Cascades in Language Acquisition

CHAPTER THREE
Cascades in language
acquisition: Re-thinking
the linear model of development
Laura X. Guoa, Amy Pacea,*, Lillian R. Masekb,
Roberta M. Golinkoffc, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasekd
a
University of Washington, Seattle, United States
b
New York University, New York, United States
c
University of Delaware, Newark, United States
d
Temple University, Philadelphia, United States
*Corresponding author: e-mail address: amypace@uw.edu
Contents
1. Introduction 70
2. Defining cascades 73
3. Looking within: Cascades within the language “module” 73
4. Beyond the language module: Interdependencies between developmental
systems 75
4.1 Perceptual to language 75
4.2 Social to language 76
4.3 Motor to language 79
5. Cascades in dual language acquisition 80
5.1 Linking dual language input, language processing skills, and bilingual
outcomes 81
5.2 Individual differences and learning mechanisms in bilingual trajectories 83
5.3 Cascades across languages: Patterns of cross-linguistic interaction (CLI) 85
6. Cascades in developmental language disorder 86
6.1 Early identification of developmental language disorders (DLD) to prevent
further cascade impact 86
6.2 Domain-specific language intervention can achieve immediate language
gain across domains 88
6.3 Early language intervention supports long-term language development
across domains 90
7. Cascades and language development: A reprise 92
References 95
#
Advances in Child Development and Behavior, Volume 64 Copyright 2023 Elsevier Inc. 69
ISSN 0065-2407 All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2022.11.004
70 Laura X. Guo et al.
Abstract
The first 5 years of life are characterized by incredible growth across domains of
child development. Drawing from over 50 years of seminal research, this chapter
contextualizes recent advances in language sciences through the lens of develop-
mental cascades to explore complexities and connections in acquisition. Converging
evidence—both classic and contemporary—points to the many ways in which
advances in one learning system can pose significant and lasting impacts on the
advances in other learning systems. This chapter reviews evidence in developmental
literature from multiple domains and disciplines (i.e., cognitive, social, motor, bilingual
language learning, and communication sciences and disorders) to examine the
phenomenon of developmental cascades in language acquisition.
1. Introduction
Wicked problems require complex, interdisciplinary solutions.
Explaining how babies learn to talk is a wicked problem. For decades,
researchers have documented the milestones of language acquisition, with
production of a first word appearing at roughly 12 months and expressive
grammar at somewhere around 2 years. We know that children often point
to indicate reference at around 10 months of age and that they begin to
pummel their parents with the word “why” at 2.5–3 years of age.
Doctors’ charts and textbooks have clear descriptions of language growth
that are rough markers of development. What we have yet to truly discover
are the mechanisms behind these milestones. Does a first word just appear
because humans are “destined” to learn language in the way that “spiders
spin webs” (Pinker, 1994)? Or might a baby’s first word emerge in the con-
text of living in a somewhat predictable social and physical environment
(Karmiloff-Smith, Thomas, & Johnson, 2018; Plunkett, Karmiloff-Smith,
Bates, Elman, & Johnson, 1997)? Otherwise put, are humans born with a
modular language “organ” as Chomsky (1965) suggested or might they have
domain general abilities in memory, attention, and statistical processing
(Ruba, Pollak, & Saffran, 2022; Saffran & Kirkham, 2018) that enable them
to skillfully harness the input that they hear en route to the comprehension
and production of language? To study child language acquisition, researchers
have often adopted a top-down approach that starts with formal description
of adult language forms and then investigates how children’s language come
to fit in that description (e.g., Miller, 1991; Pinker, 1994), or a bottom-up
approach that describes child language development in its own terms with-
out an assumption of adult forms, also referred to as usage-based models
(e.g., Pereira, Smith, & Yu, 2014; Tomasello, 2000a).
Cascades in language acquisition 71
For many years, researchers pondered these alternatives. In his scathing

1959 review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, Chomsky argued that no amount
of associative learning of mere environmental input would ever allow chil-
dren to generate novel sentences. Researchers in the 1970s and 1980s thus
adopted what was called a “core knowledge” perspective of language
growth equipped with a universal language module that was honed by input
(Carey & Spelke, 1996; Spelke, 2000, 2022). Computer modeling, connec-
tionism (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982; Elman, Bates, & Johnson, 1996) and
statistical learning studies (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996) continue to test
the alternative model that infants learn language through a bottom-up
process, in which language is an emergent behavior. By 1996, with the
publication of The Origins of Grammar (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996),
it was clear that language was a complex system that probably required
the mechanistic equivalent to “starter dough,” but that the rate and complexity
of the unfolding development was governed by social and perceptual develop-
ments that were outside the language domain per se. Our Emergentist
Coalition model was deeply influenced by Thelen and Smith’s (1994)
dynamic system’s models (Tucker & Hirsh-Pasek, 1993) as we argued that
language growth is more of a multifaceted developmental systems model
than part of a linear process enfolded within a single language module.
We wrote that,
The framework we have proposed highlights the fact that children do not rely on a
single type of input as they negotiate sentence meaning; rather, they live in a world
of multiple inputs they piece together… (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996, p. 198).
And further we stated,

The crux of the story is this: Rather than characterizing the different language
inputs as always being in some hierarchic relation to each other, it is much more
useful to think of these inputs as systems of developing knowledge that are mutu-
ally informing and always available with weights at different developmental
points. Such a vision provides us with a non-linear framework for development
(Hirsh-Pasek, Tucker, & Golinkoff, 1995, p. 485).
These quotations presage the advent of the cascade approach, recognizing

that as different systems within and outside of the language domain come
online the very process of language acquisition changes. Others suggested
similar multipronged models (Hollich, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2000;
Tomasello, 2005; Waxman & Markow, 1995; Werker & Tees, 1984) as
the realization that language required diverse inputs and settings grew.
Our intellectual neighbors studying social development had already been
influenced by Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) systems theories of multiple contexts
influencing developmental outcomes at multiple levels over multiple

times. Karmiloff-Smith (1992), a cognitive psychologist, also argued that
researchers should eliminate the nativist-empiricist dichotomy in favor of
an approach that recognized that, “The skeletal outline [of the mind]
involves attention biases toward particular inputs and a certain number of
principled predispositions constraining the computations of those inputs”
(p. 15). This perspective, too, opened the door to the idea that a single
smoking gun found only within the language domain could not explain
how language acquisition occurred. The field of language growth, however,
stood firmly with its cognitive cousins studying linear models of language
growth from milestone to milestone often in lab-based settings. While
this method was productive, debates between domain general and domain
specific impacts on language acquisition continued to reign and the questions
studied became narrower and narrower.
In many ways, language learning is a case study for traps that can
occupy scientifists when they zooms into language per se and ultimately lose
sight of a whole child living in a complex world. Lois Bloom argued the
same, insisting that language researchers move from the lab to the world
(Bloom, 2000). She argued that the MIT child was a “cold” child, receiving
no inputs from the environment other than a few sentences to set them off
on the path of language. Recent developments in what is called a cascade
theory of development (e.g., Iverson, 2021; Masten & Cicchetti, 2010;
Oakes & Rakison, 2019), underscore Bloom’s plea for researchers to change
the paradigm. Bloom recognized early on that the study of language acqui-
sition required building a richer picture that embraced both domain general
and domain specific mechanisms. Her perspective was that language growth
could only be witnessed by demonstrating how these mechanisms from
different areas of development over different time periods and in different
contexts provided a foundation for language milestones.
This chapter offers an update of our thinking about language acquisition
using the lens of developmental cascades. We review four areas that
support such a framework: (1) within language itself; (2) across domains
of development that systematically provide a foundation for language learn-
ing; (3) across two languages in the study of bilingualism; and (4) acquisition
in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). In the end, we
suggest that language is a perfect proving ground for a cascade model.
Thinking in a more holistic way—as Bloom long ago suggested—opens
doors to a clearer understanding of the developmental mechanisms that sup-
port the emergence of language milestones. Reflecting on where the field
has been and where it is going places contemporary work in a larger context
and it invites exploration of developmental cascades in language acquisition.
2. Defining cascades
The construct of developmental cascades was first defined as the
“cumulative consequence for development of the many interactions and
transactions occurring in developing systems that result in spreading
effects across levels, among domains at the same level, and across different
systems and generations” (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010, p. 491). More
recently, Oakes and Rakison (2019) borrow from such luminaries as
Piaget’s mechanisms of accommodation and assimilation (Piaget, 1952,
1954), Gibson’s perceptual learning (Gibson, 1963, 1988) and Gottlieb’s
epigenetic model (Gottlieb, 1991) to argue that cascades involve three broad
components: (a) development that reflects the use of multiple mechanisms;
(b) mechanisms of developmental change that operate at many levels includ-
ing perception and cognition; and (c) the emergence of any behavior,
thought, or ability—in general, any milestone—is but one mark in an ongo-
ing developmental cascade (Oakes & Rakison, 2019, p. 6). As they rightly
acknowledge, the search for a single developmental cause of an outcome
does not generate an understanding of a complex behavior. To use a
Bayesian perspective, development is more like multiple systems operating
in tandem that then provide the priors for the next level of development.
They identify what they call the Humpty Dumpty problem, which is a
narrow focus on developmental milestones in isolation. As they wrote,
“Put another way, the development of any ability (e.g., searching for hidden
objects, uttering the first word, taking a step) involves the whole child”
(Oakes & Rakison, 2019, p. 61). While Oakes and Rakison (2019) demon-
strate the viability of a cascade model across multiple areas of infant
development, they pose the model as one that can advance an understanding
of development generally. Here we focus on just one area of study–that of
language development.
3. Looking within: Cascades within the language

“module”
There is no question that better language skills early in life beget better
language ability later in life (Pace, Luo, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2017).
Likewise, there is no shortage of evidence documenting within-domain
connections between the exposure to language that children receive in

infancy and early childhood and both short- and longer-term outcomes
in children’s language understanding and usage (Fernald and Weisleder,
2011). Although findings from the classic Hart and Risley (1995) study on
the 30-million word gap have incited enormous debate (e.g., Golinkoff,
Hoff, Rowe, Tamis-LeMonda, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2018; Sperry, Sperry, &
Miller, 2018), it is now widely accepted that across cultures and income levels,
more language input predicts more vocabulary output (see Golinkoff et al.,
2018, for a review; Masek et al., 2021).
Reciprocal cascades have also been described such as the mutually
reinforcing effects that infants’ own babbling and vocal play have on the
early perception of speech sounds; this learning loop is then shaped by adult
imitation and feedback, giving rise to more sophisticated phonological
processing (Gros-Louis, West, Goldstein, & King, 2006; Long, Ramsay,
Bowman, Burkhardt-Reed, & Oller, 2022). Such a longitudinal cascade
describes chains over time that link certain aspects of language development
with subsequent language learning outcomes. A strong example of how
infants’ own babbling fuels their subsequent language development comes
from children who are born congenitally deaf. Infant vocalizations are
prompted by hearing their own noises; only when children receive cochlear
implants do their vocalizations increase to the level of hearing babies (Fagan,
Bergeson, & Morris, 2014). The fact that hearing is one of the behaviors
that permits the vocal babbling cascade to occur suggests that cases where
an element is missing may be particularly informative about the role that
other factors play in the appearance of the milestone. However, it should
also be noted that the babbling cascade is not only limited to hearing babies.
Infants who are congenitally deaf but are raised in environments where
they are exposed to a signed language from birth demonstrate manual babbling
which feeds directly into sign language development (Petitto & Marentette,
1991). Identifying the factors at play in the appearance of a language mile-
stone invites thinking broadly about what underlies that milestone. What
are the necessary and sufficient factors that contribute to the milestone’s
appearance?
Developmental cascades are crystal clear in language learning because so
many of the linguistic skills that children acquire rely on prior acquisition
of foundational communication skills as well as children’s current state of
comprehension and production. Evidence strongly suggests, for example,
that the amount of vocabulary a child possesses supports later grammatical
development (Levine, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2020; Moyle, Weismer,

Evans, & Lindstrom, 2007). Moyle et al. (2007) found that lexical develop-
ment continues to predict grammatical development beyond 3 years old
for groups of typically developing children and late talkers. Given that
language skills are mutually reinforcing particularly in the early stages of
development ( Justice et al., 2015), individual differences in infancy can
likely account for a substantial proportion of subsequent skill development
(Gibson, Newbury, Pickles, Conti-Ramsden, & Toseeb, 2021). In line with
a cascade lens, robust converging evidence suggests that seemingly small
differences in infancy can be traced across learning trajectories and result
in magnified differences in elementary school and beyond (Donnelly &
Kidd, 2021; M€a€att€a et al., 2016; Yu et al., 2021). For example, infants
who more rapidly tune into the speech sounds that occur in their native
language(s) and simultaneously tune out speech sounds that do not occur
are the ones with larger vocabularies over a year later (Tsao, Liu, & Kuhl,
2004) and early differences in productive vocabulary have been linked with
academic achievement 10 years later (Bleses, Makransky, Dale, Højen, &
Ari, 2016).
While these within-domain correlations reveal a co-dependency of one
area of language growth on another, they fail to demonstrate the full portrait
of early language acquisition, which is as reliant on social and perceptual
development as it is on language priors. Looking through a wide-angle
lens, recent research demonstrates how the social interactions that infants
have with caregivers pave the way for learning words and vocabulary
(Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). In fact, early socially contingent interactions
actually build brain structure and connectivity that are central to language
learning (Romeo et al., 2018).
4. Beyond the language module: Interdependencies

between developmental systems
4.1 Perceptual to language
We can think of acquisition as a set of cascading systems that align to set the
foundation for language learning. In our emergentist coalition model of language
development (Hollich et al., 2000), we argued that perceptual, social, and
linguistic development converge to enable word learning and grammatical
development. In fact, we demonstrated how infants rely on and weight
different inputs at different times in development in ways that cascade to
language growth. At first, vocabulary is determined more through percep-

tual association of an object with its label. Later, children use the rich
resources of their social partners to infer the meaning of a word. For exam-
ple, when one very interesting and one boring object are placed side by
side, children in the first phase at around 12 months assume a label goes with
the interesting object, even when the speaker indicates the boring object
through eye gaze and gesture.
By 18 months of age, toddlers are more likely to assume that the word
labels what the social partner indicates rather than that which is just percep-
tually interesting (Briganti & Cohen, 2011; Frank, Tenenbaum, & Fernald,
2013; Lee & Lew-Williams, 2022). Generally, infants around the age of
18 months rely heavily on social cues (e.g., communication bids from
caregivers, joint attention opportunities to share interests) to develop verbal
and non-verbal cognition (Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2019). Finally,
by 24 months of age, children shift to rely more heavily on linguistic cues (e.g.,
morphology and syntax) to bootstrap word learning (Fisher, Jin, & Scott,
2020; Gleitman, 1990; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996; Jin & Fisher, 2014;
Pozzan, Gleitman, & Trueswell, 2016).
4.2 Social to language

Language development embedded in the nexus of social interaction; it does
not occur in a vacuum. Infants learn language in the context of rich social
interactions with caregivers (Tamis-LeMonda, Kuchirko, & Song, 2014).
However, infants are not passive recipients during language learning inter-
actions (Foushee, Srinivasan, & Xu, 2022). Infants use their burgeoning
social attention skills to learn language from the interactions around them
(Begus & Southgate, 2018; Masek et al., 2021). One key set of skills is joint
attention—the ability to knowingly share attention and engagement around
an object or event with another. As infants develop their joint attention
skills, they use these skills to learn new words from the interactions they
engage in. This process starts early, before infants even utter their first words.
Around 6 months of age, infants begin to develop an understanding
of joint attention, as evidenced by their ability to follow an adult’s point
or eye gaze to an object of shared attention (Collis & Schaffer, 1975;
Morales, Mundy, & Rojas, 1998; Scaife & Bruner, 1975). This early devel-
oping social skill opens a multitude of opportunities for infant language
learning. Looking at what caregivers are looking at helps infants to identify
what the caregiver is talking about, increasing the referential clarity of the
caregiver’s speech (Trueswell et al., 2016). Indeed, infants’ ability to respond
to a caregiver’s joint attention relates to their later language skills (Brooks &
Meltzoff, 2008; Morales et al., 1998, 2000; Mundy & Gomes, 1998;
Mundy & Newell, 2007). In one study, infants who more accurately
followed their mothers’ gaze at 6-months-old knew more words at
12-months-old and produced more words at 18-, 21-, and 24-months
old relative to infants who were less accurate (Morales et al., 1998). At
the same time, caregivers respond to infants’ bids for joint attention in
ways that reinforce the transactional flow of dyadic communication. One
recent study found that maternal linguistic responsiveness to their child’s
actions along with child language skills at age 2 predicted children’s expres-
sive language at age 4 (Levickis, Reilly, Girolametto, Ukoumunne, &
Wake, 2018).
As infants’ social understanding improves over the first year of life, infants
begin to actively bid for joint attention by pointing and alternating their gaze
between their social partner and their intended target (Bates, Camaioni, &
Volterra, 1975; Carpenter, Nagell, Tomasello, Butterworth, & Moore,
1998). Indeed, joint engagement around objects predicts language deve-
lopment in infancy (e.g., Conway et al., 2018; Trautman & Rollins,
2006). In one study, spontaneous pointing among 10- to 11-month-old
infants predicted the rate of infant vocabulary growth over the second year
of life (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2008). Contingent interactions between infants
and caregivers may explain this association. By directing their caregivers’
attention, infants can elicit language input about the objects and events about
which they want to learn. Indeed, in experimental manipulations, infants
learn the labels and functions for objects they point to better than for other
objects they don’t (Begus, Gliga, & Southgate, 2014; Lucca & Wilbourn,
2018; Wu & Gros-Louis, 2015). In one such study, 16-month-old infants
learned the labels for novel words best when the label followed the infants’
own pointing gesture, as opposed to their gaze or at predetermined timing
(Wu & Gros-Louis, 2015). Infant pointing coupled with caregiver response
not only helps infants to learn words in the moment, but it also has cascading
effects on later language development (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2008; Colonnesi,
Stams, Koster, & Noom, 2010; Mundy & Newell, 2007).
As joint attention skills mature over the second year of life, infants engage
in more prolonged periods of joint attention, or joint engagement states,
with caregivers (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984). Joint engagement is a rich
context for language learning as it provides ample opportunities for infants
and caregivers to share attention with each other in increasingly complex
ways. Bouts of joint engagement become infused with symbols such as
words, gestures, and episodes of pretend play, which predict language
development in toddlers (Adamson, Bakeman, & Deckner, 2004; Hirsh-Pasek

et al., 2015) and into the preschool years (Adamson, Bakeman, Deckner, &
Nelson, 2014). Caregivers scaffold and support joint engagement by
responding to the objects of infants’ interests, play, and touch (Rivera,
2019). Together, this work highlights how joint attention is a communica-
tive behavior that is mutually reinforced within parent-child dyads. Parental
responsiveness to children’s own information seeking behaviors creates
reciprocal cascades of increasing engagement—which in turn, provides
additional opportunities to build language.
Joint attention is just one aspect of infants’ social development that
impacts language learning; other social skills also impact language learning.
Infants’ understanding of who is and is not a reliable informant relates to
who they elicit language input from and how well they learn from that input
(e.g., Bazhydai, Westermann, & Parise, 2020; Begus, Gliga, & Southgate,
2016; Begus & Southgate, 2012). Later in infancy, infants’ understanding
of social interactions allows them to attend to and learn from overheard
conversations (e.g., Akhtar, 2005; Shneidman, Buresh, Shimpi, Knight-
Schwarz, & Woodward, 2009). Infants’ knowledge about the communica-
tive intentions of others allows them to learn words when the referent is
not even present in the environment (Tomasello, 2000b; Tomasello,
Strosberg, & Akhtar, 1996). Across the early years of life, infant social under-
standing increases opportunities for language learning. However, it is not
just social development that opens these doors; social skills work together
with other emerging skills across domains to support the complex process
of learning language.
Young children’s own contribution to learning continues to emerge
during the first 5 years. A wonderful example of how the child’s own inter-
ests and attention skills impact their language development comes from a
study of how preschool children engage in self-directed learning while over-
hearing speakers talking in a naturalistic context (Foushee, Srinivasan, & Xu,
2021). Claiming that children are active learners of language who select
the input they wish to attend to, they offered young children a story with
simple versus complex input (many new words). Based on children’s level
of development, the researchers could predict who would prefer to pay
attention to the simple versus the complex input. Five year olds (but not
3 year olds) preferentially allocated and coordinated their attention to both
overheard speech and child-directed speech to learn multiple new words
(Foushee et al., 2021).
4.3 Motor to language

Infant motor development, like social development, creates opportunities
for infant language learning. Advances in the control of the tongue and lips
allows infants to better articulate the sounds of their language. Development
of fine motor skills allows infants to extend one finger to point as a way to
direct the attention of the adults around them. And burgeoning gross motor
skills allow infants to see the world from a different vantage point, and to go
further and faster. Here, we focus on how the transition from crawling to
walking has cascading impacts on infant language skills.
Most infants make the transition from crawling to walking around the
end of the first year of life, the same time that most infants begin to produce
their first word. Although this may seem like a developmental coincidence,
it is not. For typically developing infants, the transition from crawling to
walking is accompanied by an acceleration of vocabulary learning indepen-
dent of the age at which this transition occurs (He, Walle, & Campos, 2015;
Walle & Campos, 2014; West, Leezenbaum, Northrup, & Iverson, 2019).
Why do walkers learn more words faster than crawlers? Walking changes
how infants interact with their caregivers, and how caregivers speak to
infants.
Free hands are one key change that comes with walking. Crawlers rely
on their hands to support their weight while locomoting; walkers have free
hands to use to communicate with their caregiver. Walking onset, indepen-
dent of age, is associated with an increase in infant use of communicative
gesture, including points and show gestures that serve to elicit language from
caregivers (Clearfield, 2011; West & Iverson, 2021). Infants with free hands
can more easily carry objects to caregivers (Karasik, Tamis-LeMonda, &
Adolph, 2011), which in turn elicits more and different input from care-
givers (Karasik, Tamis-LeMonda, & Adolph, 2014). The early development
of fine motor skills, including pointing and picking up objects to interact,
predicts child expressive language in later years (LeBarton & Iverson,
2013). While studying motor and communicative development trajectories
in infants who are at risk for autism spectrum disorder, researchers (Iverson,
2018; LeBarton & Iverson, 2013) found that advances in language skills
were supported by advances in motor learning and variation in infant fine
motor and language development appears to have cascading effects on later
development.
Caregiver speech likewise changes with their infants’ developing motor
skills. Mothers speak more to infants when they are walking as opposed to
crawling (Schneider & Iverson, 2022), and respond in different ways to the
social bids of crawlers versus walkers (Karasik et al., 2011, 2014). What
walkers hear also differs from what crawlers hear. In a study of infants
and mothers interacting at home, mothers named the motor and manual
actions that their infant performed, for example saying “Jump! Jump! Jump!”
while the infant jumped (West, Fletcher, Adolph, & Tamis-LeMonda,
2022). Walking infants have more actions, both manual and motor, available
to them than did crawlers and hence, appear to elicit a wider range of input.
Cascading developmental processes among these different domains
(perceptual, social, and motor), each of which has its own developmental
trajectory, form a foundation for language development. Yet, language
development offers multiple ways to think about cascades that even go
beyond the integration of multiple systems from multiple contexts across
multiple time periods. In the following section, we use cascade thinking
to better understand bilingual development.
5. Cascades in dual language acquisition

Despite broad enthusiasm for modeling developmental cascades in
the process of language acquisition, a large portion of this work has been
centered on infants learning a single language. Examining bilingual language
acquisition provides another point of entry to understand cascade models
because researchers can more systematically examine cross linguistic inter-
action and the contribution and interaction of the child’s own language
processing skills with key features of input and exposure. Thus, the purpose
of the next section is to explore the evidence for how “language begets
language” in dual language learners (DLLs)—or children who acquire a
second language within the first 6 years of life (Guzman-Orth, Lopez, &
Tolentino, 2017). The research presented in this section begins to untangle
complex patterns of linguistic interaction and suggests that caregivers and
children engage in evolving language exchanges as the child’s language
competency grows and caregivers modify their own language input to
scaffold more sophisticated communication. Specifically, we explore how
relative language input interacts with children’s language processing skills
to influence bilingual outcomes; the role of individual differences and learn-
ing mechanisms in bilingual development; and patterns of cross-linguistic
influence across languages.
5.1 Linking dual language input, language processing skills,

and bilingual outcomes
Ample evidence documents how early acquisition of foundational commu-
nication skills is important for subsequent language learning in monolinguals
and DLLs alike (De Houwer, Miller, Bayram, Rothman, & Serratrice, 2018;
Paradis, 2017). One commonly explored pathway in monolingual develop-
ment is the connection between properties of the language input, the child’s
language processing skills, and subsequent language development (Hurtado,
Marchman, & Fernald, 2008; Newman, Rowe, & Ratner, 2016). A parallel
cascade can be described in bilingual development (De Houwer et al., 2018;
Hurtado, Gr€ uter, Marchman, & Fernald, 2014). Here, as in the monolingual
literature, input is most often defined by proximal factors that directly relate
to the speech children hear such as exaggerated vowel production in
infant-directed speech (Kalashnikova & Carreiras, 2022), the types of
questions adults pose (Palacios, Kibler, Baird, Parr, & Bergey, 2015) and
the kind of verbal scaffolding caregivers provide in the context of naturalistic
daily interactions in each language (Casla et al., 2021; Fletcher, Cates,
Mendelsohn, & Tamis-LeMonda, 2020). As is critical in the study of
cascades, these predictive patterns hold even after accounting for the devel-
opmental continuity and stability that would be expected over time in any
domain of adaptive behavior (Bornstein, Putnick, & Esposito, 2017). In
this way, cascades are rooted in systems theories of development which
emphasize the importance of understanding not only the key elements
within the system but also (and perhaps more importantly) their interactions
(Sameroff, 1983). Thus, a combination of the child’s language exposure and
linguistic processing skills clearly gives rise to the child’s bilingual language
competencies.
Several studies have documented the effects of relative exposure to each
language on development within each language (Cha & Goldenberg, 2015).
In a study of DLLs between 22 and 30 months of age, relative input in
each language was associated with the number of words children produced
in each language and the rate of language growth within this period (Hoff
et al., 2012). Moreover, effects were language specific: children who were
exposed to larger proportions of English had stronger English skills whereas
children exposed to relatively more Spanish had stronger Spanish skills.
Recent research highlights children’s exposure to and experience with
the non-societal language–that is, a language spoken at home that is distinct
from the language spoken by members of the larger community–as an
essential component of bilingual development throughout childhood and
adolescence ( Jang & Brutt-Griffler, 2019). In a large-scale longitudinal

study of simultaneous bilingualism, children who heard mostly Spanish
input between 30 months and 5 years had the strongest bilingual skills
(in English and Spanish) at age 5 whereas other children demonstrated
English dominance (Hoff, Tulloch, & Core, 2021). In sequential bilingual
learners, children with the strongest Spanish language processing skills at age
2 similarly demonstrated the strongest bilingual outcomes in both English
and Spanish at age 4.5 (Marchman, Bermúdez, Bang, & Fernald, 2020).
Thus, bilingual proficiency may require high quality input that prioritizes
the home language as it is likely to become the language of less exposure
once the child enters school environments (Hiebert & Rojas, 2021).
However, input alone is not sufficient for DLLs to become proficient
speakers of both languages (e.g., Core, 2020; Hoff, 2020). Notably, children
need practice using and producing each language—ideally in a variety
of supported contexts with multiple native speakers of each language—to
demonstrate growth in expressive language skills (Ribot, Hoff, &
Burridge, 2018). Dyadic interactions between children and caregivers are
also key, but in bilingual families, patterns of dual language input may be het-
erogeneous and show substantial variability over time (Luo, Escobar, &
Tamis-LeMonda, 2020). In our recent work with Spanish-speaking
mother-child dyads in the U.S., for example, we found that change over time
in mothers’ productive grammatical complexity was significantly coupled
with change in children’s productive grammatical complexity in Spanish
(Pace et al., 2021). We also found high correspondence in mother–child dis-
course trajectories, such that changes in children’s rate of asking questions
were associated with a similar change in mothers, and children’s turn-taking
and likelihood of responding to questions were inversely related to mothers’
questions over developmental time. These pathways are consistent with
the notion of developmental cascades because early trajectories of maternal
language use accounted for the longitudinal link between children’s language
use and receptive language 1 year later (Pace et al., 2021). Moreover, focusing
on a narrow period of development may obscure longer-term developmental
trends. Together, these findings suggest that the emergence of new patterns
of behavior (e.g., bilingual proficiency) may be understood as a cascade of
multiple influences, including the relative timing of the start of input in
two languages, the child’s cumulative experience with both languages in
the context of the societal language, and changes in sources of language input
and use over time.
5.2 Individual differences and learning mechanisms

in bilingual trajectories
Individual differences at the level of the child also impact dual language
trajectories. Children’s own preferences about which language to use
during conversations with other bilingual speakers has been recognized
as a significant predictor of language development (Ribot et al., 2018).
Specifically, children who consistently responded to Spanish with
Spanish (or switched to Spanish when addressed in English), showed
different trajectories of bilingual growth than children who reliably
responded to English with English and sometimes chose to switch to
English when their primary caregivers addressed them in Spanish (Ribot
et al., 2018). Notably, child-level variables do not always have equivalent
effects on each language; rather they often display language-specific asso-
ciations. For instance, in another recent study, phonological memory
contributed to outcomes in both languages (Spanish and English) whereas
nonverbal IQ contributed only to English vocabulary development (Lauro,
Core, & Hoff, 2020). Together, these findings reflect one of the core
features of cascade models—the fact that children are not passive recipients
of input but are active agents in their own language construction. Foushee
et al. (2021) said it well, “…children preferentially attend to some sources
of language over others…and select the linguistic information they want to receive
in order to enhance their own learning” (p. 2; authors’ italics).
For infants exposed to more than one language, this extends to monitor-
ing both languages during real-time listening in a way similar to bilingual
adults (Byers-Heinlein, Morin-Lessard, & Lew-Williams, 2017). In this
study, infants and adults heard same-language (Find the dog!) and
switched-language (Find the chien!) sentences. Cognitive processing load
in response to language mixing was measured via pupillometry. Although
both infants and adults both showed processing costs during mixed
sentences, it was reduced or eliminated when the switch occurred from
the nondominant to the dominant language. These effects reflect an active
learning strategy—used by infants and adults alike—to navigate bilingual
environments by monitoring their languages for efficient comprehension
(Byers-Heinlein et al., 2017). By age 5, bilingual children succeeded at
learning novel words presented in a code-switched (Spanish-English) con-
dition with fewer exposures than novel words presented in an English-only
condition and this effect was not moderated by children’s language ability
or exposure to code-switching (Kaushanskaya, Crespo, & Neveu, 2022).
These are just two examples of the way in which bilingual acquisition
emerges from dual language input and processing strategies that may differ
from monolingual contexts.
Exposure to more than one language may also result in different word
learning heuristics. When monolingual infants are presented with two
objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar, they can reliably apply a strategy
of disambiguation when they hear a novel label and infer the word-object
map through a mutual exclusivity assumption (Markman & Wachtel, 1988).
Bilingual infants, however, know that this is an unreliable strategy because
one object, such as a utensil for eating soup for example, can have more than
one label (e.g., spoon and cuchara). In one study, monolingual infants showed
strong use of disambiguation during word learning whereas bilingual infants
showed marginal use and trilingual infants showed no disambiguation
(Byers-Heinlein & Werker, 2009). The number of languages the infant
was learning (but not vocabulary size) predicted the strength of the effect.
Moreover, bilingual children between 2 and 5 years have shown that they
are equally capable of applying a disambiguation strategy as monolingual
infants when this strategy facilitates word learning but are more likely to
suspend or be flexible with their application of the strategy in contexts that
are less reliable (Byers-Heinlein, Chen, & Xu, 2014; Kalashnikova,
Mattock, & Monaghan, 2015; Kalashnikova, Escudero, & Kidd, 2018).
Distal factors that reflect sociocultural norms such as values and beliefs
about parenting and language pedagogy are also important to consider in
cascading models and may vary in degree of influence depending on the
child’s developmental stage. Factors such as maternal health and wellbeing,
community support, and access to linguistically and culturally-relevant early
childhood services are critical components to evaluate (Serrano-Villar,
Huang, & Calzada, 2017; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2020). Toddlerhood,
for example, appears to be a pivotal period in which beliefs, values, and
practices related to language and literacy development become embedded
into daily interactions and set the foundation for early childhood education
(Cycyk & Hammer, 2020). Family practices around the frequency of literacy
activities and language choices during shared book reading have both been
linked with bilingual outcomes, emphasizing the importance of active and
intentional planning for heritage language maintenance (Hammer et al.,
2020; Quiroz, Snow, & Zhao, 2010). In our own work, the home literacy
environment mediated the association between family socioeconomic status
and children’s language processing skills in preschool-aged DLLs (Luo et al.,
2021). The use of the cascade lens, therefore, invites reflection on key indi-
vidual differences and potential mechanisms that drive bilingual trajectories.
5.3 Cascades across languages: Patterns of cross-linguistic

interaction (CLI)
We have already observed evidence for language-specific effects and seen
that the relation of input to acquisition may be different for different aspects
of language and also different as a function of each language. We now adjust
the aperture of our lens to focus on evidence for cross-linguistic interaction,
training our eyes to pay specific attention to patterns of transfer or influence
across languages. Even though many correlations among linguistic elements
are stronger within each language than across languages (e.g., vocabulary and
grammar are likely to be strongly correlated with each other in one language,
but not with the other language; Hoff, Quinn, & Giguere, 2018), transfer is
nonetheless very common. Indeed, there is substantial evidence to suggest
that cross-linguistic influence (CLI) is prevalent in many language domains
including phonology, vocabulary, grammar, narrative, and more (DeAnda,
Arias-Trejo, Poulin-Dubois, Zesiger, & Friend, 2016; Restrepo, Mesa, &
Yeomans-Maldonado, 2021; Verhoeven, 2007).
One explanation for CLI comes from the structural sensitivity hypothesis,
which proposes that exposure to bilingual input fundamentally alters
children’s language development while simultaneously increasing children’s
awareness of the patterns and properties of input that vary by language
(Kuo & Anderson, 2012). In this way, bilingual experience naturally facil-
itates children’s metalinguistic skills by providing ample opportunity to
compare and contrast features and parameters of two (or more) languages.
From a cascade framework, we can interpret cross-linguistic influence as
evidence that children are drawing from language specific and language
general knowledge to support new bilingual acquisition and development.
Cross-language influence has been described by a growing number of
studies showing how children’s early skills in the home or heritage language
contribute to subsequent learning not only within that language, but also
across languages. For instance, children with stronger Spanish-language
processing efficiency at 2 years had stronger English-language skills at
4½ years, controlling for socioeconomic status and exposure to English
(Marchman et al., 2020). Critically, this research indicated that children’s
early language processing efficiency in Spanish was associated with stronger
real-time information processing skills that supported maintenance of
Spanish in addition to learning in English when children entered school.
However, it should be emphasized that these findings were unidirectional;
children’s English processing skills did not contribute to subsequent Spanish
learning. This pattern is consistent with other research showing that skills
in the primary home language often contribute to learning of the societal
language, whereas children with stronger skills in the societal language do

not show comparable benefits for supporting the heritage language and
are often at higher risk for heritage language attrition (Hiebert & Rojas,
2021; Quiroz et al., 2010).
Recent evidence from our laboratories have also shown how DLLs may
rely on knowledge from one language (e.g., word learning skills) to support
learning (e.g., new vocabulary words) in both, but that this capacity is
also moderated by language experience (Pace et al., 2021). Specifically,
we investigated associations among preschool children’s vocabulary, gram-
mar, and word learning processes in English and Spanish and asked how
existing vocabulary and grammar comprehension in each language related
to children’s ability to learn new words—including nouns, adjectives, and
verbs—within and across languages. In addition, we tested the moderating
role of dual-language experience by asking whether associations varied
for children reported to have balanced experience with English and
Spanish and for children reported to have more experience with Spanish
than English. Notably, we found that preschool children with more expo-
sure to Spanish demonstrated better word learning skills in both Spanish and
English (Pace et al., 2021). In contrast, children who received more expo-
sure to English than Spanish did not show commensurate benefits in Spanish
word learning. Thus, evidence for CLI is ample, but the direction of mutu-
ally beneficial support is more likely to come from strong foundational skills
in the primary home language rather than strong societal language skills.
This finding has important implications for encouraging parents to speak
to their children in their home language. Of course, individual differences,
family dynamics, cultural values, parenting practices, and community sup-
port surrounding bilingualism are important factors that must be considered
for a holistic understanding of complexities contributing to longitudinal
bilingual trajectories. Once again, a developmental cascade approach moti-
vates us to consider the factors that influence bilingual language acquisition.
6. Cascades in developmental language disorder

6.1 Early identification of developmental language
disorders (DLD) to prevent further cascade impact
Young children with language learning difficulties have diverse profiles.
The terminology of Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) describes
a specific group of children who have expressive and receptive language dif-
ficulties in the absence of intellectual disabilities, hearing loss, neurological
impairments, or other developmental delays (Green, 2020). Language devel-

opment trajectories in children with DLD demonstrate the interactive effect
of cascades not only across language domains but also across the lifespan. An
impairment in the acquisition and use of different modalities of language
(e.g., spoken, written, and sign language) can be caused by deficits in recep-
tive and expressive skills across any of the five language domains: phonology,
morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics (Paul, 2020). Meanwhile,
DLD in childhood tends to have long-term sequelae through cascading
processes over time. For instance, preschool children with delayed phono-
logical processing skills are more likely to develop reading difficulties in later
school years (Dickinson, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2010; Eissa, 2014;
Schaadt & M€annel, 2019); difficulty with grammatical morphology (e.g.,
plurals and past tense) is a clinical marker of DLD in young children until
adolescence (Moraleda-Sepúlveda & López-Resa, 2022; Scott, 2014); and
lexical and semantic deficits, as another hallmark of DLD, may have
pervasive impacts in multiple areas including reduced vocabulary size, slow
lexical retrieval, and/or slow semantic processing that can impact academic
outcomes (Drljan & Vukovic, 2019; Kornilov, Magnuson, Rakhlin,
Landi, & Grigorenko, 2015; Lowe, Henry, M€ uller, & Joffe, 2018).
Early language and communication skills contribute to lifelong positive
outcomes. Early identification and intervention is recommended for chil-
dren under three who are at risk for language disorders. However, many
children with language impairments are not accurately identified until
school age, which means that children and families may miss the critical win-
dow to receive professional support (Kaiser, Chow, & Cunningham, 2022).
Professionals in the field of communication science and disorders have
called for a universal screening approach to help identify young children
who have language delays as early as possible. Reliable early predictors
for DLD include delay in gesture use, late spoken language emergence, lim-
ited sentence comprehension and few word combinations at the age of
30 months (Sansavini et al., 2021). For instance, symbolic gesture use at
the age of 36 months exerted a direct cascading effect on emergent literacy
through the age of 12 (Elder, 2005). A large repertoire of symbolic gestures
in infancy was associated with learning written symbols and size of reading
vocabulary during school-age. All of these features are important indicators
of subsequent language skills, providing robust evidence for cascading effects
in the case of atypical development.
Language screeners now exist that can be administered on a tablet to
monolingual English children as young as 24 months of age through age 6
(Golinkoff et al., 2017; Pace et al., in press). The Quick Interactive Language
Screener for Toddlers (QUILS: TOD) and the Quick Interactive Language
Screener (QUILS) for preschoolers (Golinkoff et al., 2017; Pace et al., in
press). Researchers have also created a Spanish-English bilingual language
screener (QUILS: ES; de Villiers et al., 2021) that is validated by strong
relations with other widely used language tests (de Villiers et al., 2021; de
Villiers, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, & Iglesias, 2021). One benefit of the
QUILS is that it can be administered by a teacher or classroom aid in
15–20 min and is scored automatically, reducing traditional barriers to wide-
spread screening. The purpose of the creation of the QUILS was to identify
children with potential language issues as early as possible in their language
trajectory. And, because the QUILS tests vocabulary, grammar, and the
learning of new language items, different pieces of the language puzzle
can be pulled apart. Cascade models also play an important role in identify-
ing early precursors and markers of language delay and can be harnessed to
meet the continuing need for increasing widespread assessment and diagno-
sis of language disorders.
6.2 Domain-specific language intervention can achieve

immediate language gain across domains
Language skills can be categorized into discrete domains, such as phonology,
semantics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics. Standardized language
assessment tools have been developed to evaluate one or more individual
domains to identify deficit areas and provide specific instructional guidance
for implementing treatment plans. For example, most language outcome
studies (Donnelly & Kidd, 2021; Pollard-Durodola et al., 2021; Silvey,
Demir-Lira, Goldin-Meadow, & Raudenbush, 2021) with young children
with language delay use vocabulary tests, like the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test (PPVT) or parent-report vocabulary inventory, like the
MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs).
With school-age children, comprehensive assessment tools, such as the
Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Fifth Edition (CELF-5)
and Test of Language Development–Primary, Fifth Edition (TOLD-P:5),
are used to gain information about linguistic level in multiple domains.
Notably, however, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and other special
education professionals who target age-appropriate skills within a specific
deficit area sometimes achieve improvements in other language domains,
indicating developmental cascades across subdomains of language. For
example, Tyler, Lewis, Haskill, and Tolbert (2002) assessed the effects of
a morphosyntax (i.e., the linguistic system of the internal structure of words

and the way in which words are combined together to form larger units like
phrases and sentences) and a phonological intervention on non-targeted
language domains. Participants were 20 preschool children with DLD
who were assigned to two treatment groups. Both treatment groups
received two 12-week intervention blocks beginning with either the
phonology intervention block first or the morphosyntax intervention block
first. As compared with the assessment results of the control group, both
intervention programs achieved significant improvement in the target area
after the first 12-week block. In addition, the morphosyntax (e.g., Tyler
et al., 2002) intervention observed cross-domain change in phonological
skills that was similar to the change observed after the phonology interven-
tion. Note that not all studies with a proposed language intervention can
generate across-domain effects due to various factors including intervention
frequency and duration, implementing fidelity, and teaching techniques
(Combiths, Barlow, Richard, & Pruitt-Lord, 2019).
Compared with static language assessments that measure language
learning products of what a child already knows, dynamic assessments have
been developed to measure language learning processes of how a child
learns, especially for children from diverse cultural and linguistic back-
grounds (Kapantzoglou, Restrepo, & Thompson, 2012; Luo et al., 2021;
Orellana, Wada, & Gillam, 2019; Pace et al., 2021; Peña, Iglesias, & Lidz,
2001). As one type of dynamic assessment of examining learning processes,
fast-mapping is a well-studied approach that is used to observe how infants
rapidly link a novel label with an unfamiliar word during the initial stages of
word learning (Pace et al., 2021). Fast-mapping studies have demonstrated
that typically developing toddlers and preschoolers can efficiently and
effectively extend their initial mapping to new linguistic items just after a
brief exposure stage (Bergelson & Swingley, 2012; Bion, Borovsky, &
Fernald, 2013; Borovsky, Elman, & Kutas, 2012). Moreover, monolingual
and bilingual children with DLD tend to establish a slow or incorrect initial
connection between a linguistic item and its referent as compared with
their typical developing peers in fast-mapping tasks (Chen & Liu, 2014;
Dollaghan, 1987; Kapantzoglou et al., 2012). The examination of word
learning processes can help identify the children who need extra support in
word learning from both monolingual and bilingual learning backgrounds.
The identification of the underlying factors for word learning difficulties,
such as poor verbal working memory, can ensure that young children receive
appropriate support (e.g., visual cues to support verbal working memory
during language learning tasks), which could prevent cascading impacts on

the advances of other language domains (Duyck, Szmalec, Kemps, &
Vandierendonck, 2003; Gorman, 2012).
Another hypothesis about learning processes is that across-domain
bootstrapping plays a significant role for language learning in both typically
developing children and atypically developing children. Children use
vocabulary knowledge to learn grammar, which is known as semantic
bootstrapping; children use syntactic cues to learn verbs, which is known
as syntactic bootstrapping (Blom & Boerma, 2019; Cao & Lewis, 2022;
Fisher, Gertner, Scott, & Yuan, 2010; Gleitman & Gleitman, 2001;
Wagley & Booth, 2021). Similar associations are found in the development
of semantic and syntactic skills in typically developing children and children
with DLD. A neurocognitive study examined bi-directional relations
between the neural development of semantics and syntax at two time
points: ages 6–7.5 years old and age 7–8 years old (Wagley & Booth,
2021). A significant bi-directional relation was identified in children by
6–7.5 years old. Another study measured semantic and syntactic skills of
typically developing children and children with DLD at age 5–6 years old
three times within a year, using standardized tests of receptive vocabulary,
sentence repetition, and nonverbal executive functioning tests (Blom &
Boerma, 2019). Both participant groups showed stable development in
semantic and syntactic domains, but children with DLD relied more on their
syntactic skills to learn meanings of new words than did typically developing
children. Clinical implication from this line of research is that children
with DLD are likely to benefit from language interventions with syntactic
goals, which would lead to both within-domain and across-domain impact
such as verb learning (Cao & Lewis, 2022). Thus, utilizing a cascade frame-
work when designing language treatment may contribute to new targets or
strategies for intervention.
6.3 Early language intervention supports long-term language

development across domains
As we have already seen throughout this chapter, many skills come to bear
on language learning in a dynamic, cascading way. Research from language
intervention offers powerful evidence for the confluence of multiple com-
plex factors that contribute to positive developmental outcomes. Although a
majority of clinical studies have examined short-term effects of specific
language interventions, a few studies have also explored long-term effects
of domain-specific early language intervention on more generalized language
outcomes and academic performance. Numerous intervention studies

(Conner, Kelly-Vance, Ryalls, & Friehe, 2014; Landa, Holman, O’Neill,
& Stuart, 2011; Schertz & Odom, 2007; Wetherby & Woods, 2006;
Yoder & Warren, 2004) have provided empirical evidence of building
early social, symbolic, and prelinguistic foundations for positive spoken
language and literacy outcomes in typically developing children, children
with DLD, and children with other developmental delays such as Autism
Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
Interventions to support literacy development are likewise grounded in
the idea that multiple oral language skills and experiences need to be targeted
to affect the developing system (Dickinson et al., 2010). Specifically, (pre)
school-based intervention approaches often target skills in multiple domains
of language including phonological processing, lexical and grammatical
development, and narrative skills, which are all known to have long-term
spreading effects on emergent literacy (Fricke, Bowyer-Crane, Haley,
Hulme, & Snowling, 2013; Kaiser & Roberts, 2011; Mesa et al., 2020;
Sawyer & Butler, 1991; Staskowski & Creaghead, 2001; Ukrainetz, 2017).
Phonological processing refers to the skill to use sounds to process written
and oral language. Children who struggle with phonological processing have
difficulty with phonological awareness skills such as identifying individual
sounds in spoken words. Early reading fluency is dependent on many oral
language skills, including word retrieval, phonological and word decoding,
and sentence comprehension. It is estimated that one in three school-age
children experiences reading difficulties in the United States, which nega-
tively impacts academic performance and the ability to participate in literacy
activities throughout adulthood (Espinosa, 2002). Therefore, it is important
that children who demonstrate early signs of reading difficulties receive
professional support as soon as possible before having a learning disability
due to cascading effects (Gillon, 2002).
Cascade models also provide support regarding the best ways to imple-
ment language interventions for optimal outcomes. For instance, there is
substantial empirical evidence that caregiver-mediated early intervention
can achieve positive effects on target language outcomes, such as vocabulary
skills (Korat & Shneor, 2019; Zipoli Jr, Coyne, & McCoach, 2011?), gram-
mar and morphological development (Finestack, 2018), conversation skills
(Leech & Rowe, 2021; Ramı́rez, Lytle, & Kuhl, 2020; Suskind et al., 2016),
as well as establishing the important communication foundation upon
which language can flourish (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Masek et al., 2021).
Early language intervention for the birth-to-three population focuses on
supporting language development in the context of close relationships

with caregivers, who can meet the social and emotional needs of their child
while establishing this first relationship. When child-parent dyads are
supported to interact and respond in contingent, meaningful ways, children
demonstrate gains in language and communication. For older children,
multipronged approaches to intervention that involve educators, clinicians,
family members and even peers have been identified as effective strategies to
support long-term gains (Biel et al., 2020; Seven, Ferron, & Goldstein, 2020;
Watkins et al., 2015).
7. Cascades and language development: A reprise

In 1998 and again in 2000, Lois Bloom suggested that understanding
language would require a broader view of language in the context in which
children experienced it and a look at the many converging systems that made
language production and comprehension possible. She wrote:
…the acquisition of language is, itself, embedded in other cognitive, social, and
emotional developments that occur at the same time. Efforts to explain word
learning, therefore, must involve broad principles that account for both the devel-
opmental process and changes in behavior over time (Bloom, 2000, p. 19).
In their emergentist coalition model of word learning, Hirsh-Pasek and

Golinkoff (1991, 1996) and later Hollich, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Brand,
et al. (2000) who were deeply influenced by Bloom (1973) and by
Thelen and Smith (1994) noted the diverse and at times highly polarized
models of language acquisition in which each adopted a different position
on the key ingredient (e.g., social interaction, cognitive constraints, etc.)
and offered a multi-factor approach that aligns with principles of develop-
mental cascades to explain how changes within the child at multiple levels
and between children and their experiences work together in complex
ways to support development. Their emergentist coalition model offered
a hybrid model of word learning in which different kinds of inputs would
be differentially weighted over time to build the foundation for language
learning.
These early models were perhaps contributors to what would become a
broader model of cascading development across social, cognitive, and
linguistic skills (Oakes & Rakison, 2019). With more sophisticated method-
ologies that allow us to peer beneath the surface behaviors and to look
beyond the milestones, we can now sketch a fuller and more updated view
of language growth. In this chapter, we offered sketches of our recent

understanding that language milestones beget later language milestones as
in the number of words in a child’s productive vocabulary predicting the
child’s first word combinations and later use of complex grammatical
forms (see Levine et al., 2020, for a review). We documented the newer
findings that social development–as revealed in contingent adult-child
interaction–prepares the human brain for language learning and potentially
for other cognitive cues like attention (Masek et al., 2021) and executive
function skills (Masek et al., 2022). Indeed, research from Nobel’s laboratory
argues that there is likely a cascading relation between these early adult-child
interactions, language learning and later reading ability in 5- to 9-year-olds
(Merz, Wiltshire, & Noble, 2019). We further demonstrate that cascading
features of the language learning system are revealed in dual language learn-
ing at many levels of the language system and that language delay can be
better explained through a multiple input system of development over time
in varied contexts.
While the ideas of cascading development have been available for some
time—so too have researchers recognized the methodological challenges
that come with this research. For one, it is hard to isolate the many factors
that might impinge on the process of language growth. While researchers
broadly outline social, perceptual, motor, and linguistic factors—each of
these in turn has multiple operational definitions and multiple internal levels
that must be evaluated.
Second, when potential mechanisms are difficult to isolate, determining
cause and effect or the critical constructs for bidirectional development is a
challenge. By way of example, Masek et al. (2021) asked how contingent
relationships might build not only language structure and process, but also
the foundations for attention. They concluded that there is a reciprocal rela-
tion between the child’s contingent interactions and their attention that
enables a child to participate in behavioral interactions and such interactions,
in return, situate the child to better attend to learning tasks. In situations like
this, it becomes difficult to parse out which variables in any given context at
any given time are responsible for the milestone that the child reaches.
Research does not progress in the linear fashion that is the presumed norm
in cognitive psychology. Methods that abandon the search for linearity
and for a single cause will try to parse out the variability accounted for by
different inputs and will help to speed our discovery. These methods like
SEM and multiple hierarchical regression should shine some light on the
ways in which cascading inputs vary over time.
Finally, as we investigate the processes and principles that guide language

development in context, we will need better descriptions of how language
evolves. What is more universal and what factors show individual differ-
ences? Here too, there has been precedent. Many years ago in Nelson,
1973, Katherine Nelson proposed that there were two types of learners—
referential learners and expressive word learners. Referential learners were
the word callers who had amassed a cadre of nominal words like cat and
dog in their vocabularies. Expressive learners were those with more social
words, hi and bye, but not as many nominal words. Researchers later noted
that most children fall within these extremes (Goldfield & Snow, 2005,
p. 299). Yet, the fact that individual differences can point to different path-
ways that are reliant on varied input, is likely an important insight that will
rise again as we embrace cascade models more fully.
In sum, language acquisition is indeed a wicked problem. It is a multiply
determined behavior and children arrive with biases to attend to some infor-
mation over others. They pick up on particular cues at particular times in
development that allow them to seamlessly piece together the puzzle called
language. Yet, there is an alternative that is now more viable than it has been
in the past. Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (1996) suggested,
The position that we developed adopts neither a nativistic nor environmental
stance. Rather, it embraces newer developmental theories that call for early selec-
tivity and constraints on the way in which the organism processes the input along
with the construction of cognitive representations through the interaction of these
selected systems with input. (p. 200).
The cascade model puts more flesh on the skeleton of these ideas. And newer
data allow us to realize the promise of this approach more fully. Challenges
remain in both methodology that will allow us to better understand the
many forces at work in development and the ability to capture these forces
in real world settings. Challenges remain in our ability to include cultural
variation as we do this work. Challenges also remain in asking just how
much figurative starter dough children need to achieve the difficult task
of language development. Our understanding of the development of a
whole child over time in natural contexts will also make our research more
relevant and impactful for those who study dual language learning and
atypical development. As scientists embrace these challenges, however,
we will have the fuller picture of language growth that our forebears
envisioned 50 years ago.
References
Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Deckner, D. F., & Nelson, P. B. (2014). From interactions
to conversations: The development of joint engagement during early childhood. Child
Development, 85(3), 941–955.
Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., & Deckner, D. F. (2004). The development of symbol-
infused joint engagement. Child Development, 75(4), 1171–1187. https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00732.x.
Akhtar, N. (2005). Is joint attention necessary for early language learning? In B. D.
Homer, & C. S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), The development of social cognition and commu-
nication (pp. 165–179). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Bakeman, R., & Adamson, L. B. (1984). Coordinating attention to people and objects in
mother-infant and peer-infant interaction. Child Development, 55(4), 1278–1289.
https://doi.org/10.2307/1129997.
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1982). Functionalist approaches to grammar/E. In L. G.
Wanner (Ed.), Language acquisition: The state of the art. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Bates, E., Camaioni, L., & Volterra, V. (1975). The acquisition of performatives prior
to speech. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, 21(3), 205–226.
Bazhydai, M., Westermann, G., & Parise, E. (2020). “I don’t know but I know who to ask”:
12-month-olds actively seek information from knowledgeable adults. Developmental
Science, 23(5), e12938. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12938.
Begus, K., & Southgate, V. (2012). Infant pointing serves an interrogative function.
Developmental Science, 15(5), 611–617. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.
01160.x.
Begus, K., & Southgate, V. (2018). Curious learners: How infants’ motivation to learn
shapes and is shaped by infants’ interactions with the social world. In Active learning from
infancy to childhood (pp. 13–37). Cham: Springer.
Begus, K., Gliga, T., & Southgate, V. (2014). Infants learn what they want to learn:
Responding to infant pointing leads to superior learning. PLoS One, 9(10), e108817.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0108817.
Begus, K., Gliga, T., & Southgate, V. (2016). Infants’ preferences for native speakers are
associated with an expectation of information. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 113(44), 12397–12402. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1603261113.
Bergelson, E., & Swingley, D. (2012). At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of
many common nouns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(9), 3253–3258.
Biel, C. H., Buzhardt, J., Brown, J. A., Romano, M. K., Lorio, C. M., Windsor, K. S., et al.
(2020). Language interventions taught to caregivers in homes and classrooms: A review
of intervention and implementation fidelity. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 50,
140–156.
Bion, R. A., Borovsky, A., & Fernald, A. (2013). Fast mapping, slow learning:
Disambiguation of novel word–object mappings in relation to vocabulary learning at
18, 24, and 30 months. Cognition, 126(1), 39–53.
Bleses, D., Makransky, G., Dale, P. S., Højen, A., & Ari, B. A. (2016). Early productive
vocabulary predicts academic achievement 10 years later. Applied PsychoLinguistics,
37(6), 1461–1476.
Blom, E., & Boerma, T. (2019). Reciprocal relationships between lexical and syntactic
skills of children with Developmental Language Disorder and the role of executive
functions. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 4, 1–17. https://doi.org/
10.1111/infa.12378.
Bloom, L. (1973). One word at a time; the use of single word utterances before syntax. Mouton.
Bloom, L. (2000). The intentionality model of word learning: How to learn a word, any
word. In R. M. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek, L. Bloom, L. B. Smith, A. L.
Woodward, N. Akhtar, M. Tomasello, & G. Hollich (Eds.), Becoming a word learner
(pp. 19–50). Oxford University Press.
Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., & Esposito, G. (2017). Continuity and stability in
development. Child Development Perspectives, 11(2), 113–119. https://doi.org/10.1111/
cdep.12221.
Borovsky, A., Elman, J. L., & Kutas, M. (2012). Once is enough: N400 indexes semantic
integration of novel word meanings from a single exposure in context. Language
Learning and Development, 8(3), 278–302.
Briganti, A. M., & Cohen, L. B. (2011). Examining the role of social cues in early word learn-
ing. Infant Behavior and Development, 34(1), 211–214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.
2010.12.012.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design.
Harvard University Press.
Brooks, R., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Infant gaze following and pointing predict
accelerated vocabulary growth through two years of age: A longitudinal, growth curve
modeling study. Journal of Child Language, 35(1), 207–220. https://doi.org/10.1017/
S030500090700829X (Opens in a new window).
Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J. F. (2009). Monolingual, bilingual, trilingual: Infants’ lan-
guage experience influences the development of a word-learning heuristic. Developmental
Science, 12(5), 815–823.
Byers-Heinlein, K., Chen, K. H., & Xu, F. (2014). Surmounting the Tower of Babel:
Monolingual and bilingual 2-year-olds’ understanding of the nature of foreign language
words. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 119, 87–100.
Byers-Heinlein, K., Morin-Lessard, E., & Lew-Williams, C. (2017). Bilingual infants control
their languages as they listen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(34),
9032–9037.
Cao, A., & Lewis, M. (2022). Quantifying the syntactic bootstrapping effect in verb
learning: A meta-analytic synthesis. Developmental Science, 25(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/
10.1111/desc.13176.
Carey, S., & Spelke, E. (1996). Science and core knowledge. Philosophy of Science, 63(4),
515–533. https://doi.org/10.1086/289971.
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K., Tomasello, M., Butterworth, G., & Moore, C. (1998). Social
cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of
age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, i–174. https://doi.org/
10.2307/1166214.
Casla, M., Mendez-Cabezas, C., Montero, I., Murillo, E., Nieva, S., & Rodrı́guez, J. (2021).
Spontaneous verbal repetition in toddler-adult conversations: A longitudinal study
with Spanish-speaking two-year-olds. Journal of Child Language, 1–36. https://doi.org/
10.1017/S030500092100015.
Cha, K., & Goldenberg, C. (2015). The complex relationship between bilingual home
language input and kindergarten children’s Spanish and English oral proficiencies.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(4), 935–953. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000030.
Chen, Y., & Liu, H. M. (2014). Novel-word learning deficits in Mandarin-speaking
preschool children with specific language impairments. Research in Developmental
Disabilities, 35(1), 10–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2013.10.010.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clearfield, M. W. (2011). Learning to walk changes infants’ social interactions. Infant Behavior
and Development, 34(1), 15–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2010.04.008.
Collis, G. M., & Schaffer, H. R. (1975). Synchronization of visual attention in mother-infant

pairs. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 16(4), 315–320. https://doi.org/10.1111/
j.1469-7610.1975.tb00365.x.
Colonnesi, C., Stams, G. J. J. M., Koster, I., & Noom, M. J. (2010). The relation between
pointing and language development: A meta-analysis. Developmental Review, 30(4),
352–366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2010.10.001.
Combiths, P. N., Barlow, J. A., Richard, J. T., & Pruitt-Lord, S. L. (2019). Treatment
targets for co-occurring speech-language impairment: A case study. Perspectives of the
ASHA Special Interest Groups, 4(2), 240–256. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_PERS-SIG1-
2018-0013.
Conner, J., Kelly-Vance, L., Ryalls, B., & Friehe, M. (2014). A play and language interven-
tion for two-year-old children: Implications for improving play skills and language.
Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 28(2), 221–237. https://doi.org/
10.1080/02568543.2014.883452.
Conway, L. J., Levickis, P. A., Mensah, F., Smith, J. A., Wake, M., & Reilly, S. (2018).
The role of joint engagement in the development of language in a community-derived
sample of slow-to-talk children. Journal of Child Language, 45(6), 1275–1293. https://doi.
org/10.1017/S030500091800017X (Opens in a new window).
Core, C. (2020). Effects of nonnative input on language abilities in Spanish-English
bilinguals. In F. Li, K. Pollack, R. Gibb, F. Li, K. Pollack, & R. Gibb (Eds.), Volume
10. Child Bilingualism and Second Language Learning: Bilingual Processing and Acquisition
(pp. 87–111). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Cycyk, L. M., & Hammer, C. S. (2020). Beliefs, values, and practices of Mexican immigrant
families towards language and learning in toddlerhood: Setting the foundation for
early childhood education. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 52, 25–37. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.09.009.
De Houwer, A., Miller, D., Bayram, F., Rothman, J., & Serratrice, L. (2018). The role
of language input environments for language outcomes and language acquisition in
young bilingual children: The state of the science across its subfields. In Bilingual cognition
and language (pp. 127–153). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
de Villiers, J., Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Iglesias, A. (2021). User’s manual for the
Baby Quick Interactive Language Screener TM (BabyQUILSTM): A measure of vocabulary,
syntax, and language acquisition skills in two-year-old children. Brookes Publishing.
de Villiers, J., Iglesias, A., Golinkoff, R., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Wilson, M. S., & Nandakumar, R.
(2021). Assessing dual language learners of Spanish and English: Development of the
QUILS: ES. Revista de Logopedia, Foniatrı´a y Audiologı´a, 41(4), 183–196.
DeAnda, S., Arias-Trejo, N., Poulin-Dubois, D., Zesiger, P., & Friend, M. (2016). Minimal
second language exposure, SES, and early word comprehension: New evidence from a
direct assessment. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(01), 162–180. https://doi.org/
10.1017/S1366728914000820.
Dickinson, D. K., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. K. (2010). Speaking out for language:
Why language is central to reading development. Educational Researcher, 39(4), 305–310.
Dollaghan, C. (1987). Fast mapping in normal and language-impaired children. The
Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 52(3), 218–222. https://doi.org/10.3102/
0013189X10370204.
Donnelly, S., & Kidd, E. (2021). The longitudinal relationship between conversational
turn-taking and vocabulary growth in early language development. Child Development,
92(2), 609–625. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13511.
Drljan, B., & Vukovic, M. (2019). Comparison of lexical-semantic processing in children
with developmental language disorder and typically developing peers. Govor, 36(2),
119–138. https://doi.org/10.22210/govor.2019.36.07.
Duyck, W., Szmalec, A., Kemps, E., & Vandierendonck, A. (2003). Verbal working
memory is involved in associative word learning unless visual codes are available.
Journal of Memory and Language, 48(3), 527–541.
Eissa, M. A. (2014). The Effect of a phonological awareness intervention program on pho-
nological memory, phonological sensitivity, and metaphonological abilities of preschool
children at-risk for reading disabilities. International Journal of Psycho-Educational Sciences,
3(2), 68–80. Online Submission. https://eric.ed.gov/?id¼ED565627.
Elder, B. N. (2005). Early predictors of emergent and conventional literacy skills: A longitudinal
investigation. Davis: University of California.
Elman, J. L., Bates, E. A., & Johnson, M. H. (1996). Rethinking innateness: A connectionist
perspective on development. Vol. 10. MIT Press.
Espinosa, L. M. (2002). The connections between social-emotional development and early
literacy. The Kauffman Early Education Exchange, 1(1), 30–42. https://doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.2355477.
Fagan, M. K., Bergeson, T. R., & Morris, K. J. (2014). Synchrony, complexity and directiveness
in mothers’ interactions with infants pre- and post-cochlear implantation. Infant Behavior and
Development, 37(3), 249–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2014.04.001.
Fernald, A., & Weisleder, A. (2011). Early language experience is vital to developing fluency
in understanding. In S. B. Neuman, & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Vol. 3. Handbook of early
literacy research (pp. 3–19). The Guilford Press.
Finestack, L. H. (2018). Evaluation of an explicit intervention to teach novel
grammatical forms to children with developmental language disorder. Journal of
Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(8), 2062–2075. https://doi.org/10.1044/
2018_JSLHR-L-17-0339.
Fisher, C., Gertner, Y., Scott, R. M., & Yuan, S. (2010). Syntactic bootstrapping. Wiley
Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(2), 143–149. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.17.
Fisher, C., Jin, K. S., & Scott, R. M. (2020). The developmental origins of syntactic boo-
tstrapping. Topics in Cognitive Science, 12(1), 48–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12447.
Fletcher, K. K., Cates, C. B., Mendelsohn, A. L., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2020). Play in
Mexican-American mothers and toddlers is frequent, multimodal, and rich in symbolic
content. Infancy, 25(5), 535–551. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12344.
Foushee, R., Srinivasan, M., & Xu, F. (2022). Active learning in language development.
PsyArXiv Preprints.
Foushee, R., Srinivasan, M., & Xu, F. (2021). Self-directed learning by preschoolers in a
naturalistic overhearing context. Cognition, 206, 104415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cog-
nition.2020.104415.
Frank, M. C., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Fernald, A. (2013). Social and discourse contributions
to the determination of reference in cross-situational word learning. Language Learning
and Development, 9(1), 1–24.
Fricke, S., Bowyer-Crane, C., Haley, A. J., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2013). Efficacy of
language intervention in the early years. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(3),
280–290. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12010.
Gibson, E. J. (1963). Perceptual learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 14(1), 29–56.
Gibson, E. J. (1988). Exploratory behavior in the development of perceiving, acting, and the
acquiring of knowledge. Annual Review of Psychology, 39(1), 1–42.
Gibson, J. L., Newbury, D. F., Durkin, K., Pickles, A., Conti-Ramsden, G., &
Toseeb, U. (2021). Pathways from the early language and communication environment
to literacy outcomes at the end of primary school; the roles of language development and
social development. Oxford Review of Education, 47(2), 260–283.
Gillon, G. T. (2002). Follow-up study investigating the benefits of phonological
awareness intervention for children with spoken language impairment. International
Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 37(4), 381–400. https://doi.org/10.
1080/1368282021000007776.
Gleitman, L. (1990). The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 1(1),
3–55. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327817la0101_2.
Gleitman, L., & Gleitman, H. (2001). Bootstrapping a first vocabulary. Language Acquisition
and Language Disorders, 23, 79–96.
Goldfield, B. A., & Snow, C. E. (2005). Individual differences: Implications for the study of
language acquisition. In J. Berko Gleason (Ed.), The development of language. Boston:
Allyn & Bacon.
Golinkoff, R. M., De Villiers, J. G., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Iglesias, A., Wilson, M. S., Morini, G.,
et al. (2017). User’s manual for the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS): A measure of
vocabulary, syntax, and language acquisition skills in young children. Paul H: Brookes
Publishing Company.
Golinkoff, R. M., Hoff, E., Rowe, M. L., Tamis-LeMonda, C., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2018).
Language matters: Denying the existence of the 30-million-word gap has serious
consequences. Child Development, 90, 985–992.
Gorman, B. K. (2012). Relationships between vocabulary size, working memory, and
phonological awareness in Spanish-speaking English language learners. American
Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 21(2), 109–123. https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-
0360(2011/10-0063).
Gottlieb, G. (1991). Epigenetic systems view of human development. Developmental
Psychology, 27(1), 33–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.27.1.33.
Green, L. (2020). The specific language impairment/developmental language disorders
forum: fostering a discussion of terminology. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest
Groups, 5(1), 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_PERSP-19-00184.
Gros-Louis, J., West, M. J., Goldstein, M. H., & King, A. P. (2006). Mothers provide
differential feedback to infants’ prelinguistic sounds. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 30(6), 509–516. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025406071914.
Guzman-Orth, D., Lopez, A. A., & Tolentino, F. (2017). A framework for the dual language
assessment of young dual language learners in the United States. ETS Research Report
Series, 2017(1), 1–19.
Hammer, C. S., Burchinal, M., Hong, S. S., LaForett, D. R., Páez, M., Buysse, V., et al.
(2020). Change in language and literacy knowledge for Spanish–English dual language
learners at school-entry: Analyses from three studies. Early Childhood Research Quarterly,
51, 81–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2019.07.001.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young
American children. Paul H Brookes Publishing.
He, M., Walle, E. A., & Campos, J. J. (2015). A cross-national investigation of the relation-
ship between infant walking and language development. Infancy, 20, 283–305. https://
doi-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.1111/infa.12071.
Hiebert, L., & Rojas, R. (2021). A longitudinal study of Spanish language growth and loss in
young Spanish–English bilingual children. Journal of Communication Disorders, 92,
106110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2021.106110.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. (1991). Language comprehension: A new look at some old.
Biological and behavioral determinants for language development (p. 301), Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (1996). The origins of grammar: Evidence from early language
comprehension. MIT Press.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Owen, M. T., Golinkoff, R. M., Pace, A.,
et al. (2015). The contribution of early communication quality to low-income children’s
language success. Psychological Science, 26(7), 1071–1083. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0956797615581493.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Tucker, M. L., & Golinkoff, R. M. (1995). Dynamical systems:
Reinterpreting prosodic bootstrapping. In J. L. Morgan, & K. Demuth (Eds.), Signal
to syntax: Bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hoff, E. (2020). Lessons from the study of input effects on bilingual development.
International Journal of Bilingualism, 24(1), 82–88.
Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M., & Parra, M. (2012). Dual language
exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39(1), 1–27. https://
doi.org/10.1017/S0305000910000759.
Hoff, E., Quinn, J. M., & Giguere, D. (2018). What explains the correlation between
growth in vocabulary and grammar? New evidence from latent change score analyses
of simultaneous bilingual development. Developmental Science, 21(2), e12536.
Hoff, E., Tulloch, M. K., & Core, C. (2021). Profiles of minority-majority language profi-
ciency in 5-year-olds. Child Development, 92(5), 1801–1816.
Hollich, G. J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Brand, R. J., Brown, E., Chung, H. L.,
et al. (2000). Breaking the language barrier: An emergentist coalition model for the
origins of word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development,
65(3), i–135.
Hollich, G. J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2000). Breaking the language barrier: An
emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. University of Chicago Press.
Hurtado, N., Gr€ uter, T., Marchman, V. A., & Fernald, A. (2014). Relative language expo-
sure, processing efficiency and vocabulary in Spanish–English bilingual toddlers.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(1), 189–202.
Hurtado, N., Marchman, V. A., & Fernald, A. (2008). Does input influence uptake?
Links between maternal talk, processing speed and vocabulary size in Spanish-learning
children. Developmental Science, 11(6), F31–F39.
Iverson, J. M. (2018). Early motor and communicative development in infants with an older
sibling with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
61(11), 2673–2684. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-RSAUT-18-0035.
Iverson, J. M. (2021). Developmental variability and developmental cascades: Lessons from
motor and language development in infancy. Current Directions in Psychological Science,
30(3), 228–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721421993822.
Jang, E., & Brutt-Griffler, J. (2019). Language as a bridge to higher education: A large-scale
empirical study of heritage language proficiency on language minority students’
academic success. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 40(4), 322–337.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2018.1518451.
Jin, K. S., & Fisher, C. (2014). Early evidence for syntactic bootstrapping: 15-month-olds use
sentence structure in verb learning. In BUCLD 38 Online Proceedings Supplement.
Justice, L. M., Lomax, R., O’Connell, A., Pentimonti, J., Petrill, S. A., Piasta, S. B., et al.
(2015). The dimensionality of language ability in young children. Child Development,
86(6), 1948–1965. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12450.
Kaiser, A. P., & Roberts, M. Y. (2011). Advances in early communication and language
intervention. Journal of Early Intervention, 33(4), 298–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1053815111429968.
Kaiser, A. P., Chow, J. C., & Cunningham, J. E. (2022). A case for early language and behav-
ior screening: Implications for policy and child development. Policy Insights From the
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9(1), 120–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322211068886.
Kalashnikova, M., & Carreiras, M. (2022). Input quality and speech perception development
in bilingual infants’ first year of life. Child Development, 93(1), e32–e46. https://doi.org/
10.1111/cdev.13686.
Kalashnikova, M., Escudero, P., & Kidd, E. (2018). The development of fast-mapping and
novel word retention strategies in monolingual and bilingual infants. Developmental
Science, 21(6), e12674.
Kalashnikova, M., Mattock, K., & Monaghan, P. (2015). The effects of linguistic experience
on the flexible use of mutual exclusivity in word learning. Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 18(4), 626–638.
Kapantzoglou, M., Restrepo, M. A., & Thompson, M. S. (2012). Dynamic assessment of

word learning skills: Identifying language impairment in bilingual children. https://doi.org/
10.1044/0161-1461(2011/10-0095).
Karasik, L. B., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Adolph, K. E. (2011). Transition from crawling
to walking and infants’ actions with objects and people. Child Development, 82(4),
1199–1209. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01595.x.
Karasik, L. B., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Adolph, K. E. (2014). Crawling and walking infants
elicit different verbal responses from mothers. Developmental Science, 17(3), 388–395.
https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12129.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science.
MIT PRESS.
Karmiloff-Smith, A., Thomas, M. S., & Johnson, M. H. (2018). Thinking developmentally from
constructivism to neuroconstructivism. Routledge.
Kaushanskaya, M., Crespo, K., & Neveu, A. (2022). Does code-switching influence novel
word learning? Developmental Science, e13292.
Korat, O., & Shneor, D. (2019). Can e-books support low SES parental mediation to
enrich children’s vocabulary? First Language, 39(3), 344–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0142723718822443.
Kornilov, S. A., Magnuson, J. S., Rakhlin, N., Landi, N., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2015).
Lexical processing deficits in children with developmental language disorder: An
event-related potentials study. Development and Psychopathology, 27(2), 459–476.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579415000097 (Opens in a new window).
Kuo, L. J., & Anderson, R. C. (2012). Effects of early bilingualism on learning phonological
regularities in a new language. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111(3), 455–467.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2011.08.013.
Landa, R. J., Holman, K. C., O’Neill, A. H., & Stuart, E. A. (2011). Intervention targeting
development of socially synchronous engagement in toddlers with autism spectrum
disorder: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,
52(1), 13–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02288.x.
Lauro, J., Core, C., & Hoff, E. (2020). Explaining individual differences in trajectories
of simultaneous bilingual development: Contributions of child and environmental
factors. Child Development, 91(6), 2063–2082.
LeBarton, E. S., & Iverson, J. M. (2013). Fine motor skill predicts expressive language in
infant siblings of children with autism. Developmental Science, 16(6), 815–827. https://
doi.org/10.1111/desc.12069.
Lee, C., & Lew-Williams, C. (2022). The dynamic functions of social cues during children’s
word learning. Infant and Child Development, e2372. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2372.
Leech, K. A., & Rowe, M. L. (2021). An intervention to increase conversational turns
between parents and young children. Journal of Child Language, 48(2), 399–412.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000920000252.
Levickis, P., Reilly, S., Girolametto, L., Ukoumunne, O. C., & Wake, M. (2018).
Associations between maternal responsive linguistic input and child language perfor-
mance at age 4 in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. Child: Care,
Health and Development, 44(5), 776–783.
Levine, D., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2020). Infant word learning and emerging
syntax. In The Cambridge handbook of infant development (pp. 632–660). Cambridge
University Press.
Long, H. L., Ramsay, G., Bowman, D. D., Burkhardt-Reed, M. M., & Oller, D. K. (2022).
Canonical babbling during vocal turn taking and independent vocal play. bioRxiv,
2010–2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.09.333872.
Lowe, H., Henry, L., M€ uller, L. M., & Joffe, V. L. (2018). Vocabulary intervention for ado-
lescents with language disorder: A systematic review. International Journal of Language &
Communication Disorders, 53(2), 199–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12355.
Lucca, K., & Wilbourn, M. P. (2018). Communicating to learn: Infants’ pointing

gestures result in optimal learning. Child Development, 89(3), 941–960. https://doi.
org/10.1111/cdev.12707.
Luo, R., Pace, A., Levine, D., Iglesias, A., de Villiers, J., Golinkoff, R. M., et al. (2021).
Home literacy environment and existing knowledge mediate the link between socio-
economic status and language learning skills in dual language learners. Early Childhood
Research Quarterly, 55, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2020.10.007.
Luo, R., Escobar, K., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2020). Heterogeneity in the trajectories of
US Latine mothers’ dual-language input from infancy to preschool. First Language, 40(3),
275–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723720915401.
M€a€att€a, S., Laakso, M. L., Ahonen, T., Tolvanen, A., Westerholm, J., & Aro, T. (2016).
Continuity from prelinguistic communication to later language ability: A follow-up
study from infancy to early school age. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 59(6), 1357–1372. https://doi.org/10.1044/2016_JSLHR-L-15-0209.
Marchman, V. A., Bermúdez, V. N., Bang, J. Y., & Fernald, A. (2020). Off to a good start:
Early Spanish-language processing efficiency supports Spanish-and English-language
outcomes at 4½ years in sequential bilinguals. Developmental Science, 23(6), e12973.
Markman, E. M., & Wachtel, G. F. (1988). Children’s use of mutual exclusivity to constrain
the meanings of words. Cognitive Psychology, 20(2), 121–157.
Masek, L. R., McMillan, B. T., Paterson, S. J., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Golinkoff, R. M., &
Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2021). Where language meets attention: How contingent interactions
promote learning. Developmental Review, 60, 100961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2021.
100961.
Masek, L. R., Weiss, S. M., McMillan, B. T., Paterson, S. J., Golinkoff, R. M., &
Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2022). Contingent conversations build more than language: How com-
municative interactions in toddlerhood relate to preschool executive function skills.
Developmental Science, e13338.
Masten, A. S., & Cicchetti, D. (2010). Developmental cascades. Development and
Psychopathology, 22(3), 491–495. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579410000222
(Opens in a new window).
Merz, E. C., Wiltshire, C. A., & Noble, K. G. (2019). Socioeconomic inequality and the
developing brain: Spotlight on language and executive function. Child Development
Perspectives, 13(1), 15–20.
Mesa, C., Newbury, D. F., Nash, M., Clarke, P., Esposito, R., Elliott, L., et al. (2020). The
effects of reading and language intervention on literacy skills in children in a remote com-
munity: An exploratory randomized controlled trial. International Journal of Educational
Research, 100, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101535.
Miller, G. A. (1991). The science of words. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Moraleda-Sepúlveda, E., & López-Resa, P. (2022). Morphological difficulties in people
with developmental language disorder. Children, 9(2), 125. https://doi.org/10.3390/
children9020125.
Morales, M., Mundy, P., Delgado, C. E., Yale, M., Messinger, D., Neal, R., et al. (2000).
Responding to joint attention across the 6-through 24-month age period and early
language acquisition. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 21(3), 283–298.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0193-3973(99)00040-4.
Morales, M., Mundy, P., & Rojas, J. (1998). Following the direction of gaze and language
development in 6-month-olds. Infant Behavior and Development, 21(2), 373–377. https://
doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(98)90014-5.
Moyle, M. J., Weismer, S. E., Evans, J. L., & Lindstrom, M. J. (2007). Longitudinal relation-
ships between lexical and grammatical development in typical and late-talking children.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 508–528. https://doi.org/
10.1044/1092-4388(2007/035).
Mundy, P., & Gomes, A. (1998). Individual differences in joint attention skill development
in the second year. Infant Behavior and Development, 21(3), 469–482.
Mundy, P., & Newell, L. (2007). Attention, joint attention, and social cognition. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 16(5), 269–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-
8721.2007.00518.x.
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for
Research in Child Development, 1–135, 1165788.
Newman, R. S., Rowe, M. L., & Ratner, N. B. (2016). Input and uptake at 7 months
predicts toddler vocabulary: The role of child-directed speech and infant processing
skills in language development. Journal of Child Language, 43(5), 1158–1173.
Oakes, L. M., & Rakison, D. H. (2019). Developmental cascades: Building the infant mind.
Oxford University Press.
Orellana, C. I., Wada, R., & Gillam, R. B. (2019). The use of dynamic assessment for the
diagnosis of language disorders in bilingual children: A meta-analysis. American Journal of
Speech-Language Pathology, 28(3), 1298–1317. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_AJSLP-
18-0202.
Pace, A., Luo, R., Levine, D., Iglesias, A., De Villiers, J., Golinkoff, R. M., et al. (2021).
Within and across language predictors of word learning processes in dual language
learners. Child Development, 92(1), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13418.
Pace, A., Curran, M., Van Horne, A., de Villiers, J., Iglesias, A., Golinkoff, R., Hirsh-Pasek,
K., Wilson, M. S. (in press). Diagnostic accuracy of the QUILS screener for detection of
children at risk for developmental language disorder. Journal of Communication
Disorders.
Pace, A., Luo, R., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2017). Identifying
pathways between socioeconomic status and language development. Annual Review of
Linguistics, 3, 285–308. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011516-034226.
Palacios, N., Kibler, A. K., Baird, A. S., Parr, A., & Bergey, R. (2015). An examination
of language practices during mother-child play activities among Mexican immigrant
families. International Multilingual Research Journal, 9(3), 197–219. https://doi.org/
10.1080/19313152.2015.1048543.
Paradis, J. (2017). Parent report data on input and experience reliably predict bilingual
development and this is not trivial. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20(1), 27–28.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S136672891600033X (Opens in a new window).
Paul, R. (2020). Language disorders. In Vol. 174. Handbook of clinical neurology (pp. 21–35).
Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-64148-9.00002-8.
Peña, E., Iglesias, A., & Lidz, C. S. (2001). Reducing test bias through dynamic assessment
of children’s word learning ability. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 10(2),
138–154.
Pereira, A. F., Smith, L. B., & Yu, C. (2014). A bottom-up view of toddler word learning.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(1), 178–185.
Petitto, L. A., & Marentette, P. F. (1991). Babbling in the manual mode: Evidence for the
ontogeny of language. Science, 251(5000), 1493–1496.
Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. (M. Cook, Trans.). W. W. Norton &
Co. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/11494-000.
Piaget, J. (1954). The development of object concept. In M. Cook, J. Piaget, & M. Cook
(Eds.), The construction of reality in the child (pp. 3–96). Basic Books. https://doi.org/
10.1037/11168-001.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates. Language. New York: Harper
Collins.
Plunkett, K., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Bates, E., Elman, J. L., & Johnson, M. H. (1997).
Connectionism and developmental psychology. Journal of Child Psychology and
Psychiatry, 38(1), 53–80.
Pollard-Durodola, S. D., Gonzalez, J. E., Saenz, L., Soares, D., Davis, H. S., Resendez, N.,
et al. (2021). The social validity of content enriched shared book reading vocabulary
instruction and preschool DLLs’ language outcomes. Early Education and Development,
1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2021.1946761.
Pozzan, L., Gleitman, L. R., & Trueswell, J. C. (2016). Semantic ambiguity and syntactic
bootstrapping: The case of conjoined-subject intransitive sentences. Language Learning
and Development, 12(1), 14–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2015.1018420.
Quiroz, B. G., Snow, C. E., & Zhao, J. (2010). Vocabulary skills of Spanish—English
bilinguals: Impact of mother–child language interactions and home language and literacy
support. International Journal of Bilingualism, 14(4), 379–399.
Ramı́rez, N. F., Lytle, S. R., & Kuhl, P. K. (2020). Parent coaching increases conversational
turns and advances infant language development. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 117(7), 3484–3491. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921653117.
Restrepo, M. A., Mesa, C., & Yeomans-Maldonado, G. (2021). English and Spanish predic-
tors of grade 3 reading comprehension in bilingual children. Journal of Speech, Language,
and Hearing Research, 64(3), 889–908. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00379.
Ribot, K. M., Hoff, E., & Burridge, A. (2018). Language use contributes to expressive
language growth: Evidence from bilingual children. Child Development, 89(3), 929–940.
Rivera, C. S. (2019). Joint attention in infancy: Definitions, sensory-motor basis and developmental
consequences. Doctoral dissertation Indiana University.
Romeo, R. R., Segaran, J., Leonard, J. A., Robinson, S. T., West, M. R., Mackey, A. P.,
et al. (2018). Language exposure relates to structural neural connectivity in childhood.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 38(36), 7870–7877. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.
0484-18.2018.
Ruba, A. L., Pollak, S. D., & Saffran, J. R. (2022). Acquiring complex communicative
systems: Statistical learning of language and emotion. Topics in Cognitive Science.
https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12612.
Saffran, J. R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2018). Infant statistical learning. Annual Review of
Psychology, 69, 181. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011805.
Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old
infants. Science, 274(5294), 1926–1928. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.274.5294.1926.
Sameroff, A. J. (1983). Developmental systems: Context and evolution. In W. Kessen
(Series Ed.) & P. H. Mussen (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. History, theory,
and methods (4th ed., pp. 237–294). New York: Wiley.
Sansavini, A., Favilla, M. E., Guasti, M. T., Marini, A., Millepiedi, S., Di Martino, M. V.,
et al. (2021). Developmental language disorder: Early predictors, age for the diagnosis,
and diagnostic tools. A scoping review. Brain Sciences, 11(5), 654. https://doi.org/
10.3390/brainsci11050654.
Sawyer, D. J., & Butler, K. (1991). Early language intervention: A deterrent to reading
disability. Annals of Dyslexia, 41(1), 55–79. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02648078.
Scaife, M., & Bruner, J. S. (1975). The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant. Nature,
253(5489), 265–266. https://doi.org/10.1038/253265a0.
Schaadt, G., & M€annel, C. (2019). Phonemes, words, and phrases: Tracking phonological
processing in pre-schoolers developing dyslexia. Clinical Neurophysiology, 130(8),
1329–1341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2019.05.018.
Schertz, H. H., & Odom, S. L. (2007). Promoting joint attention in toddlers with autism: A
parent-mediated approach. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1562–1575.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0290-z.
Schmidt, M. F., Rakoczy, H., & Tomasello, M. (2019). Eighteen-month-old infants correct
non-conforming actions by others. Infancy, 24(4), 613–635. https://doi.org/10.1111/
infa.12292.
Schneider, J. L., & Iverson, J. M. (2022). Cascades in action: How the transition to walking
shapes caregiver communication during everyday interactions. Developmental Psychology,
58(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001280.
Scott, C. M. (2014). One size does not fit all: Improving clinical practice in older children and
adolescents with language and learning disorders. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in
Schools, 45(2), 145–152. https://doi.org/10.1044/2014_LSHSS-14-0014.
Serrano-Villar, M., Huang, K. Y., & Calzada, E. J. (2017). Social support, parenting, and
social emotional development in young Mexican and Dominican American children.
Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 48, 597–609. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s10578-016-0685-9.
Seven, Y., Ferron, J., & Goldstein, H. (2020). Effects of embedding decontextualized lan-
guage through book-sharing delivered by mothers and fathers in coparenting environ-
ments. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(12), 4062–4081.
Shneidman, L. A., Buresh, J. S., Shimpi, P. M., Knight-Schwarz, J., & Woodward, A. L.
(2009). Social experience, social attention and word learning in an overhearing
paradigm. Language Learning and Development, 5(4), 266–281. https://doi.org/10.
1080/15475440903001115.
Silvey, C., Demir-Lira, O. € E., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2021). Effects of
time-varying parent input on children’s language outcomes differ for vocabulary and syn-
tax. Psychological Science, 32(4), 536–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620970559.
Spelke, E. S. (2000). Core knowledge. American Psychologist, 55(11), 1233–1243.
Spelke, E. S. (2022). What babies know: Core knowledge and composition. Vol. 1. Oxford
University Press.
Sperry, D. E., Sperry, L. L., & Miller, P. J. (2018). Re-examining the verbal environments of
children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Child Development. https://doi.org/
10.1111/cdev.13072.
Staskowski, M., & Creaghead, N. A. (2001). Reading comprehension: A language interven-
tion target from early childhood through adolescence. Seminars in Speech and Language,
22(3). https://doi.org/10.1055/s-2001-16198.
Suskind, D. L., Leffel, K. R., Graf, E., Hernandez, M. W., Gunderson, E. A., Sapolich, S. G.,
et al. (2016). A parent-directed language intervention for children of low socioeconomic
status: A randomized controlled pilot study. Journal of Child Language, 43(2), 366–406.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000915000033.
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Caughy, M. O. B., Rojas, R., Bakeman, R., Adamson, L. B.,
Pacheco, D., et al. (2020). Culture, parenting, and language: Respeto in Latine
mother–child interactions. Social Development, 29(3), 689–712. https://doi.org/
10.1111/sode.12430.
Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Kuchirko, Y., & Song, L. (2014). Why is infant language learning
facilitated by parental responsiveness? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(2),
121–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414522813.
Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and
action. MIT Press.
Tomasello, M. (2000a). A usage-based approach to child language acquisition. In 26. Annual
Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 305–319). No. 1.
Tomasello, M. (2000b). The social-pragmatic theory of word learning. Pragmatics, 10(4),
401–413. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.10.4.01tom.
Tomasello, M. (2005). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition.
Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, M., Strosberg, R., & Akhtar, N. (1996). Eighteen-month-old children learn
words in non-ostensive contexts. Journal of Child Language, 23(1), 157–176. https://
doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900010138.
Trautman, C. H., & Rollins, P. R. (2006). Child-centered behaviors of caregivers with

12-month-old infants: Associations with passive joint engagement and later language.
Applied PsychoLinguistics, 27(3), 447–463. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716406060358
(Opens in a new window).
Trueswell, J. C., Lin, Y., Armstrong, B., III, Cartmill, E. A., Goldin-Meadow, S., &
Gleitman, L. R. (2016). Perceiving referential intent: Dynamics of reference in natural
parent–child interactions. Cognition, 148, 117–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogni-
tion.2015.11.002.
Tsao, F. M., Liu, H. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Speech perception in infancy predicts lan-
guage development in the second year of life: A longitudinal study. Child Development,
75(4), 1067–1084.
Tucker, M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1993). Systems and language: Implications for acquisition. In
L. Smith, & E. Thelen (Eds.), A dynamic systems approach to development: Applications
(pp. 359–384). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tyler, A. A., Lewis, K. E., Haskill, A., & Tolbert, L. C. (2002). Efficacy and cross-domain
effects of a morphosyntax and a phonology intervention. Language, Speech, and Hearing
Services in Schools, 33, 52–66. https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2002/005).
Ukrainetz, T. A. (2017). Commentary on “Reading comprehension is not a single ability”:
Implications for child language intervention. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in
Schools, 48(2), 92–97. https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_LSHSS-16-0031.
Verhoeven, L. (2007). Early bilingualism, language transfer, and phonological awareness.
Applied PsychoLinguistics, 28(3), 425–439.
Wagley, N., & Booth, J. R. (2021). Neuro-cognitive development of semantic and syntactic
bootstrapping in 6-to 7.5-year-old children. Neuro. Image, 241, 118416. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118416.
Walle, E. A., & Campos, J. J. (2014). Infant language development is related to the acquisition
of walking. Developmental Psychology, 50(2), 336. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033238.
Watkins, L., O’Reilly, M., Kuhn, M., Gevarter, C., Lancioni, G. E., Sigafoos, J., et al.
(2015). A review of peer-mediated social interaction interventions for students with
autism in inclusive settings. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(4),
1070–1083.
Waxman, S. R., & Markow, D. B. (1995). Words as invitations to form categories: Evidence
from 12- to 13-month-old infants. Cognitive Psychology, 29(3), 257–302. https://doi.org/
10.1006/cogp.1995.1016.
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for
perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development,
7(1), 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(84)80022-3.
West, K. L., & Iverson, J. M. (2021). Communication changes when infants begin to walk.
Developmental Science, 24(5), e13102. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13102.
West, K. L., Fletcher, K. K., Adolph, K. E., & Tamis-LeMonda, C. S. (2022). Mothers
talk about infants’ actions: How verbs correspond to infants’ real-time behavior.
Developmental Psychology, 58(3), 405–416. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001285.
West, K. L., Leezenbaum, N. B., Northrup, J. B., & Iverson, J. M. (2019). The relation
between walking and language in infant siblings of children with autism spectrum
disorder. Child Development, 90(3), e356–e372. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12980.
Wetherby, A. M., & Woods, J. J. (2006). Early social interaction project for children
with autism spectrum disorders beginning in the second year of life: A preliminary
study. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 26(2), 67–82. https://doi.org/
10.1177/02711214060260020201.
Wu, Z., & Gros-Louis, J. (2015). Caregivers provide more labeling responses to infants’
pointing than to infants’ object-directed vocalizations. Journal of Child Language, 42(3),
538–561. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000914000221.
Yoder, P. J., & Warren, S. F. (2004). Early predictors of language in children with and with-
out Down syndrome. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 109(4), 285–300. https://
doi.org/10.1352/0895-8017(2004)109<285:EPOLIC>2.0.CO;2.
Yu, X., Ferradal, S. L., Sliva, D. D., Dunstan, J., Carruthers, C., Sanfilippo, J., et al. (2021).
Functional connectivity in infancy and toddlerhood predicts long-term language
and preliteracy outcomes. Cerebral Cortex, 0, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/
bhab230.
Zipoli, R. P., Jr., Coyne, M. D., & McCoach, D. B. (2011). Enhancing vocabulary
intervention for kindergarten students: Strategic integration of semantically related
and embedded word review. Remedial and Special Education, 32(2), 131–143. https://
doi.org/10.1177/0741932510361262.

Cascades in Language Acquisition

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Cascades in Language Acquisition

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CHAPTER THREE

For many years, researchers pondered these alternatives. In his scathing

And further we stated,

These quotations presage the advent of the cascade approach, recognizing

influencing developmental outcomes at multiple levels over multiple

3. Looking within: Cascades within the language

connections between the exposure to language that children receive in

development (Levine, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2020; Moyle, Weismer,

4. Beyond the language module: Interdependencies

language growth. At first, vocabulary is determined more through percep-

4.2 Social to language

development in toddlers (Adamson, Bakeman, & Deckner, 2004; Hirsh-Pasek

4.3 Motor to language

5. Cascades in dual language acquisition

5.1 Linking dual language input, language processing skills,

adolescence ( Jang & Brutt-Griffler, 2019). In a large-scale longitudinal

5.2 Individual differences and learning mechanisms

5.3 Cascades across languages: Patterns of cross-linguistic

language, whereas children with stronger skills in the societal language do

6. Cascades in developmental language disorder

impairments, or other developmental delays (Green, 2020). Language devel-

6.2 Domain-specific language intervention can achieve

a morphosyntax (i.e., the linguistic system of the internal structure of words

during language learning tasks), which could prevent cascading impacts on

6.3 Early language intervention supports long-term language

outcomes and academic performance. Numerous intervention studies

supporting language development in the context of close relationships

7. Cascades and language development: A reprise

In their emergentist coalition model of word learning, Hirsh-Pasek and

of language growth. In this chapter, we offered sketches of our recent

Finally, as we investigate the processes and principles that guide language

Collis, G. M., & Schaffer, H. R. (1975). Synchronization of visual attention in mother-infant

Kapantzoglou, M., Restrepo, M. A., & Thompson, M. S. (2012). Dynamic assessment of

Lucca, K., & Wilbourn, M. P. (2018). Communicating to learn: Infants’ pointing

Trautman, C. H., & Rollins, P. R. (2006). Child-centered behaviors of caregivers with

You might also like