Editorial: New trends in typical and atypical language acquisition

[eng] This Research Topic presents a selection of contributions linked to the IX AEAL International Congress on Language Acquisition. The Association for the Study of Language Acquisition (AEAL; https://aeal.eu) promotes research on language acquisition and development in both, monolingual and multilingual contexts, with a particular focus on Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician, as well as the relationships between language and psychological, social, educational and biological processes. The triennial AEAL Congress has reached its 10th edition since 1995, and it has become one of the most relevant international scientific events in the field of language acquisition, bringing together experts in diverse areas, including grammar, lexicon, discourse analysis, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language teaching and education. A substantial body of research on language acquisition from these broad and interdisciplinary perspectives has been published in previous AEAL conference volumes (Pérez-Pereira, 1996; Mayor et al., 2005; Diez-Itza, 2008; Aguilar-Mediavilla et al., 2019). The 18 articles included in this Research Topic provide an updated contribution to this research area, fostering and giving continuity to the dissemination and open discussion of new trends in the study of typical and atypical acquisition, as promoted by AEAL. They address the key topics covered in the AEAL Congress on Language Acquisition, including studies on phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical-semantic levels, the development of discourse and pragmatics, literacy acquisition and development, language acquisition in bilingual and multilingual contexts, assessment and intervention in developmental language disorders, language learning and teaching, and new methodological approaches. Accordingly, this Research Topic offers an integrated view of theoretical, methodological and applied issues from multilingual and multidisciplinary perspectives. It includes review articles, brief research reports and original research articles employing experimental, cross-sectional and longitudinal designs that cover a wide range of crucial issues in the field. The studies examine language acquisition among native speakers of various languages and dialects (i.e., Chilean, Colombian, Mexican and Peninsular Spanish; Basque; Catalan; Italian; English); in both monolingual and bilingual participants, across different age groups (infants, children, adolescents, and adults), and in both typical and atypical development (e.g., Developmental Language Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder; Williams and Down Syndromes, Hearing Impairment). A variety of research methods and assessment tools for spontaneous and elicited oral and written language are employed, including those from the CHILDES Project (MacWhinney, 2000), PROESC (Cuetos-Vega et al., 2002), PREP-CORP (Diez-Itza et al., 2022), PDP-PI (Junquera and Zubiauz, this volume), MacArthur Bates CDI (Fenson et al., 2007), SSRT Repetition Task (Bravo et al., this volume), The Pragmatics profile (Dewart and Summers, 1995), and MUAQ (Aparici et al., this volume). Additionally, instruments such as eyetracking, the preferential-looking paradigm, multimodal input in foreign language teaching or technology-assisted intervention in neurodevelopmental disorders can also be found

La metodología Retamhe y el Proyecto Childes: breviario para la codificación y análisis del lenguaje infantil

RETAMHE methodology and the CHILDES project with a focus on minimal standards to codify and analyze child language. This paper investigates some methodological issues concerning research in the field of child language and introduces a set of instruments and software developed in the context of the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) Project. The RETAHME system provides powerful tools for recording, transcribing, and analyzing spontaneous speech samples. Information about the use of the coding system (CHAT) for making distinctions in the transcription process is provided together with the minimum set of standards (minCHAT) to create CHAT files. The CLAN computer programs are used to analyze files containing transcriptions of speech samples for frequency counts, word searches, interactional analyses, etc. The core set of CLAN commands and options constitute the minCLAN system. The first steps in learning to use the CHILDES tools are also explained.En este artículo se investigan algunas cuestiones metodológicas relativas al estudio del lenguaje infantil y se presenta la instrumentación y el software desarrollados en el proyecto CHILDES (Sistema de Intercambio de Datos del Lenguaje Infantil). El sistema proporciona potentes herramientas para investigar en el marco de la metodología de Registro, Transcripción y Análisis de Muestras de Habla Espontánea (RETAMHE). Se proporciona información del sistema de codificación (CHAT) que permite introducir finas distinciones en el proceso de transcripción, al tiempo que se exponen los requerimientos básicos (minCHAT) para crear archivos CHAT. El paquete de programas (CLAN) específicamente diseñados para analizar esos archivos que contienen transcripciones de muestras de habla, incluye recuentos de frecuencias, búsqueda de palabras, análisis de la interacción, etc. El núcleo de comandos y opciones de CLAN constituye el sistema minCLAN, del que se ofrecen algunas pautas. Se trata con todo ello de facilitar los primeros pasos para aprender a usar los instrumentos metodológicos de CHILDES

Late phonological development in Spanish children with bilateral hearing loss / Desarrollo fonologico tardio en ninos espanoles con perdidas auditivas bilaterales

This study has a twofold objective: to analyse and compare the phonological processes in a sample of Spanish children with hearing loss, both with a cochlear implant and with a hearing aid, with a group with normal hearing; and to determine whether there are differences between the participants with a cochlear implant and with a hearing aid in the frequency and nature of the phonological processes. The sample is made up of 168 participants, eight with hearing loss (four with an implant and four with a hearing aid) and 160 with normal hearing. Samples of spontaneous speech were collected and transcribed using the tools from the CHILDES project. For the analysis, the phonological processes paradigm was adopted, evaluating phonological development based on normative error rates. The participants with a hearing loss show slower phonological development in terms of phonological processes, along with atypical processes. Furthermore, the participants with cochlear implants committed more phonological errors than those that wear a hearing aid. The implications of the results are discussed, and it is recommended that auditory stimulation should be done early in children with hearing loss regardless of their technical aid