Editorial: New trends in typical and atypical language acquisition

Eliseo Diez-Itza ^1* Victoria Marrero-Aguiar ² Alejandra Auza ³ Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla ⁴

• ¹ LOGIN Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
• ² Actualing. Clinical Applications, Technological and Related Uses of Linguistics, Department of Spanish Language and General Linguistics, National University of Distance Education (UNED), Madrid, Madrid, Spain
• ³ Language and Cognition Laboratory, Hospital General Dr. Manuel Gea Gonzalez, Mexico City, México, Mexico
• ⁴ Investigation in Development, Education and Language (I+DEL), Institute for Research and Innovation in Education (IRIE), University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

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. (Junquera and Zubiauz, 2024, this volume), MacArthur Bates CDI (Fenson et al., 2007), SSRT Repetition Task (Bravo et al., 2024, this volume), The Pragmatics profile (Dewart and Summers, 1995), and MUAQ (Aparici et al., 2024, this volume).Additionally, instruments such as eye-tracking, the preferential-looking paradigm, multimodal input in foreign language teaching or technology-assisted intervention in neurodevelopmental disorders can also be found.The significance of preverbal abilities during the first year of life as a foundation for language emergence has been increasingly recognized over recent decades through diverse experimental paradigms. In this context, the study by Laia Marcet, Joan Birulés, Laura Bosch and Ferrán Pons, employing an eye-tracking preferential-looking paradigm, explore how monolingual and bilingual infants form face-language associations during their first year of life.The development and use of diverse assessment tools and instruments in the early stages of language acquisition are essential to detect language difficulties and factors influencing language acquisition, a focus of several studies in the present volume. Natalia Bravo, Sonia Mariscal, Marta Casla and Miguel Lázaro examine the potential of a Spanish Sentence Repetition Task for detecting language disorders in young children, comparing it with measures of spontaneous language (Mean Length of Utterance, lexical diversity, and structure of the Noun Phrase A frequent cause of atypical language acquisition is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a primary language disorder that persists into school age and beyond. This impairment is investigated in two experimental studies utilizing eye-tracking. Ernesto Guerra, Carmen Julia Coloma and Andrea Helo examine lexical-semantic processing in preschool children with DLD, focusing on their real-time comprehension of semantic relationships, to verify expected difficulties in lexical access and retrieval, as well as greater lexical competition among children with DLD. María Fernanda Lara-Díaz, Judy Costanza Beltrán Rojas and Yennifer Aponte Rippe investigate visual attention during phonological processing tasks, also testing language, vocabulary, and phonological awareness in Colombian children with DLD to assess its role in integrating visual perceptual information with diverse cognitive and linguistic processes. Children with DLD not only face challenges in oral language but also show significant writing difficulties. This aspect is explored by Raquel Balboa-Castells, Nadia Ahufinger, Mònica Sanz-Torrent and Andreu Llorenç, who utilize a writing process evaluation battery (PROESC) to analyze how these children plan and code written expository texts, examining word frequency and sentence structure, grammatical complexity, lexical density, as well as omissions and errors.Two contributions in this volume stem from the SYNDROLING Project, which aims to identify specific linguistic phenotypes in neurodevelopmental genetic syndromes, as postulated by neuroconstructivist models. These studies employ the methods of language corpus analysis provided by the CHILDES Project. Verónica Martínez, Vanesa Pérez, María Aránzazu Antón, Manuela Miranda and Patricio Vergara explore the profiles of late phonological development of children with Williams syndrome, focusing on the absolute frequency of phonological errors, in a longitudinal analysis that tracks an accelerated evolution from expansion to stabilization stages following non-linear trajectories. Aitana Viejo, Maite Fernández-Urquiza and Eliseo Diez-Itza explore the pragmatic profiles of adolescents with Down syndrome and Williams syndrome by comparing the microstructure and macrostructure of their narratives, highlighting atypical dissociations, using the Pragmatic Evaluation Protocol for Corpora (PREP-CORP) to assess productivity and complexity at both levels.The relationships between language and cognition in children with hearing loss have been recurrently addressed in developmental research, as they show significant delays in understanding Theory of Mind. This has often been attributed to limited access to conversational interactions in their environment. In this vein, Elisabet Serrat, Anna Amadó, Stephanie Durrleman, Alaitz Intxaustegi and Francesc Sidera assess the connection between language development and mindreading abilities in hearing-impaired children, and specifically whether the successful completion of a second-order false-belief task requires the comprehension of complements or other language skills, such as expressive vocabulary, receptive and expressive syntax, recalling sentences, and a recursive sentential complement.New trends in the research on atypical language acquisition increasingly focus on the development of innovative intervention methods that incorporate technological devices. Finally, Ana Lucía Urrea, Vanessa Fernández-Torres, Isabel R. Rodríguez-Ortiz and David Saldaña present a systematic review, preregistered in PROSPERO, evaluating the effectiveness of technology-assisted interventions-using tablets and computers-for vocabulary learning in children with autism spectrum disorder, emphasizing essential factors such as personalized assessments, recognition of prior experiences, and awareness of the context of usageIn sum, the articles included in this Research Topic provide a rich tapestry of interdisciplinary perspectives in the study of language development, encompassing a wide array of topics. The studies presented illustrate the dynamic and evolving nature of research on typical and atypical language acquisition, incorporating a broad range of theoretical and applied perspectives. A salient feature of this volume is its methodological diversity, employing experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal designs to investigate language acquisition across various age groups and linguistic backgrounds. Furthermore, the focus on bilingual and multilingual contexts reflects the growing recognition of the need to understand language acquisition in increasingly diverse linguistic environments. This Research Topic contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying language production, comprehension and processing and demonstrates the field's commitment to advancing reliable assessment strategies. The contributions also emphasize the need of early detection and effective intervention in atypical language development, highlighting the results of interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative methodologies in addressing the complexities of language development. This collection underscores the relevance of AEAL's mission in shaping future directions in language acquisition research.ED-I wrote the first draft of this editorial. VM-A, AA-B, and EA-M edited consecutive versions. The overall Research Topic has been conceptualized by all the authors. All authors have agreed on the final version.