The findings suggest that mothers of children with SLI adjust their repairs to their children's linguistic limitations. The use of supportive repairs is functional to model the children's answers, enables them to practise new words, and contributes to the children's experience of being an active interlocutor. These findings have a potential clinical value that can be used in language intervention programmes based on shared book reading.

This study examined (a) the relationship between gesture and speech produced by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children, and their mothers, during shared book-reading, and (b) the potential effectiveness of gestures accompanying maternal speech on the conversational responsiveness of children. Fifteen preschoolers with expressive SLI were compared with fifteen age-matched and fifteen language-matched TD children. Child and maternal utterances were coded for modality, gesture type, gesture-speech informational relationship, and communicative function. Relative to TD peers, children with SLI used more bimodal utterances and gestures adding unique information to co-occurring speech. Some differences were mirrored in maternal communication. Sequential analysis revealed that only in the SLI group maternal reading accompanied by gestures was significantly followed by child's initiatives, and when maternal non-informative repairs were accompanied by gestures, they were more likely to elicit adequate answers from children. These findings support the 'gesture advantage' hypothesis in children with SLI, and have implications for educational and clinical practice.

Background The regular practice of shared book reading (SBR) at home may play a key role in fostering the linguistic development of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). However, more evidence is needed of the benefits of home‐based SBR interventions on the parents’ conversational strategies and on the communicative and linguistic production of children with DLD. Aims To examine the impacts of a parent‐based SBR intervention on the parent's use of conversational strategies, and on the engagement, conversational participation and linguistic production of Italian‐speaking children with DLD. The mothers trained in the use of SBR strategies were expected to increase their use of these strategies. The children were expected to show gains in their level of engagement and conversational participation during SBR; in turn, moderate increments of the indices of language production were expected. Methods & Procedures Thirty‐two preschool children with DLD participated in the study; all were receiving speech language therapy. Using a non‐randomized pre‐post‐test control trial, 20 mother–child dyads implemented an 8‐week SBR programme (the SBR intervention group), while 12 dyads acted as a comparison group. Based on the ‘dialogic reading’ method, eight verbal and non‐verbal SBR strategies were employed during individual and small‐group parent training sessions. Speech–language therapists were involved in the individual parent training sessions to provide suggestions focused on the specific characteristics of each mother–child dyad. Measures of parents’ intervention strategies, children's engagement, conversational participation and oral language were included. Outcomes & Results At post‐test, mothers in the SBR intervention group used three of the eight SBR strategies—Shared Book Handling, Captivating Talking, and Utterances with a familiar topic—significantly more than the comparison group. Children whose mothers implemented the intervention showed significant gains in terms of time spent in engagement and amount of verbal production during shared reading. No effects were found for the children's communicative initiatives and answers, or for indices of language complexity and diversity. Conclusions & Implications The present parent‐based SBR intervention for Italian‐speaking preschoolers with DLD showed effects, albeit modest, on both maternal and child communicative behaviours. The results suggest that extralinguistic strategies may be implemented successfully by parents and may be effective in enhancing children's engagement and language production in the short term. Further investigations are needed that provide a longer intervention period and examine the joint impact of therapist‐ and parent‐based intervention for children with DLD.

No abstract

The relationship between first and second language in early vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children is still debated in the literature. This study compared the expressive vocabulary of 39 equivalently low-SES two-year-old bilingual children from immigrant families with different heritage languages (Romanian vs. Nigerian English) and the same majority language (Italian). Vocabulary size, vocabulary composition and translation equivalents (TEs) were assessed using the Italian/L1 versions of the CDI. Higher vocabulary in Italian than in the heritage language emerged in both groups. Moreover, Romanian-Italian-speaking children produced higher proportions of TEs than Nigerian English-Italian-speaking children, suggesting that L1-L2 phonological similarity facilitates the acquisition of cross-linguistic synonyms.