Vocabulary plays a central role in reading comprehension correlations between receptive vocabulary scores and reading scores from kindergarten to 10th grade are in the range of r =. Early and robust vocabulary growth is associated with higher reading levels in elementary school ( Adlof & Perfetti, 2013 Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006 Catts & Kamhi, 2005). Understanding the sources of variability in vocabulary acquisition is important given that individual differences in vocabulary acquisition predict children's subsequent academic achievement. Clair, Pickles, & Durkin, 2012 Johnson et al., 1999), little information is available about long-term vocabulary growth trajectories for children with SLI compared with unaffected children, limiting our understanding about when and how genetic influences operate or how genetic and environmental influences could change over time. Although it is known that language impairments are likely to persist in children with SLI during elementary school, even into adolescence ( Conti-Ramsden, St. ![]() Studies of twin children find significant heritability for vocabulary acquisition in early childhood, such that heritability estimates are higher for children with SLI as compared with estimates from a full population-based sample, suggesting that the etiology of limited vocabulary learning is likely to involve biological as well as environmental factors ( Bishop, Price, Dale, & Plomin, 2003 Dale, Price, Bishop, & Plomin, 2003 DeThorne, Petrill, Hayiou-Thomas, & Plomin, 2005 Rice, Zubrick, Taylor, Gayán, & Bontempo, 2014). Individual differences in vocabulary acquisition, SLI, heritability, associated variables, and possible causal pathways. The 20-year study reported here aims to move the field forward by investigating a trait-based vocabulary metric suitable for comparing the performance of children from preschool into young adulthood, describing patterns of individual change, evaluating predictors of growth, examining ways in which children with SLI grow similarly or differently from unaffected age peers, and enhancing hypotheses of possible causal pathways. Individual growth data would inform studies of causal pathways, allowing for examination of individual differences in vocabulary change over time as well as the relationship of putative predictors over time comparing SLI-affected and unaffected groups. The available studies using cross-sectional methods are informative but cannot address the actual path of individual change over time, the underlying dynamics of the observation that children maintain their relative rank within their age peer group, and the transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Effects of environment and genetics are thought to contribute to the individual differences, and recent studies have explored associations between reading and language across repeated times of measurement in investigations of causal pathways.Īn important gap in our knowledge of children's vocabulary acquisition is a lack of long-term longitudinal studies comparing the vocabulary growth of children with and without SLI. The causes of this variation from age expectations are not known, although increasing evidence suggests that scores adjusted for age expectations tend to be stable over time. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often demonstrate vocabulary delays compared with their age peers ( Gray, Plante, Vance, & Henrichsen, 1999 Rice et al., 2010), and experimental studies of word learning show consistent deficits for children with SLI compared with unaffected children ( Ellis Weismer & Hesketh, 1993, 1998 Gray, 2004, 2005 Oetting, Rice, & Swank, 1995 Rice, Buhr, & Nemeth, 1990 Rice, Buhr, & Oetting, 1992 Rice, Oetting, Marquis, Bode, & Pae, 1994). ![]() These assessments reveal that children of the same age vary in vocabulary size. Standardized vocabulary assessments are often included in assessments of children's language and cognitive development. Children's vocabulary acquisition is widely recognized as a core component of their emerging linguistic abilities, a component with ties to general cognitive abilities such as reading and school success.
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