Background: Between 90% and 95% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who often need support with how to adapt their communication. Parent-child interaction (PCI) is an important predictor of deaf children's future language development. It is therefore necessary for professionals to assess parents' strengths and needs to identify areas for…

Background: One of the most consistent findings reported in the paediatric cochlear implant (CI) literature is the heterogeneity of language performance observed more in grammatical morphology than in lexicon or pragmatics. As most of the corpus studies addressing these issues have been conducted in English, it is unclear whether their results can…

Objective: This study was designed to produce a new parent-report measure, the Diagnostic Receptive Expressive Assessment of Mandarin-Infant Toddler Assessment of Communication and Language (DREAM-IT) in order to provide norms for the developmental skills of children aged 0-36 months in four areas: expressive language, receptive language,…

Background: Children born with a cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP ± L) are known to be at risk for speech-language disorders that impact educational and social-emotional growth. It is hypothesized that speech-language intervention delivered before the age of 3 years could decrease the impact of CP ± L on speech-language development.…

Background: Little is known about the spontaneous speech characteristics of young children with language delay in Mandarin, relative to their peers. Until the recent development of standardized language assessments normed in China on Mandarin-speaking children, it was difficult to independently identify atypically developing children to study…

Background: The emergence of language in the early years is a major developmental accomplishment that underpins learning, enables social interaction and, later, is an indicator of well-being. Learning language is an effortless process for most, but can be challenging for others. There is a need to act early. First, because there are several…

Background: One of the most significant developmental accomplishments is the emergence of language in early childhood. Whilst this process is effortless for most children, others can face significant hurdles. Identifying, in the early years, which children will go on to have developmental language disorder is, however, fraught with several…

Background: Evidence shows that the relation with the referent (object manipulation, contact/no contact pointing) and the different hand features (index finger/open palm) when pointing indicate different levels of cognitive and linguistic attainment in typical development (TD). This evidences the close link between pointing, cognition and language…

Background: Speech and language acquisition can be a challenge for young children with Down syndrome (DS), and while early intervention is important, we do not know what early interventions exist and how effective they may be. Aims: To systematically review existing early speech, language and communication interventions for young children with DS…

Aims: To describe typical phonological development of Brazilian Portuguese (BP)-speaking children, considering the following parameters: age of customary production, acquisition and mastery. Methods & Procedures: Data were collected from 857 children aged between 3 years and 8 years 11 months with typical language and speech development. The…

Background: 'Late talkers' (LTs) are toddlers with late language emergence that cannot be explained by other impairments. It is difficult to predict which of these children continue to present long-term restrictions in language abilities and will later be identified as having a developmental language disorder. Procedural memory weaknesses have…

Background: There is empirical evidence that a developmental language disorder (DLD) in early childhood leads to behaviour problems. However, it is still not clear how changes in language proficiency in these children influence the presence of behaviour problems. Aims: The aim of this study is to examine if changes in language proficiency are…

Background: Accurate and detailed records of children's speech are a critical component of competent service delivery in speech-language pathology/speech and language therapy (SLP/SLT). Previous research has shown that during speech-sound acquisition, children gradually learn to produce sounds in adult-like manners. Continuous rating scales are a…

Background: Early reading success is predicated on language and pre-literacy skills. Children who are behind their peers in language and pre-literacy development before formal schooling are less likely to be proficient beginner readers, and difficulties may persist throughout primary school and beyond. We know children experiencing adversity are…

Background: Cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) presents a rather complex challenge that requires understanding beyond biological or clinical perspective. Even though inaccuracies in speech articulation are the common consequences of CL/P, individuals with repaired CL/P are likely to experience other language-associated issues. Studies on social…