Mothers used wider vocabulary and talked to their six-month-old infants more during shared book reading than when they played with toys.

Aim: We compared mothers reading books to six-month-old infants or playing with toys and measured whether the maternal language input influenced the children's spoken vocabulary at 18 months of age.

Method: This Taiwanese study recruited 46 dyads and video recorded them while the mothers read books to their infants and played with them with toys at 6 months of age. The mothers' lexical diversity, which is the ratio of different unique words to the total number of words, was measured.

Predictive brain signals mediate association between shared reading and expressive vocabulary in infants.

The ability to predict upcoming information is crucial for efficient language processing and enables more rapid language learning. The present study explored how shared reading experience influenced predictive brain signals and expressive vocabulary of 12-month-old infants. The predictive brain signals were measured by fNIRS responses in the occipital lobe with an unexpected visual-omission task.

Top-down sensory prediction in the infant brain at 6 months is correlated with language development at 12 and 18 months.

Previous research has suggested that top-down sensory prediction facilitates, and may be necessary for, efficient transmission of information in the brain. Here we related infants' vocabulary development to the top-down sensory prediction indexed by occipital cortex activation to the unexpected absence of a visual stimulus previously paired with an auditory stimulus. The magnitude of the neural response to the unexpected omission of a visual stimulus was assessed at the age of 6 months with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and vocabulary scores were obtained using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI) when infants reached the age of 12 months and 18 months, respectively.

Cross-modal working memory binding and word recognition skills: how specific is the link?

Recent research has suggested that the creation of temporary bound representations of information from different sources within working memory uniquely relates to word recognition abilities in school-age children. However, it is unclear to what extent this link is attributable specifically to the binding ability for cross-modal information. This study examined the performance of Grade 3 (8-9 years old) children on binding tasks requiring either temporary association formation of two visual items (i.

Cross-modal working memory binding and L1-L2 word learning.

The ability to create temporary binding representations of information from different sources in working memory has recently been found to relate to the development of monolingual word recognition in children. The current study explored this possible relationship in an adult word-learning context. We assessed whether the relationship between cross-modal working memory binding and lexical development would be observed in the learning of associations between unfamiliar spoken words and their semantic referents, and whether it would vary across experimental conditions in first- and second-language word learning.

Evaluating the developmental trajectory of the episodic buffer component of working memory and its relation to word recognition in children.

The creation of temporary bound representation of information from different sources is one of the key abilities attributed to the episodic buffer component of working memory. Whereas the role of working memory in word learning has received substantial attention, very little is known about the link between the development of word recognition skills and the ability to bind information in the episodic buffer of working memory and how it may develop with age. This study examined the performance of Grade 2 children (8 years old), Grade 3 children (9 years old), and young adults on a task designed to measure their ability to bind visual and auditory-verbal information in working memory.

Interference control in children with reading difficulties.

Two studies investigated whether the greater Stroop interference reported in children with reading difficulties compared to typical readers of the same age represents a generalized deficit in interference control or a consequence of their reading problems. In Study 1, a color-word Stroop task and a nonverbal task involving responses to locations associated with pictures were administered to 23 children with single word reading difficulties and 22 typically developing children matched for age and nonverbal ability. Children with reading difficulties showed disproportionate interference effects in the color-word Stroop but not the nonverbal task.

Working memory deficits in children with reading difficulties: memory span and dual task coordination.

The current study investigated the cause of the reported problems in working memory in children with reading difficulties. Verbal and visuospatial simple and complex span tasks, and digit span and reaction times tasks performed singly and in combination, were administered to 46 children with single word reading difficulties and 45 typically developing children matched for age and nonverbal ability. Children with reading difficulties had pervasive deficits in the simple and complex span tasks and had poorer abilities to coordinate two cognitive demanding tasks.