıklar yaşamaktadır. Dil ve iletişim becerilerinde yaşanan bozukluklar otizm spektrum bozukluğunun tanı ölçütlerinden biridir. Birçok çalışma, sözel olmayan iletişim becerilerinin, alıcı ve ifade edici dil gelişimi ile ilişkili olduğunu göstermektedir. Bu araştırmada taklit oyun ve jestleri ile OSB olan çocukların alıcı ifade edici sözcük dağarcığı arasındaki ilişkiler incelenmiştir. Araştırmanın çalışma grubu, 3-6 yaş arası 7 kız, 29 erkek toplam 36 OSB tanılı çocuktan oluşmaktadır. Araştırmanın sonucunda taklit, jest ve oyun becerilerinin hem alıcı hem de ifade edici sözcük dağarcığı ile ilişkili olduğu bulunmuştur. Bununla birlikte sadece jest kullanımının alıcı ve ifade edici sözcük dağarcığını anlamlı olarak yordadığı bulunmuştur. Araştırmanın bulgularına göre, OSB olan çocuklarda jest kullanımlarının, çocukların sözcük dağarcığı gelişiminde önemli bir rolü olabileceği düşünülmektedir.

Recurrent respiratory tract infections or acute otitis media were not a risk factor for vocabulary development in children at 13 and 24months of age.

This study examined associations between recurrent respiratory tract infections (RTI) and acute otitis media (AOM) during the first one and two years of life and vocabulary size at 13 and 24months of age. We studied 646 children born between January 2008 and April 2010 and followed up from birth to two years of age with daily diary and study clinic visits during RTIs and AOM. The families were recruited from maternity health care clinics or delivery wards in south-west Finland. Parents completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory at 13 and 24months, and the vocabularies of children with high rates of RTIs or AOM were compared to children without recurrent issues. Of the 646 children, 9.6% had recurrent RTIs and 9.9% had recurrent AOM from 0 to 24months. Children with high rates of RTIs or AOM did not have smaller vocabularies than children without recurrent RTIs or AOM. Girls had larger vocabularies and higher parental socioeconomic status was associated with a larger expressive vocabulary at 24months. The child's gender and parental socioeconomic status played a more critical role in vocabulary development in the first two years than a high burden of RTIs or AOM.

Effects of home language input on the vocabulary knowledge of sequential bilingual children

The current study examined whether the vocabulary skills of sequential bilingual children who learned Cantonese as a home language (L1) and English as a second language (L2) were predicted by the amount of L1 and L2 used at home. Ninety-two preschool children who learned Cantonese as L1 were recruited from a Head Start program. The amounts of L1 and L2 used at home were measured using parent questionnaires. Mixed patterns of L1 and L2 use were found across family members and home activities. After controlling for time spent in preschool, regression analyses showed that the amount of L1 and L2 used by individual family members, with the exception of older siblings, was not significantly linked to children's vocabulary skills. In contrast, the language used during some home activities such as dinner and book reading significantly predicted children's vocabulary knowledge. Implications for family involvement in facilitating children's vocabulary development are discussed.

Measures to Develop Vocabulary for Children 3-4 Years Old with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Inclusive Kindergarten School

The research was accomplished with 40 teachers, who are teaching in inclusive kindergarten school in Hanoi in order to evaluate the reality of the degree of utilization and the effectiveness of vocabulary development of children 3 – 4 years old with autism spectrum disorders, which was conducted by teachers then propose some possible measures based on that. The result indicates that the teachers lack of flexibility in the use of the measures, particularly the coordination of measures; the measures have not focused on the vocabulary development but more about perception. From the reality, the research proposes seven measures of vocabulary development of children 3 – 4 years old with autism spectrum disorders focusing on games, providing meaningful situations, enhancing communication through the pictures, encouraging the interaction of children with their friends… Experimental result has shown that children make progress of vocabulary development in all the aspects (1) the ability to understand the meaning of words (2) the ability to apply the correct words into situations (3) the number of words which children can understand and speak. This demonstrates that the proposed measures have had a positive impact on the children.

Children with cochlear implants in infancy: predictors of early vocabulary.

Language outcomes for children with cochlear implants (CIs) vary widely, even for those implanted before 2 years of age. Identifying the main influencing factors that account for some of the variability is important in order to provide information to guide appropriate clinical and intervention services for young children with CIs. However, there is limited research focusing on the predictors of early vocabulary development for children implanted in infancy. To identify significant predictors of vocabulary (12-15 months post-implant) for a sample of 33 children with CIs, the majority implanted between 6 and 10 months of age, drawing on predictors of vocabulary reported for children with normal hearing. Of particular interest was the impact of pre-implant development and use of gestures. Children with severe to profound hearing loss, and no other known disabilities, were recruited from CI clinics in Australia before receiving their CIs. Subscales from the Bayley Scales-III (receptive and expressive communication, gross and fine motor, and cognition) were used to assess their development at that time. Using the Macarthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Words and Gestures) we documented the children's (1) use of gestures at six data-collection times 3 months apart; and (2) vocabulary at the last three time points. Time since implant and time to consistent use of the CIs were also included as potential predictors. Data were analysed using generalized linear models, assuming a negative binomial response with a log-link function. Stepwise variables selection was followed to retain a smaller number of the covariates. A year after implantation, the significant predictors identified for vocabulary were pre-implant receptive communication and early gesture use. Together with fine motor and cognitive skills, these two variables were also significant predictors of vocabulary 3 months later. With maternal education entered into the models, higher vocabulary scores were significantly associated with higher maternal education 12 months post-implantation, but not 15 months. Pre-implant abilities are important in explaining some variability in the early vocabulary of infants with CIs, together with their use of early gestures post-implantation. That is, having a non-verbal means to express a concept can assist in their development of oral vocabulary. Identifying strategies to help develop fine motor skills for infants with CIs, and encouraging their use of gestures to communicate their needs/intentions, are likely to be of benefit.

Vocabulary comprehension and strategies in name construction among children using aided communication

Vocabulary learning reflects the language experiences of the child, both in typical and atypical development, although the vocabulary development of children who use aided communication may differ from children who use natural speech. This study compared the performance of children using aided communication with that of peers using natural speech on two measures of vocabulary knowledge: comprehension of graphic symbols and labeling of common objects. There were 92 participants not considered intellectually disabled in the aided group. The reference group consisted of 60 participants without known disorders. The comprehension task consisted of 63 items presented individually in each participant’s graphic system, together with four colored line drawings. Participants were required to indicate which drawing corresponded to the symbol. In the expressive labelling task, 20 common objects presented in drawings had to be named. Both groups indicated the correct drawing for most of the items in the comprehension tasks, with a small advantage for the reference group. The reference group named most objects quickly and accurately, demonstrating that the objects were common and easily named. The aided language group named the majority correctly and in addition used a variety of naming strategies; they required more time than the reference group. The results give insights into lexical processing in aided communication and may have implications for aided language intervention.

Differential effects of internal and external factors in early bilingual vocabulary learning: The case of Singapore

ABSTRACTBoth internal factors (e.g., nonverbal intelligence) and external factors (e.g., input quantity) are claimed to affect the rate of children's vocabulary development. However, it remains an open question whether these variables work similarly on bilingual children's dual language learning. The current paper examined this issue on 805 Singapore children (4 years, 1 month to 5 years, 8 months) who are learning English (societal language) and an ethnic language (Mandarin/Malay/Tamil). Singapore is a bilingual society; however, there is an inclination for English use at home in recent years, resulting in a discrepancy of input between English and ethnic languages in many families. In this study, internal and external factors were examined comprehensively with standardized tests and a parental questionnaire. Regression analysis was used to address the questions. There were statistically significant differences in language input quantity, quality, and output between English and ethnic language learning environments. Singapore children are learning English in an input-rich setting while learning their ethnic language in a comparatively input-poor setting. Multiple regressions revealed that while both sets of factors explained lexical knowledge in each language, the relative contribution is different for English and ethnic languages: internal factors explained more variance in English language vocabulary, whereas external factors were more important in explaining ethnic language knowledge. We attribute this difference to a threshold effect of external factors based on the critical mass hypothesis and call for special attention to learning context (input-rich vs. input-poor settings) for specific bilingual language studies.