Following a usage-based approach of language acquisition, the goal of this article is to make a detailed analysis of other and self-repairs targeting a French child's non-conventional productions between 1;09 and 4;0. The study's hypotheses were that (1) the mother would start by offering repairs and later in development use strategies to lead the…

This paper reports on an original study designed to investigate age-related change in the way French children produce speech during oral narrative, considering both prosodic parameters -- speaking rate and duration of the prosodic speech unit -- and linguistic structure. Eighty-five French children aged four to eleven years were asked to tell a…

These studies tested two questions about the developmental origins of children's sensitivity to iconicity with regard to number gestures: (1) whether children initially learn number gestures with sensitivity to the one-to-one correspondence between fingers and quantities or whether they learn them as unanalyzed symbols; and (2) whether sensitivity…

Background: Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome (RSTS) is a multiple congenital anomaly syndrome characterised by several typical somatic characteristics and by developmental disabilities with various degrees of severity. Focusing on children with RSTS, the aim of this study was to describe their psychomotor, cognitive, and socio-emotional developmental…

This study investigates vocal imitation of prosodic contour in ongoing spontaneous interaction with 10- to 13-week-old infants. Audio recordings from naturalistic interactions between 20 mothers and infants were analyzed using a vocalization coding system that extracted the pitch and duration of individual vocalizations. Using these data, the…

To evaluate the orthographic and phonological processing skills of developmental dyslexics, we (a) examined their abilities to exploit properties of orthographic redundancy and (b) tested whether their phonological deficit extends to spelling-to-sound connections for large-grain size units such as syllables. To assess the processing skills in…

In a previous study, Parisse suggested that subject dislocations in French language (e.g. "la fille "elle" dort") could be considered as a marker of morphosyntactic development in children with normal language development. The present study aimed to develop this proposition and to confirm it with experimental data, more…

Examined how French mothers' gestures and prosody contributed to their infants' conversational competence, investigating how they used ostensive marking to point out common references at different developmental stages. Longitudinal observations of mother/infant dyads during free play at three developmental stages indicated that mothers adapted…

Examined children's metapragmatic knowledge, or knowledge about linguistic forms. Children were read narratives in which a protagonist made a request. Children evaluated the request, explained their judgments, and suggested alternative formulations of the request. Findings showed that five year olds had metapragmatic knowledge and that…

Two studies investigated developmental changes, and inter-linguistic and inter-individual variations, in the expansion and composition of young French children's early lexicons. Results indicated that lexical productivity strongly increased with age, whereas lexical diversity showed little developmental progression. Inter-individual variability in…

A fundamental question in developmental science is how brains with and without language compute numbers. Measuring young children's verbal reactions in Spain and Finland, we show that, although there is a general arithmetic ability for small numbers that is shared by monkeys and preverbal infants, the development of such initial knowledge in…

Investigated the use of relative clauses in French children's narrative monologues. Narrative texts, based on a picture book without text, were collected from monolinguals age 5, 7, and 10 years and adults. Researchers coded relative constructions. Use of relative clauses in general-discourse functions preceded use in more specific narrative…

In this bulletin, the author describes the various efforts, conditions, and tasks of kindergarten educators during wartime. The document makes particular note of the International Kindergarten Union's work with the American Red Cross in providing service to the children of France who have been severely affected by the war. Further, the author…

This document reviews a number of recent studies written in French that investigate the nature of communication between 2-year-old infants and others. The review includes three parts. The first part focuses on studies aiming to constitute a behavioral catalog of the child. Characteristically, these studies offer a posteriori interpretations of…