Dual language and literacy development of Spanish-speaking preschool children.

This article describes oral language and early literacy skills in Spanish and English for a sample of 319 bilingual children in Massachusetts and Maryland (ECS) and a comparison group of 144 monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Puerto Rico (PRC). Children were assessed as they entered and exited pre-kindergarten programs. Data collection included four subtests of the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery and a researcher-developed phonological awareness task.

Longitudinal prediction of child outcomes from differing measures of parenting in a low-income sample.

This study examined predictions from preschool parenting measures to middle childhood cognitive and socioemotional child outcomes to explore whether parenting assessment methodologies that require more time, training, and expense yield better predictions of child outcomes than less intensive methodologies. Mother-child dyads (N = 278) in low-income African American families were assessed when the child was in preschool, using maternal report, the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment-Short Form (P. Baker & F.

Differential diagnosis of selective mutism in bilingual children.

Early diagnosis of selective mutism (SM) is an important concern. SM prevalence is higher than initially thought and at least three times higher in immigrant language minority children. Although the precludes diagnosing SM in immigrant children with limited language proficiency (as children acquiring a second language may normally undergo a “silent period”), specific diagnostic boundaries are not clear.