Although family factors are considered important for children’s language acquisition, the evidence comes primarily from affluent societies. Thus, this study aimed to examine the relations between family factors (family’s socioeconomic status [SES], home literacy activities, access to print resources, and parental beliefs) and children’s vocabulary knowledge in both urban and rural settings in China. Data from 366 children (urban group: 109, 4.85 years; rural group: 257, 4.89 years) were collected. Results showed that whereas family’s SES significantly predicted access to print resources and children’s vocabulary knowledge in the rural group, parental beliefs directly predicted children’s vocabulary knowledge in the urban group. Multigroup analysis showed that the associations of family’s SES and access to print resources with children’s vocabulary knowledge were stronger in the rural group than in the urban group. Our findings highlight the importance of considering contextual settings when conceptualising the role of family factors in children’s language acquisition.

Research on the language acquisition of deaf individuals who are exposed to accessible linguistic input at a variety of ages has provided evidence for a sensitive period of first language acquisition. Recent studies have shown that deaf individuals who first learn language after early childhood, late first-language learners (LL1), do not comprehend reversible Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) sentences. The present study analyzed 478 signed productions elicited with pictures depicting simple events with one or two arguments by 28 signers. The argument order patterns of native signers converged with one another and the word order patterns of American Sign Language (ASL). By contrast, the ordering patterns of the LL1 signers did not converge with one another or with the patterns of the native signers. This indicates that early childhood is a period of heightened sensitivity to basic word order and may help explain why complex structures are difficult for LL1 signers to learn.

The current study examined the relationship between interest, the home environment, and young Chinese children’s development of English as a second/foreign language in Hong Kong. Two hundred and seventy-four Hong Kong kindergartners were assessed on their interest in learning English and their English language skills (i.e., expressive and receptive vocabulary). Their parents completed questionnaires eliciting family socio-economic status, parental beliefs, and home learning environment. The results indicated that (1) interest was related to children’s English language abilities after controlling for children’s gender, non-verbal intelligence, and kindergarten type; (2) parents’ beliefs about their child’s English ability and self-efficacy were related to children’s interest in learning English; and (3) interest uniquely contributed to children’s English language ability in the home environment. The present findings provide evidence of the active role that children play in their second/foreign language development and highlight the significant influence of parental beliefs on children’s interest in learning English.

Children acquire vocabulary at different growth rates. The aim of this study was to identify subgroups of different vocabulary trajectories in a community sample of L1 German-speaking children aged 1;6 to 3;0 to enlarge the understanding of vocabulary trajectories. Parents filled out vocabulary checklists at four measurement times, each six months apart. Growth mixture modelling was used to naturally determine latent classes of observed vocabulary growth curve patterns. Six distinct trajectories of vocabulary growth were identified and characterised. Children’s (N=198) vocabulary abilities were divided into the following subgroups: “far above average” (2.0%), “above average” (6.6%), “typical” (70.2%), “below average” (14.1%), “early below average" but caught up with their peers over time (5.6%), and “far below average” (1.5%). Socioeconomic status differed significantly between subgroups.

This study investigates Mandarin-speaking children’s (age 3–7) comprehension development of novel and conventional metonymy, combining online and offline methods. Both online and offline data show significantly better performances from the oldest group (6-to-7-year-old) and a delayed acquisition of conventional metonymy compared with novel metonymy. However, part of offline data shows no significant difference between adjacent age groups, while the eye-tracking data show a chronological development from age 3–7. Furthermore, in offline tasks, the three-year-old group features a high choice randomness and the four-to-five-year-olds show the longest reaction time. Therefore, we argue that, not only age but also metonymy type can influence metonymy acquisition, and that a lack of socio-cultural experience can be a source of acquisition difficulty for children under six. Methodologically speaking, we believe that online methods should not be considered superior to offline ones as they investigate different aspects of implicit and explicit language comprehension.

Research shows that children’s home environment (e.g., the composition of their household and the resources available in it) has an impact on children’s language development. However, this research has mostly been conducted among English speakers from the minority world and has often only considered vocabulary size. This exploratory study investigated whether home environment factors are predictive of grammar development in Afrikaans-speaking (n = 117) and English-speaking (n = 102) toddlers in South Africa. Moreover, potential differences between these two language groups were explored. Results showed that home environment factors pertaining to family stability predicted two of the three grammar scores, namely total grammar and complex phrases. Cluster analysis showed distinct patterns of home environment factors between Afrikaans and English-speaking households, illustrating the importance of measuring these factors even across samples from the same country. This study shows that children’s home environment is an interconnected system and cautions against oversimplified single-factor approaches.

Infants’ language is often measured indirectly via parent reports, but mothers may underestimate or overestimate their infants’ word comprehension. The current study examined estimations of mothers from diverse educational backgrounds regarding their infants’ word comprehension and how these estimations are associated with their verbal input and infants’ receptive vocabulary at 14 months. We compared 34 infants’ looking-while-listening (LWL) performances with the mothers’ Turkish Communicative Development Inventory (TCDI) reports to calculate the mothers’ overestimation and underestimation. During free-play sessions, we assessed the mothers’ number of words, number of clauses, lexical diversity, and linguistic complexity. We found that mothers have overestimations and underestimations regardless of their educational background. Crucially, mothers’ only overestimations were positively associated with their number of words and lexical diversity. Mothers’ verbal input was not related to infants’ receptive vocabulary scores. The findings suggest that mothers’ input might be aligned with their estimations of their infants’ language capabilities, which might not reflect the infants’ true performance.

This study investigated the role of temperament in oral language development in over 200 Mandarin and Cantonese speakers in the Growing Up in New Zealand pre-birth longitudinal cohort study. Mothers assessed infant temperament at nine months using a five-factor Infant Behaviour Questionnaire-Revised Very Short Form. They also reported on children’s vocabulary and word combinations at age two using adapted MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory short forms. Regression analyses were employed to examine unique links between infant temperament and language, respectively, controlling for demographic factors. Fear was associated with larger English vocabularies for English-Mandarin speakers and larger Cantonese vocabularies for Cantonese speakers. Orienting capacity was associated with more advanced word combinations for Mandarin speakers, whereas negative emotionality was associated with less advanced word combinations for Cantonese speakers. Positive affect/surgency was associated with more advanced word combinations for English-Cantonese speakers. This study revealed predictive patterns of infant temperament across Chinese-speaking children’s multiple languages.

English-speaking children sometimes make errors in production and comprehension of biclausal questions, known as “Scope-Marking Errors”. In production, these errors surface as medial wh questions (e.g., What do you think who the cat chased? (Thornton, 1990)). In comprehension, children respond to questions like How did the boy say what he caught? by answering what was caught (de Villiers & Roeper, 1995). These errors resemble wh-scope marking questions, attested in languages like German. Together, these errors suggest temporary adoption of multiple UG-licensed grammars (e.g., Yang, 2002). However, Lutken et al. (2020) found that children who make these errors in production do not necessarily make errors in comprehension and vice versa. They suggest these errors stem from children’s immature processing mechanisms. This article examines children’s production, comprehension, and processing capabilities, specifically working memory (WM). We find a correlation between WM and error rate and suggest separate causes for production and comprehension errors.

Both the quantity and quality of the maternal language input are important for early language development. However, depression and anxiety can negatively impact mothers’ engagement with their infants and their infants’ expressive language abilities. Australian mother-infant dyads (N = 30) participated in a longitudinal study examining the effect of maternal language input when infants were 24 and 30 months and maternal depression and anxiety symptoms on vocabulary size. Half the mothers had elevated depression and anxiety symptoms during at least one point in the study (at 6, 12, 18, 24, or 30 months). The results showed that only maternal input measures (word tokens, types, and mean length of utterance) predicted vocabulary size. While no evidence was found that brief periods of maternal depression and anxiety negatively impacted early vocabulary development, the findings highlight the critical importance and possible mitigating effects of maintaining good quality mother–infant interactions during early development.

Private speech is a tool through which children self-regulate. The regulatory content of children’s overt private speech is associated with response to task difficulty and task performance. Parenting is proposed to play a role in the development of private speech as co-regulatory interactions become represented by the child as private speech to regulate thinking and behaviour. This study investigated the relationship between maternal parenting style and the spontaneous regulatory content of private speech in 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 70) during a problem-solving Duplo construction task. Sixty-six children used intelligible private speech which was coded according to its functional self-regulatory content (i.e., forethought, performance, and self-reflective). Mothers completed the Australian version of the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire. Results revealed a significant positive association between maternal authoritative parenting and the frequency and proportion of children’s forethought type (i.e., planning and self-motivational) utterances during the construction task. There were no significant associations between maternal parenting style and other private speech content subtypes.

We characterised language samples collected remotely from typically developing three-year-olds by comparing them against independent language samples collected in person from age-matched peers with and without language delays. Forty-eight typically developing, English-learning three-year-olds were administered a picture description task via Zoom. The in-person comparison groups were two sets of independent language samples from age-matched typically developing as well as language-delayed children available on the Child Language Data Exchange System. The findings show that although language samples collected remotely from three-year-olds yield numerically dissimilar lexical and grammatical measures compared to samples collected in person, they still consistently distinguish toddlers with and without language delays.