Infants start learning words, the building blocks of language, at least by 6 months. To do so, they must be able to extract the phonological form of words from running speech. A rich literature has investigated this process, termed word segmentation. We addressed the fundamental question of how infants of different ages segment words from their…

Reviews new developments in the field of child language acquisition that emphasize the role of communication and dialogue. Mentions work on precursors to dialogue in infancy, the development of communicative intent, and the importance of cognitive over syntactic strategies of language processing by the young child. (Author/SS)

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…

Reviews research on the development of intentional communication between adult and child. Suggests that the communicative partnership between caregiver and child is dynamic, functioning to assist in the developmental achievements of the child and also functioning as a mechanism for socializing the child and his or her partner into the appropriate…

This book investigates children's security of attachment in infancy and its relationship to their cognitive development in the preschool years, presenting evidence that caregivers' proclivity to treat their infants as mental agents and to attribute intentionally to their behavior is critical to their child's cognitive development. The book…