Resources for Researchers
We have compiled a list of useful resources for child language researchers. Would you like to add a resource? Please e-mail our Media Coordinator!
Check the journals, data archives and data collection tools, consortia, online studies, and resources on bilingual language development.
Journals
The following peer-reviewed scientific journals publish on (aspects of) child language and factors (potentially) influencing its development, either as their main topic, or as one topic amongst (many) others. The journals that have child language as their main focus are marked with an asterisk.
Advances in Cognitive Psychology
This open access, open science oriented journal covers all areas and aspects of human cognitive psychology from behavioral, cognitive, psychophysiological, and neuropsychological perspectives. It also publishes research based on computer modeling.
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
This open access journal publishes innovative developments in research methods, practices and conduct within psychological science. It publishes new types of empirical work reflecting various approaches to research across the field, amongst them studies by the multilab Many Babies Consortium focusing on infant directed speech.
American Journal of Play
This journal focuses on the ways in which play impacts our lives and draws on the fields of child development, education, psychology, media, gaming, and more.
Applied Psycholinguistics
This journal publishes on language development, use, and disorders in both adults and children, with an emphasis on cross-language studies.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
This journal aims to promote research on individual bilingualism as approached from a linguistic, psycholinguistic, or neuroscientific perspective within a wide range of areas, including child bilingual language acquisition. The journal specifically encourages the study of less well researched languages.
Child Development
Since 1930, this interdisciplinary journal has published articles, essays, reviews, and tutorials on various topics in the field of child development. It presents the latest research for researchers and theoreticians, as well as for child psychiatrists, clinical and educational psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and specialists in (early childhood) education.
Child Language Teaching and Therapy
This peer reviewed journal publishes original research and review articles in the field of intervention for and management of children’s speech, language and communication needs.
Cognition
This interdisciplinary journal covers a wide variety of subjects concerning all the different aspects of cognition.
Developmental Psychology
This journal focuses on seminal empirical contributions that significantly advance knowledge and theory about human development across the lifespan. Studies of any aspect of psychological development are welcome, as are studies of the biological, social, and cultural factors that affect development.
Developmental Science
This journal publishes research bridging levels of explanation in developmental psychology and developmental cognitive neuroscience, or research attempting to elucidate mechanisms of developmental change at one level.
First Language *
This IASCL-affiliated multidisciplinary journal welcomes research on child language from diverse theoretical and methodological traditions.
Infancy
This journal publishes original research on normal and atypical infant development during the first two years of life, and includes research both on humans and on animals.
Infant Behavior & Development
This international and interdisciplinary journal publishes research on infants (prenatal to 36 months of age) in the areas of cognitive development, emotional development, perception, perception-action coupling, prenatal development, motor development, and socialization.
Journal of Child Language *
This IASCL-affiliated journal is the first journal ever to be dedicated solely to children’s language acquisition. It will soon celebrate its 50th anniversary.
Journal of Cognition and Development
This journal seeks to understand ontogenetic processes in both humans and nonhumans. It encompasses typical as well as atypical development, and attempts to characterize both biological and cultural influences on cognitive change and continuity.
Journal of Early Childhood Literacy
The main emphasis in this journal is on research related to the nature, function and use of literacy in early childhood (from age 0 to 8). This includes the history, development, use, learning and teaching of literacy, as well as policy and strategy.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
This journal publishes empirical psychological research on the cognitive, social/emotional, and physical development of children.
Journal of Memory & Language
Articles in this journal contribute to the formulation of scientific issues and theories in the broad areas of memory and language (learning, comprehension and production). The journal's focus is on describing the mental processes that underpin these capacities.
Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech
This journal focuses on human speech in all its manifestations, including its acquisition.
Journal of Phonetics
This journal focuses on phonetic aspects of language and linguistic communication processes. Papers of an interdisciplinary nature that rely on linguistic-phonetic principles are also welcome.
Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research
This journal focuses on normal and disordered processes in speech, language, hearing, and related areas such as cognition, oral-motor function, and swallowing. It is an international outlet for both basic research on communication processes and clinical research pertaining to screening, diagnosis, and management of communication disorders as well as their etiologies and characteristics.
International Journal of Bilingualism
This IASCL-affiliated journal publishes on a wide array of topics related to individual bilingualism, including bilingual acquisition in children.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
This multidisciplinary journal focuses on all aspects of bilingualism and bilingual education around the world.
Language Acquisition *
Research published in this journal addresses theoretical questions about language acquisition and development from a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches.
Language Development Research *
This journal was established in 2021 to meet the field's need for a peer-reviewed journal committed to fully Open Science. LDR charges no fees for readers or authors, and mandates full sharing of materials, data, and analysis code. LDR is managed by its editorial board composed of language researchers. It is not owned or published by any public or private company, registered charity, or nonprofit organization. It is hosted as a service by the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries Publishing Service (LPS).
Language, Interaction and Acquisition | Langage, Interaction et Acquisition *
This bilingual (English/French) journal covers all facets of language acquisition among different types of learners and in diverse learning situations, with particular attention to oral speech and/or to signed languages.
Language Learning and Development *
This journal publishes research on diverse approaches to understanding all aspects of language acquisition, including biological, social, and cross-cultural influences. Investigative methods are experimental, observational, ethnographic, comparative, neuroscientific, or formal.
Learning and Individual Differences
This journal focuses on original empirical studies of individual differences as they relate to learning within an educational context.
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
This journal publishes original research with a linguistic focus on bilingual language acquisition and processing, and on the effects bilingualism has on cognition and the brain.
Data archives and data collection tools
The Acquisition Sketch Project
The Acquisition Sketch Project is an initiative that aims at increasing knowledge about the acquisition of understudied languages by presenting researchers with a model for writing an “Acquisition Sketch” of a language based on as little as 5 hours of naturalistic data.
BabyLex
BabyLex is a 2-minute online tool to estimate toddler vocabulary size and track vocabulary development over time. BabyLex is currently available for toddlers acquiring English, Norwegian or German.
CHILDES (Child Language Exchange Data Exchange System)
CHILDES is a repository for child language data, containing transcripts and media data (audio and video) from almost 50 languages in 130 corpora. CHILDES was established in 1984 by Brian MacWhinney and Catherine Snow. Several incredible improvements were made to CHILDES in 2023, which are documented here.
Databrary
Databrary is a restricted access data library that stores, streams, and shares video and audio recordings collected as research data or documentation.
Documenting the Acquisition of Indigenous Languages
Clifton Pye has put together a great resource on how to document the acquisition of indigenous languages. The webpage focuses on recording, transcribing and archiving recordings of children.
MAIN (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives)
MAIN is an instrument for assessing narrative skills in children who acquire one or more languages from birth or from early age, developed as part of the LITMUS battery of test.
MB-CDIs (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories)
The MB-CDIs are parent-report tools used to capture the development of children's vocabulary comprehension, production, gestures, and grammar. The original American English MB-CDI has been adapted in over 100 languages.
WebCDI
WebCDI is a web-based tool which allows researchers to collect CDI data online. It is a pilot project of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory Advisory Board.
Wordbank
Wordbank is an open database of children's vocabulary development. It contains data from 75,144 children and 82,983 CDI administrations across 29 languages and 56 instruments.
Consortia
DARCLE (Daylong Audio Recordings of Children's Linguistic Environments)
DARCLE is a group of researchers using the LENA System or other daylong (audio, video) recordings in their research to examine children’s linguistic environments.
LangVIEW (Consortium on Language Variation in Input Environments around the World)
LangVIEW is a network of professionals interested in how young children across the world use their language experiences to learn about the ambient language(s).
LuCiD (ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development)
LuCiD is a research collaboration investigating key questions about language development across the world.
ManyBabies
ManyBabies is a collaborative project for multi-lab replications of influential experiments in developmental psychology. ManyBabies aims to address theoretical and methodological questions about the nature of early development, including language development.
Online studies
Children Helping Science
This website collects and curates links to studies that caregivers and children can participate in from their home. These studies are run by researchers and universities around the world.
KinderSchaffenWissen (German)
This website collects and curates links to studies that caregivers and children can participate in from their home. These studies are run by researchers and universities in German-speaking Europe.
Bilingualism
Bilingualism Matters
Bilingualism Matters is a network committed to making research on bilingualism available and accessible to families, communities, and professionals.
HaBilNet (Harmonious Bilingualism Network)
HaBilNet supports research on harmonious bilingual language development and disseminates research findings inside and outside of academia. It also offers consultations to families living in bilingual environments.
Q-BEx
The Q-BEx project aims to provide an optimised and customisable online tool to develop profiles of bilingual (and trilingual) children.
Video interviews on YouTube
Interviews now have their own page, please view it here.