UNASSIGNED: The consensus in scientific literature is that each child undergoes a unique linguistic development path, albeit with shared developmental stages. Some children excel or lag behind their peers in language skills. Consequently, a key challenge in language acquisition research is pinpointing factors influencing individual differences in language development.
UNASSIGNED: We observed children longitudinally from 3 to 24 months of life to explore early predictors of vocabulary size. Based on the productive vocabulary size of children at 24 months, 30 children met our sample selection criteria: 10 late talkers and 10 early talkers, and we compared them with 10 typical talkers. We evaluated interactive behaviors at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months, considering vocal production, gaze at mother\'s face, and gestural production during mother-child interactions, and we considered mothers\' report of children\'s actions and gestures and receptive-vocabulary size at 15 and 18 months.
UNASSIGNED: Results indicated early precursors of language outcome at 24 months identifiable as early as 3 months in vocal productions, 6 months for gaze at mother\'s face and 12 months for gestural productions.
UNASSIGNED: Our research highlights both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, identifying the early indicators of belonging to the group of late or early talkers underscores the significant role of this developmental period for future studies. On a practical note, our findings emphasize the crucial need for early investigations to identify predictors of vocabulary development before the typical age at which lexical delay is identified.

BACKGROUND: For over 30 years, parental reports have been used to study the vocabulary of children under 4 years of age. Research exploring parental checklists as a measure of vocabulary in older children is very limited. Typically, authors of parental checklists report the reliability of the developed tools but do not explore validity in terms of the agreement between parental assessments and the children\'s actual word knowledge.
OBJECTIVE: We aimed to explore the reliability and validity of a parental checklist for assessing vocabulary in children aged between 3 and 6 years. Furthermore, we aimed to evaluate the agreement between indirect (parental checklist) and direct (picture naming and picture recognition tasks) assessments of children\'s vocabulary.
METHODS: A group of 94 typically developing monolingual Polish-speaking children aged between 3 and 6 years were first directly tested onsite with picture naming and picture recognition tasks (Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks). Subsequently, the participants\' parents completed an online checklist containing the same set of 128 items and marked all the words that they had ever heard in their child\'s spontaneous speech.
RESULTS: The parental checklist demonstrated very high internal consistency. The scores of the parental checklist and vocabulary tasks were moderately correlated. We compared the total number of words marked by parents and the number of items correctly identified by children in the picture naming and picture recognition tasks. In picture naming, we found no difference between the children\'s scores and the number of words selected by parents. However, parents selected significantly fewer words than children correctly recognised in the picture recognition task. When data were analysed at the level of individual items (i.e., whether parents selected exactly the same items that children answered correctly), we found that the level of agreement was low. The level of agreement correlated negatively with the children\'s vocabulary; that is, the more words a child knew, the lower the agreement between the direct measure and the parental checklist.
CONCLUSIONS: Parental checklists should be used with caution in children aged between 3 and 6 years, especially if the assessed children have a large vocabulary and if item analysis is planned. Such checklists may be of more use in younger children or in children with limited vocabulary.
CONCLUSIONS: What is already known on the subject Parental checklists are commonly used to assess the vocabulary of children younger than 4 years of age. Previous research has indicated that parental checklists are reliable in terms of internal consistency and valid in terms of predictive and convergent validity. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge This study introduces a parental checklist designed for assessing the vocabulary of monolingual Polish-speaking children aged between 3 and 6 years. Statistical analyses reveal that while the parental checklist exhibits high reliability, and the scores on the checklist correlate with direct measures of vocabulary, the agreement between parental reports and direct vocabulary measures (i.e., validity) is notably low, particularly when examining individual test items. What are the clinical implications of this work? These findings underscore the importance of exercising caution when using parental vocabulary checklists with children aged between 3 and 6 years. These checklists can serve as a replacement for direct vocabulary tests only when the general/overall score is needed. However, when specific words are the subject of interest, parental reports may not be a valid measure.

Objective: To investigate the development of receptive and expressive vocabulary in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CI) during the first year after CI activation. Methods: A total of 827 children (411 boys and 416 girls) who were implanted CI before 2.5 years of age from October 2019 to December 2022 in the Department of Auditory Implantation, Shandong Provincial ENT Hospital were included in this study. The Infant Checklist of the Mandarin Early Vocabulary Inventory (EVI) was used to assess the quantity and content of receptive and expressive vocabulary at the time of CI activation and at the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th months post-activation. SPSS 22.0 was used to describe the receptive and expressive vocabulary of CI children at the first year after activation. Results: During the first year after CI activation, CI children\'s receptive and expressive vocabulary consistently increased with the CI usage. The average number of receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary respectively increased from 0 to 178, and from 0 to 97. At the first year of post-activation, the number of receptive and expressive vocabulary of CI children were superior to that of hearing-age matched typical-hearing children, but fell behind of that of chronological age matched typical-hearing children. In terms of lexical categories, receptive and expressive vocabulary was acquired in the following order: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. Among the top 50 words that CI children could express, nouns were the most common, then followed by verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. Father\'s education level can significantly and positively predictethe receptive vocabulary of CI children at the first year post-activation. At the first year after CI activation, the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles were 113, 149, 178, 202, 223 for the receptive vocabulary, and 9, 37, 97, 148, 188 for expressive vocabulary. Conclusion: For Mandarin speaking children with CI, the receptive and expression vocabulary continuely increased within the first year after CI activation. The ability to grasp receptive vocabulary precedes the ability to express expressive vocabulary. Compared to hearing-age matched typical-hearing children, CI children showed faster rate of the vocabulary growth, and earlier and more frequently verb expression. However, it still larged behind that of chronological age matched hearing normal children. CI children respectively understood and expressed nouns and verbs the first. In children with CI, the first concepts understood and expressed were nouns and verbs. Among the first 50 words expressed, nouns were the most numerous, and the age at which verbs were acquired was earlier than that for hearing-age matched typical-hearing children.
目的： 通过对汉语普通话人工耳蜗植入（cochlear implantation，CI）儿童开机后词汇理解及表达的随访，了解其词汇的发展特征，建立普通话CI儿童早期词汇发展的参考数据。 方法： 选取山东省耳鼻喉医院听觉植入科2019年10月至2022年12月期间827例在2.5岁前植入人工耳蜗的儿童，其中男性411例、女性416例。分别在开机时及开机后1、3、6、9、12个月，使用普通话早期词汇量表（Early Vocabulary Inventory for Mandarin Chinese，EVI）中的婴儿版词表来评估CI儿童的理解性词汇和表达性词汇的数量及内容。应用SPSS 22.0软件统计CI儿童开机1年以内理解性词汇及表达性词汇量，采用R软件描绘不同百分位数下CI儿童理解性词汇及表达性词汇的数量及发展趋势，同时采用EXCEL软件计算并列出了CI儿童最先表达的前50个词汇。 结果： 开机1年以内，随人工耳蜗使用时间延长，CI儿童的理解性词汇量和表达性词汇量均持续增加。理解性词汇量从0个（中位数，下同）单词增加到178个单词，表达性词汇量从0个单词增加到97个单词。开机1年时理解及表达性词汇数量均优于听觉年龄匹配的正常听力儿童，但落后于生理年龄匹配的正常听力儿童。对于词性的理解和表达的掌握顺序依次为名词、动词、形容词和代词。在CI儿童会表达的前50个词中，名词占比最多，其次为动词、形容词和代词。父亲受教育水平可以显著正向预测CI儿童开机1年时的理解性词汇。开机1年时，处于第10、25、50、75、90百分位数的CI儿童对应的理解性词汇量和表达性词汇量分别为113、149、178、202、223以及9、37、97、148、188个。 结论： 普通话CI儿童开机1年以内早期词汇的发展特征为随着开机时间的延长，理解性词汇量和表达性词汇量也随之持续增加，且理解先与表达；词汇发展速度快于听觉年龄匹配的听力正常儿童，但仍落后于生理年龄匹配的听力正常儿童。CI儿童最先理解和表达的是名词和动词，最先表达的前50个词中名词最多，并且动词的习得年龄早于听觉年龄匹配的听力正常儿童。.

The words that children learn change over time in predictable ways. The first words that infants acquire are generally ones that are both frequent and highly imageable. Older infants also learn words that are more abstract and some that are less common. It is unclear whether this pattern is attributable to maturational factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficiently developed cognitive faculties needed to learn abstract words) or linguistic factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficient knowledge of their language to use grammatical or contextual cues needed to figure out the meaning of more abstract words). The present study explores this question by comparing vocabulary acquisition in 53 preschool-aged children (M = 51 months, range = 30-76 months) who were adopted from China and Eastern Europe after two and half years of age and 53 vocabulary-matched infant controls born and raised in English speaking families in North America (M = 24 months, range = 16-33 months). Vocabulary was assessed using the MB-CDI Words and Sentences form, word frequency was estimated from the CHILDES database, and imageability was measured using adult ratings of how easily words could be pictured mentally. Both groups were more likely to know words that were both highly frequent and imageable (resulting in an over-additive interaction). Knowledge of a word was also independently affected by the syntactic category that it belongs to. Adopted preschoolers\' vocabulary was slightly less affected by imageability. These findings were replicated in a comparison with a larger sample of vocabulary-matched controls drawn from the MB-CDI norming study (M = 22 months, range = 16-30 months; 33 girls). These results suggest that the patterns of acquisition in children\'s early vocabulary are primarily driven by the accrual of linguistic knowledge, but that vocabulary may also be affected by differences in early life experiences or conceptual knowledge.

Multisyllabic decoding poses a significant challenge to upper elementary grade readers. The purposes of this study were to (a) examine the reliability and validity of a classroom assessment, the Multisyllabic Decoding Inventory (MDI); (b) describe fourth- and fifth-grade students\' decoding of multisyllabic words in relation to their semantic difficulty (age of acquisition ratings); (c) investigate which aspects of word knowledge (word recognition and decoding skill, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological knowledge) predict real word and nonword reading for multisyllabic words; and (d) determine how student word knowledge and semantic difficulty of words jointly affect the odds of accurately recognizing a multisyllabic word. We found that (a) the MDI demonstrated acceptable internal consistency reliability and concurrent validity with standardized measures of word recognition and oral reading fluency; (b) students demonstrated strong performance in reading multisyllabic words and nonwords, but words with higher age of acquisition were less frequently recognized; (c) multisyllabic word reading was predicted by word recognition and decoding skill, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological knowledge, whereas multisyllabic nonword reading was predicted by decoding skills and morphological knowledge only; and (d) grade level, word recognition and decoding skill, and vocabulary at the student level increased the odds of recognizing a multisyllabic word correctly, whereas a word\'s age of acquisition rating decreased the odds of recognizing a multisyllabic word correctly. The results suggest that students in the upper elementary grades may benefit from multisyllabic decoding instruction that integrates decoding and vocabulary strategies.

Infants\' interactions with social partners are richly multimodal. Dyads respond to and coordinate their visual attention, gestures, vocalizations, speech, manual actions, and manipulations of objects. Although infants are typically described as active learners, previous experimental research has often focused on how infants learn from stimuli that is well-crafted by researchers. Recent research studying naturalistic, free-flowing interactions has explored the meaningful patterns in dyadic behavior that relate to language learning. Infants\' manual engagement and exploration of objects supports their visual attention, creates salient and diverse views of objects, and elicits labeling utterances from parents. In this chapter, we discuss how the cascade of behaviors created by infant multimodal attention plays a fundamental role in shaping their learning environment, supporting real-time word learning and predicting later vocabulary size. We draw from recent at-home and cross-cultural research to test the validity of our mechanistic pathway and discuss why hands matter so much for learning. Our goal is to convey the critical need for developmental scientists to study natural behavior and move beyond our \"tried-and-true\" paradigms, like screen-based tasks. By studying natural behavior, the role of infants\' hands in early language learning was revealed-though it was a behavior that was often uncoded, undiscussed, or not even allowed in decades of previous research. When we study infants in their natural environment, they can show us how they learn about and explore their world. Word learning is hands-on.

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is a promising technique for enhancing cognitive performance and skill acquisition. Yet, its efficacy for enhancing learning rate and long-term retention in an ecologically valid learning environment has not been demonstrated. We conducted two double-blind sham-controlled experiments examining the efficacy of auricular tVNS (taVNS: Experiment (1) and cervical tVNS (tcVNS: Experiment (2), on a 5 day second-language vocabulary acquisition protocol among highly selected career linguists at the US Department of Defense\'s premier language school. tcVNS produced accelerated recall performance during training (Day 2-4), benefits of which were maintained across a 24 h retention interval with no stimulation at the final test. Consistent with prior work, tcVNS also produced fatigue-mitigating and focus-promoting effects as measured by the Air Force Research Laboratory Mood Questionnaire. Based on the current and the previous findings supporting tVNS\' efficacy on performance, training enhancement, and fatigue mitigation, we believe tcVNS to be an effective learning acceleration tool that can be utilized at language-teaching and other institutions focused on intensive training of cognitive skills.

UNASSIGNED: This study examined the language and nonverbal inhibitory control skills of Italian monolingual and bilingual typically developing (TD) preschoolers with Italian as their second language and of age-matched monolingual and bilingual peers with developmental language disorder (DLD).
UNASSIGNED: Four groups of preschoolers were enrolled: 30 TD Italian monolinguals, 24 TD bilinguals, 19 Italian monolinguals with DLD, and 19 bilinguals with DLD. All children were assessed in Italian on vocabulary, receptive morphosyntax, and morphological markers for DLD in the Italian language (i.e., third-person verb inflections, definite articles, third-person direct-object clitic pronouns, simple prepositions) and nonverbal inhibitory control skills. Group performance was compared using a series of one-way analyses of variance.
UNASSIGNED: Monolingual and bilingual children with DLD achieved significantly lower performance in all language measures compared to both TD monolingual and bilingual children. However, TD bilinguals, although comprehensively showing better language skills than monolinguals with DLD, achieved a performance closer to that of monolinguals with DLD but significantly higher than that of bilinguals with DLD. Both TD monolinguals and bilinguals showed better results than both DLD groups in inhibitory control tasks, particularly in the interference suppression task.
UNASSIGNED: This study provides a picture of language and inhibitory control characteristics of children with various language profiles and adds to the literature on potential markers of DLD among bilingual children. These results suggest that the assessment of nonlinguistic markers, which are associated with language impairment, could be a useful approach to better specify the diagnosis of DLD and reduce cases of misdiagnosis in the context of bilingualism.

We administered a computerized adaptive test of vocabulary three times to assess the verbal intelligence of chatGPT (GPT 3.5) and Bing (based on GPT 4). There was no difference between their performance; both performed at a high level, outperforming approximately 95% of humans and scoring above the level of native speakers with a doctoral degree. In 42% of test items that were administered more than once these large language models provided different answers to the same question in different sessions. They never engaged in guessing, but provided hallucinations: answers that were not among the options. Such hallucinations were not triggered by the inability to answer correctly as the same questions evoked correct answers in other sessions. The results implicate that psychometric tools developed for humans have limitations when assessing AI, but they also imply that computerised adaptive testing of verbal ability is an appropriate tool to critically evaluate the performance of large language models.

BACKGROUND: The full assessment of bilingual children often involves at least one language for which formal vocabulary tests are lacking and which the examiner does not speak. We examined, in a sample of children with typical development (TD), whether a semantic verbal fluency task, typically used in research as a measure of executive function, could be used in the place of a formal vocabulary test to estimate vocabulary knowledge when formal tests are not available.
METHODS: 113 TD monolingual French speakers and TD bilinguals and with varying degrees of exposure to French, age 6 to 17 years, completed tests of vocabulary knowledge and semantic verbal fluency. A subset of 64 participants spoke French and English and were tested in both languages. Verbal fluency measures calculated using a traditional method which uses specific rules for superordinate categories and for animals of different sex and age and a simplified scoring method which simply counts all words produced, included the total number of words produced in each language, Total Vocabulary and Conceptual Vocabulary measures combining both languages, as well as analyses of lexical composition and word frequency within the study sample.
RESULTS: Linear regressions revealed that the number of words produced predicted vocabulary size in a language-specific way, with slightly stronger predictions made by the simplified scoring method. As expected, bilinguals produced more words and more unique words in their language of greater exposure, while different exposure groups were equivalent in measures combining both languages, including their Total vocabulary and Conceptual vocabulary. Producing unusual words (infrequently produced in the study sample) indicated higher vocabulary scores.
CONCLUSIONS: This study supports the use of the verbal fluency task as a quick and simple tool to obtain a rough estimate of vocabulary size in TD monolinguals and bilinguals. This tool shows promise as well in clinical work with other populations, subject to further verification.