Science Vocabulary and Science Achievement of Children With Language/Literacy Disorders and Typical Language Development.

Purpose: This study examined science achievement; science vocabulary knowledge; and the relationship between science vocabulary, language skills, and science achievement in school-age children with language/literacy disorders (LLDs) and typical language development (TD).

Method: Thirty-nine sixth graders (11 with LLDs) completed standardized assessments and researcher-designed science vocabulary measures over Zoom. Scores for the AIMS Science, a standardized science assessment administered to all fourth-grade public-school students in Arizona, served as the outcome measure for science achievement.

Phonological Vulnerability for School-Aged Spanish-English-Speaking Bilingual Children.

This study examined accuracy on syllable-final (coda) consonants in newly-learned English-like nonwords to determine whether school-aged bilingual children may be more vulnerable to making errors on English-only codas than their monolingual, English-speaking peers, even at a stage in development when phonological accuracy in productions of familiar words is high. Bilingual Spanish-English-speaking second- graders (age 7-9) with typical development (=40) were matched individually with monolingual peers on age, sex, and speech skills. Participants learned to name sea monsters as part of five computerized word learning tasks.

A Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers Treatment Efficacy Study: The Effect of Input Utterance Length and Identification of Responder Profiles.

Purpose This study examined the efficacy of the Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers (VAULT) treatment in a version that manipulated the length of clinician utterance in which a target word was presented (dose length). The study also explored ways to characterize treatment responders versus nonresponders. Method Nineteen primarily English-speaking late-talking toddlers (aged 24-34 months at treatment onset) received VAULT and were quasirandomly assigned to have target words presented in grammatical utterances matching one of two lengths: brief (four words or fewer) or extended (five words or more).

The Relationship Between Word Learning and Executive Function in Preschoolers With and Without Developmental Language Disorder.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between executive functioning and word learning among preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Method Forty-one preschool-age children with DLD were matched to typically developing children on age and sex. Participants were exposed to 10 novel pseudowords, half of which referred to familiar objects and half of which referred to unfamiliar objects.

Exploring Input Parameters in an Expressive Vocabulary Treatment With Late Talkers.

Purpose The aims of this study were (a) to assess the efficacy of the Vocabulary Acquisition and Usage for Late Talkers (VAULT) treatment and (b) to compare treatment outcomes for expressive vocabulary acquisition in late talkers in 2 conditions: 3 target words/90 doses per word per session versus 6 target words/45 doses per word per session. Method We ran the treatment protocol for 16 sessions with 24 primarily monolingual English-speaking late talkers. We calculated a score for each child, compared treatment to control effect sizes, and assessed the number of words per week children acquired outside treatment.

Variability of Executive Function Performance in Preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder.

Although results vary across individual studies, a large body of evidence suggests that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have domain-general deficits in executive function compared with peers with typically developing language. Poorer performance for children with DLD has been reported on verbal and nonverbal measures of sustained selective attention, working memory, inhibition, and shifting. However, examination of the variability of task scores among both children with and without DLD reveals a wide range of executive function performance for both groups.