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Background: A wealth of evidence supports the important role high-quality parent-child interactions play in children's early language acquisition. However, the impact on later language outcomes remains unclear. Aims: To examine the associations between responsive parental behaviours across the early years and child language outcomes at age 7 years with families from an Australian longitudinal cohort study (N = 1148, 50% female). Methods & Procedures: At child ages 12, 24 and 36 months, parents completed a self-report measure of responsive parental behaviours. Child language was directly assessed at age 7 using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 4th edition (CELF-4), Australian Standardisation. Linear regression was used to examine associations between responsive parental behaviours from 12 to 36 months (consistently high, inconsistent and consistently low responsive parental behaviours at the three time points) and language scores at age 7 years. Adjusted models were run, including the following potential confounders: child sex; birth weight; birth order; maternal education; socio-economic disadvantage; non-English-speaking background; family history of speech--language problems; mother's vocabulary score; maternal mental health score; and mother's age at birth of child. A final adjusted model was run, including the potential confounder variables as well as adjusting for children's earlier language skills. Outcomes & Results: Linear regression results showed children with parents who rated high on responsive parental behaviours at all three time points had higher mean language scores at age 7 than children whose parents reported low responsive parental behaviours across early childhood. This association attenuated after adjusting for earlier child language skills. Conclusions & Implications: Findings support the consistent use of responsive parental behaviours across the very early years of childhood to support long-term language outcomes. Findings also suggest that models of surveillance and support which monitor and assist families at multiple time-points over the early years are likely to be most effective for preventing ongoing language difficulties.

Purpose: To extend our knowledge about factors influencing early vocabulary development for infants with cochlear implants (CIs), we investigated the impact of positive parenting behaviors (PPBs) from the Indicator of Parent Child Interaction, used in parent-child interactions during everyday activities. Method: Implantation age for the sample recruited from CI clinics in Australia ranged from 6 to 10 months for 22 children and from 11 to 21 months for 11 children. Three observation sessions at three monthly intervals were coded for use of PPBs. Children's productive vocabulary, based on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories parent checklist, was collected approximately 6 and 9 months later. A repeated-measures negative binomial generalized linear mixed-effects model was used to investigate associations between the total PPBs per session, covariates (maternal education, gender, and time since implant), and the number of words produced. In follow-up analyses with the PPBs entered separately, variable selection was used to retain only those deemed informative, based on the Akaike information criterion. Results: As early as Session 1, associations between the PPBs and vocabulary were identified. Time since implant had a positive effect. For different sessions, specific PPBs (descriptive language, follows child's lead, and acceptance and warmth) were identified as important contributors. Conclusions: Complementing previous findings, valuable information was identified about parenting behaviors that are likely to impact positively the early vocabulary of infants with CIs. Of importance is providing parents with information and training in skills that have the potential to help create optimal contexts for promoting their child's early vocabulary development.

For children with normal hearing (NH), early communication skills predict vocabulary, a precursor to grammar. Growth in early communication skills of infants with cochlear implants (CIs) was investigated using the Early Communication Indicator (ECI), a play-based observation measure. Multilevel linear growth modelling on data from six ECI sessions held at three-monthly intervals revealed significant growth overall, with a non-significant slower growth rate than that of children with NH (comparison age centred at 18 months). Analyses of gesture use and of nonword vocalisations revealed the CI group used significantly more of each, with more rapid growth. In contrast, the CI group used significantly fewer single words and multiword utterances, and with slower growth. Maternal education and time to achieve consistent CI use impacted significantly on growth for the CI sample. The results indicate that progression to vocabulary by young CI users can be supported by encouraging their use of prelinguistic communication.

Background: 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. Aims: 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. Methods & Procedures: 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. Outcomes & Results: 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. Conclusions & Implications: 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.

We compared loss and gain in communication from 1 to 2 years in children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (n = 41), language impairment (n = 110) and in children with typical language development at 7 years (n = 831). Participants were selected from a prospective population cohort study of child language (the Early Language in Victoria Study). Parent-completed communication tools were used. As a group, children with autism spectrum disorder demonstrated slower median skill gain, with an increasing gap between trajectories compared to children with typical development and language impairment. A proportion from all groups lost skills in at least one domain (autism spectrum disorder (41%), language impairment (30%), typical development (26%)), with more children with autism spectrum disorder losing skills in more than one domain (autism spectrum disorder (47%), language impairment (15%, p = 0.0003), typical development (16%, p < 0.001)). Loss was most common for all groups in the domain of "emotion and eye gaze" but with a higher proportion for children with autism spectrum disorder (27%; language impairment (12%, p = 0.03), typical development (14%, p = 0.03)). A higher proportion of children with autism spectrum disorder also lost skills in gesture (p = 0.01), sounds (p = 0.009) and understanding (p = 0.004) compared to children with typical development but not with language impairment. These findings add to our understanding of early communication development and highlight that loss is not unique to autism spectrum disorder.

Background: There is variability in the language of children with autism, even those who are high functioning. However, little is known about how they process language structures in real time, including how they handle potential ambiguity, and whether they follow referential constraints. Previous research with older autism spectrum disorder (ASD) participants has shown that these individuals can use context to access rapidly the meaning of ambiguous words. The severity of autism has also been shown to influence the speed in which children with ASD access lexical information. Aims: To understand more about how children with ASD process language in real time (i.e., as it unfolds). The focus was the integration of information and use of referential constraints to identify a referent named in a sentence. Methods & Procedures: We used an eye-tracking task to compare performance between young, high-functioning children with autism (HFA) and children with typical development (TD). A large sample of 5-9-year-old children (mean age = 6;8 years), 48 with HFA and 56 with TD participated; all were attending mainstream schools. For each item participants were shown a display of four images that differed in two dimensions. Each sentence contained an adjective and noun that restricted the choice from four to two (the target and competitor), followed by a prepositional phrase (e.g., "the blue square with dots"); this added modifying information to provide a unique description of the target. We calculated looking time at the target, the competitor and the two distractors for each 200 ms time interval as children processed the sentence and looked at the display. Generalized estimating equations were used to carry out repeated-measures analyses on the proportion of looking time to target and competitor and time to fixate to target. Outcomes & Results: Children in both groups (HFA and TD) looked at the target and competitor more than at the distractors following the adjective and noun and following the modifying information in the prepositional phrase more at the target. However, the HFA group was significantly slower in both phases and looked proportionally less at the target. Across the sample, IQ and language did not affect the results; however, age and attention had an impact. The older children showed an advantage in processing the information as did the children with higher attention scores. Conclusions & Implications: The HFA group took longer than the TD group to integrate the disambiguating information provided in the course of processing a sentence and integrate it with the visual information, indicating that for the ASD group incremental processing was not as advanced as for children with ASD, and they were less sensitive to referential conventions. Training for young children with ASD on the use of referential conventions and available contextual clues may be of benefit to them in understanding the language they hear.

The paper reports on a study designed to develop a risk model that can best predict single-word spelling in seven-year-old children when they were aged 4 and 5. Test measures, personal characteristics and environmental influences were all considered as variables from a community sample of 971 children. Strong concurrent correlations were found between single-word spelling and single-word reading while expressive language and, to a lesser extent, receptive language were less strongly correlated. Predictors of single-word spelling at ages 4 and 5 were dominated by child-related factors such as letter knowledge, a history of speech impairment and expressive language along with maternal word reading ability. Based on the strength of the predictive factors identified at both age 4 and 5, our results provide initial support for using a targeted model for screening pre-schoolers at risk of not mastering spelling in a timely manner.

Background: Language is foundational for neurodevelopment and quality of life, but an estimated 10% of children have a language disorder at age 5. Many children shift between classifications of typical and low language if assessed at multiple times in the early years, making it difficult to identify which children will have persisting difficulties and benefit most from support. This study aims to identify a parsimonious set of preschool indicators that predict language outcomes in late childhood, using data from the population‐based Early Language in Victoria Study (n = 839). Methods: Parents completed surveys about their children at ages 8, 12, 24, and 36 months. At 11 years, children were assessed using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals 4th Edition (CELF‐4). We used random forests to identify which of the 1990 parent‐reported questions best predict children's 11‐year language outcome (CELF‐4 score ≤81 representing low language) and used SuperLearner to estimate the accuracy of the constrained sets of questions. Results: At 24 months, seven predictors relating to vocabulary, symbolic play, pragmatics and behavior yielded 73% sensitivity (95% CI: 57, 85) and 77% specificity (95% CI: 74, 80) for predicting low language at 11 years. [Corrections made on 5 May 2023, after first online publication: In the preceding sentence 'motor skills' has been corrected to 'behavior' in this version.] At 36 months, 7 predictors relating to morphosyntax, vocabulary, parent–child interactions, and parental stress yielded 75% sensitivity (95% CI: 58, 88) and 85% specificity (95% CI: 81, 87). Measures at 8 and 12 months yielded unsatisfactory accuracy. Conclusions: We identified two short sets of questions that predict language outcomes at age 11 with fair accuracy. Future research should seek to replicate results in a separate cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The evidence of a deficit in working memory in specific language impairment (SLI) is of sufficient magnitude to suggest a primary role in developmental language disorder. However, little research has investigated memory in late talkers who recover from their early delay. Drawing on a longitudinal, community sample, this study compared the memory profiles of 3 groups of 5-year-olds: children with SLI who had been identified as late talkers, resolved late talkers (RLTs), and children with typical language development (TLD). Method: Participants were 25 children with SLI, 45 RLTs, and 32 children with TLD. Subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children and the Children's Memory Scale plus recalling sentences and nonword repetition tasks were administered to test the components of Baddeley's working memory model. Results: The SLI group showed significantly poorer performance than the RLT and TLD groups on measures of the phonological loop and episodic buffer. The RLT and TLD groups scored similarly on all memory measures. Conclusions: The results support previous findings that sentence recall and nonword repetition are markers of SLI. Although residual effects of late-talking status may emerge over time, RLTs do not necessarily show memory deficits at 5 years of age despite delayed early vocabulary development.

Infants' auditory processing abilities have been shown to predict subsequent language development. In addition, poor auditory processing skills have been shown for some individuals with specific language impairment. Methods used in infant studies are not appropriate for use with young children, and neither are methods typically used to test auditory processing skills in specific language impairment (SLI). The objective in this study was to develop an appropriate way of testing auditory processing skills in children in the 4-5 year age range. We report data from 49 children aged 4-5 years (mean age 58.57 months) tested on five tasks with tones and synthesized syllables. Frequencies and inter-stimulus intervals were varied in the tone tasks; the second formant transitions between consonant and vowel were varied in the syllable tasks. Consistent with past research, variability was found in children's auditory processing abilities. Significant correlations in discrimination thresholds for the tasks were found. The results from two regression analyses showed that the children's auditory processing abilities predicted significant amounts of variance for receptive and expressive language. (Contains 5 tables, 2 figures, and 2 footnotes.)

Background: Narratives have been used by a number of researchers to investigate the language of children with specific language impairment (SLI). While a number of explanations for SLI have been proposed, there is now mounting evidence that children with SLI have limited memory resources. Phonological memory has been the focus of the research on memory with this population. However, the use of narrative tasks to investigate memory limitations in SLI has not previously been undertaken. Aims: The aims of the research were to investigate the narrative and memory abilities of 6-year-old children with SLI and the association between narrative skills and memory. Methods & Procedures: Two studies were conducted. In Study 1 the performance of the children with SLI was compared with that of their peers with typical language development (AM), and to that of a younger group (LM) matched on expressive language (about 2 years younger). Children were asked to recall ("story recall") and show comprehension of a narrative they had been told, and also to tell a story based on a series of pictures ("story generation"), to recall their story and to answer comprehension questions about it. In Study 2 the children with SLI from Study 1 and the AM children from Study 1 were tested on four working memory tasks: word and digit span, the Recalling Sentences task from the "Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals--Third Edition", and a dual-processing task. An inhibition task and an attention task were also included. It was predicted that children with SLI would perform more poorly than the AM group on measures of narrative telling, but comparably with the LM group. It was also predicted that the SLI group would perform more poorly than the AM group on both literal and inferencing comprehension questions but comparably with the LM group. The third prediction was that there would be significant associations between children's performance on the narrative tasks and the tasks measuring working memory. Outcomes & Results: In Study 1 the children with SLI performed more like the younger group on recall of a narrative they had heard, but more like their peers when asked to generate and recall their own narrative based on a series of pictures. The children with SLI had difficulty with inferencing questions. In Study 2 the impaired group performed significantly worse on measures of memory, showing a lower working memory capacity. The children with SLI made more errors on the attention task, but no group differences were found on the inhibition task. In comparing results from Studies 1 and 2, significant correlations were found between performance on the narrative tasks and memory tasks, but the contribution of memory to the narrative task scores differed for the two stories. The Recalling Sentences memory task was found to be the best overall measure for predicting variance on story comprehension and recall. Conclusions: In support of previous research, the children with SLI showed problems with inferencing, linking directly observed or stated information to likely outcomes. They also showed a limited working memory capacity, and they were more likely to make errors in attention. A main finding was that the narrative abilities of the 6-year-old children were linked to their verbal working memory. The information the SLI group heard was harder to access than information they had been able to generate themselves based on a series of pictures. The findings suggest that children with SLI are likely to be at a disadvantage in classroom situations, particularly for information presented aurally and if the information is complex. The use of pictorial aids may help them encode the information. They would also benefit from having information broken into manageable units. (Contains 6 tables, 2 figures and 6 notes.)

Purpose: E. Bialystok and E. B. Ryan (1985) have outlined two operations, analysis and control, which are required for grammaticality judgments. In this model, analysis is involved in determining the grammaticality of a sentence, and control is required so that irrelevant information is ignored. This study examined these processes in specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Sixteen children with SLI and 20 typically developing (TD) children between 8;6 (years;months) and 10;6 were presented with a grammatical judgment task. Analysis was measured by recording children's decision times in determining grammaticality. Control was assessed by examining accuracy for judgments made for semantically odd sentences. Results: Relative to the TD group, it was found that the children with SLI took longer in judging sentences associated with the process of analysis. Children with SLI were also found to have more difficulty, in terms of accuracy, with items requiring control (e.g., semantically odd sentences) than did the TD group. Conclusion: It is argued that the longer time required for children with SLI to respond to semantically normal sentences reflects a degree of difficulty with completing analysis. The SLI group's lower level of accuracy on semantically odd sentences reflects a problem with a control and is consistent with previously reported problems with cognitive inhibition in SLI.

This paper reports on an investigation of children's (aged 3;5-9;8) comprehension of sentences containing ambiguity of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment. Results from a picture selection study (N=90) showed that children use verb semantics and preposition type to resolve the ambiguity, with older children also showing sensitivity to the definiteness of the object NP as a cue to interpretation. Study 2 investigated three- and five-year-old children's (N=47) ability to override an instrumental interpretation of ambiguous PPs in order to process attributes of the referential scene. The results showed that while five-year-olds are capable of incorporating aspects of the referential scene into their interpretations, three-year-olds are not as successful. Overall, the results suggest that children are attuned very early to the lexico-semantic co-occurrences that have been shown to aid ambiguity resolution in adults, but that more diffuse cues to interpretation are used only later in development. [This research was partially funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award.]

Toddlers' (MA = 22 and 27 months) ability to extend newly taught verbs to new situational and sentential contexts was investigated. Children were interactively taught two novel verbs, presented in only the transitive frame (e.g. "You're lorping the ball"), in a playroom setting. They then viewed the verb actions presented on side-by-side monitors and were asked to distinguish the verbs in three test frames (transitive, intransitive, neutral (e.g. "lorping")). Both groups demonstrated learning of the verbs in the new situation and generalized the verbs to the intransitive sentence frame, but neither generalized reliably to the neutral frame. We conclude that even 22-month-olds demonstrate considerable context independence in their verb representations.

Children with Specific language Impairment (SLI) have problems with verbal memory, particularly with tasks that have more processing demands. They also have slower speeds of responding for some tasks. To identify the extent to which young children with SLI would differ in performance from age-matched non-impaired children on a set of spatio-visual memory tasks. It was predicted that if memory limitations of children with SLI extend beyond the verbal domain to other domains, their performance would be significantly poorer on the spatio-visual tasks than that of the comparison group. It was also predicted that they would be slower in responding. Six spatio-visual tasks were used to compare the performance of 21 children with SLI, with a mean age of 54.1 months, and 21 age-matched non-impaired children. The tasks ranged in difficulty from simple recall to a search-based working memory task. All tasks were administered though a laptop computer and responses were non-verbal using a touch screen. The children with SLI were not significantly slower than the comparison group. However, they were significantly less accurate than the comparison group in recalling patterns, but not in recalling locations. The accuracy for both groups was lower on spatial recall than on pattern recall. The children with SLI were also significantly less able to learn to associate a particular pattern with a particular location, and to have a shorter spatial span. However, on a spatial search task testing working memory, the groups did not differ significantly. The results indicate that the memory limitations of children with SLI are not restricted to verbal memory, and this fact has implications for its aetiology. Intervention programmes for young children with SLI need to extend beyond language in order to help them develop strategies for processing information in different situations.

Focuses on the influence of language specific properties in the acquisition of locative expressions. Some of the claims from literature on the acquisition of locative expressions are discussed and data from the acquisition of Warlpiri are presented and discussed in terms of these claims. (Author/CB)

Purpose: To examine (1) the association between low language (LL) and caregiver's health-related quality of life (HRQoL), (2) whether persistent LL affects caregiver's HRQoL and (3) whether child social-emotional-behavioural (SEB) difficulties attenuates the association between LL and caregiver's HRQoL. Method: Data were from the Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS) and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Caregiver's HRQoL was measured using the EuroQoL-5 dimensions and the Assessment of Quality of Life-8 dimensions. Language ability was determined using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF)-Preschool-2nd or 4th edition (ELVS) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-3rd edition or CELF-4 recalling sentences subscale (LSAC). Child SEB difficulties were measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Multivariable linear regression was used for the analysis. Result: At 11–12 years, an association between LL and reduced caregiver's HRQoL was found in LSAC, but not in ELVS. Persistent LL from 4–11 years seemed to not affect caregivers' HRQoL in either cohort. Child SEB difficulties attenuated the association between caregiver's HRQoL and LL. Conclusion: Both LL and SEB difficulties contributed to reduced caregiver's HRQoL at children age 11–12 years. Interventions supporting children with LL should consider caregiver's well-being in provision of care that meets families' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]