[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-426458-105":59,"doc-detail-426458-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","starting-over-international-adoption-as-a-natural-experiment-in-language-development","Starting Over - International Adoption as a Natural Experiment in Language Development","","Language development follows predictable shifts in children’s word choices and utterance complexity, yet determining their causes is challenging because typical acquisition intertwines maturation, cognition, and learning. This study examines English acquisition in internationally adopted preschoolers to remove cognitive or maturational roadblocks. Data from 27 children collected 3–18 months post-adoption show developmental trajectories matching monolingual infants, including early noun-dominant vocabularies, short utterances, and omitted grammatical morphemes, followed later by broader vocabularies and longer, more morphologically marked speech.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/starting-over-international-adoption-as-a-natural-experiment-in-language-development/426458/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/starting-over-international-adoption-as-a-natural-experiment-in-language-development/426458.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Putri","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-16","2026-09-29",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What research question does the study address?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It investigates how language acquisition proceeds in internationally adopted preschoolers when cognitive and maturational roadblocks are minimized.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How were participants selected and when were data collected?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The study collected parental reports and speech samples from 27 preschoolers 3 to 18 months after adoption from China.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What language patterns were observed across early and later stages?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Early stages showed noun-dominant vocabularies, short utterances, and general omission of grammatical morphemes; later stages showed more diverse vocabularies, longer utterances, and more grammatical morphemes.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},426458,1790693885,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":24,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":44,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144},962085571259,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE  \nResearch Article  \nStarting Over  \nInternational Adoption as a Natural Experiment in Language Development  \nJesse Snedeker, Joy Geren, and Carissa L. Shafto Harvard University  \n\n| ABSTRACT—Language development is characterized by predictable shifts in the words children produce and the complexity of their utterances. Because acquisition typically occurs simultaneously with maturation and cognitive development, it is difficult to determine the causes of these shifts. We explored how acquisition proceeds in the absence of possible cognitive or maturational roadblocks, by examining the acquisition of English in internationally adopted preschoolers. Like infants, and unlike other second-language learners, these children acquire language from child-directed speech, without access to bilingual informants. Parental reports and speech samples were collected from 27 preschoolers, 3 to 18 months after they were adopted from China. These children showed the same developmental patterns in language production as monolingual infants (matched for vocabulary size) . Early on, their vocabularies were dominated by nouns, their utterances were short, and grammatical morphemes were generally omitted. Children at later stages had more diverse vocabularies and produced longer utterances with more grammatical morphemes. |\n| --- |\n| Language development is marked by a series ofqualitative shifts. Infants speak in single-word utterances for several months before beginning to combine words. Young children learn a disproportionate number of nouns before acquiring a balanced complement of verbs, adjectives, and prepositions. Young English speakers typically omit function morphemes from their early word combinations, and then gradually begin to add these morphemes in. A central question in language acquisition is what causes children to move through these phases (Bloom, 1973; Gleitman & Newport, 1995; Lenneberg, 1967; Wexler, 1998). Are the early stages reflections of cognitive immaturity, or |\n\nAddress correspondence to Jesse Snedeker, 1136 WJH, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA 02138, e-mail: [snedeker@wjh.harvard.edu](snedeker@wjh.harvard.edu).  \ndo they represent necessary steps in decoding the target language? Is the emergence of new linguistic abilities driven by maturation or by the child’s growing knowledge of the language? These questions are difficult to answer because language acquisition is confounded with cognitive development and maturation in typically developing children.  \nHowever, much of what researchers know about typical language development comes from studies of atypical populations. Research on aphasics suggested there might be a critical period for language acquisition (Lenneberg, 1967), a hypothesis confirmed by studying adults deprived of linguistic experience in childhood (Newport,1990) . Research on blind children (Landau & Gleitman, 1985), linguistic isolates (Goldin-Meadow & Feldman, 1977), and children with limited language models (Singleton & Newport, 2004) has been central in demonstrating the resilience of children’s linguistic abilities. These natural experiments allow researchers to explore the effects of factors that are impossible or unethical to manipulate.  \nInternational adoption provides the opportunity for just such a natural experiment. More than 20,000 internationally adopted children enter the United States each year (U.S. Department of State, 2005) . Although most are infants or toddlers, thousands of older children are also adopted. Typically, these children lose their birth language rapidly (Glennen & Masters, 2002) . By adulthood, they fail to distinguish speech in their birth language from speech in an unfamiliar language (Pallier et al., 2003) . Most of these children are adopted when they are well within the sensitive period for language acquisition (Newport, 1990) and become fluent speakers of their new language (Pallier et al., 2003) . But almost nothing is known about how they achiev","cbCaitcvijnTqSdZ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaitcvijnTqSdZ","pdf",186876,"English","# Starting Over\n## International Adoption as a Natural Experiment in Language Development","[{\"question\":\"What research question does the study address?\",\"answer\":\"It investigates how language acquisition proceeds in internationally adopted preschoolers when cognitive and maturational roadblocks are minimized.\"},{\"question\":\"How were participants selected and when were data collected?\",\"answer\":\"The study collected parental reports and speech samples from 27 preschoolers 3 to 18 months after adoption from China.\"},{\"question\":\"What language patterns were observed across early and later stages?\",\"answer\":\"Early stages showed noun-dominant vocabularies, short utterances, and general omission of grammatical morphemes; later stages showed more diverse vocabularies, longer utterances, and more grammatical morphemes.\"}]","Starting Over - International Adoption as a Natural Experiment in Language Development | PDF",1790640650,23]