This article uses cognitive measures previously developed within linguistic relativity research to explore the thinking patterns of Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilingual children in the Yucatan peninsula. These measures were designed to detect cognitive patterns associated with specific language patterns. Here, these measures are used to test whether 12…

Hart and Risley's (1995) concept of a "word gap" (aka "language gap") is widely used to describe inferior cognitive development and lower academic achievement as by-products of the language patterns of families from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. In recent decades, this line of deficit research has proliferated and…

Parent-child conversations are a potential source of children's developing understanding of the biological domain. We investigated patterns in parent-child conversations that may inform children about biological domain boundaries. At a marine science center exhibit, we compared parent-child talk about typical sea animals with faces (fish) with…

The world's languages draw on a common set of event components for their verb systems. Yet, these components are differentially distributed across languages. At what age do children begin to use language-specific patterns to narrow possible verb meanings? English-, Japanese-, and Spanish-speaking adults, toddlers, and preschoolers were shown…

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis according to which theory of mind competence was a prerequisite to ambiguous idioms understanding. We hypothesized that the child needs to understand that the literal interpretation could be a false world representation, a false belief, and that the speaker's intention is to mean something else, to…

Details BootLex, a model using distributional cues to build a lexicon and achieving significant segmentation results with English, Japanese, and Spanish; child- and adult-directed speech, and written text; and variations in coding structure. Compares BootLex with three groups of computational models of the infant segmentation process. Discusses…

Children (2;10 to 4;7 years) taught passive sentences with forms employing animate patients could produce and comprehend passives better than children taught with forms employing inanimate patients. This indicates that "perspective" is the cognitive counterpart to the formal category of subject and that language acquisition is connected…

Examines the relationship between children's attribute saliency and metaphor interpretation. Findings indicate that attribute saliency for the individual perceiving the metaphor plays a key role in the interpretation process. (Author/CB)

Verbal and nonverbal components of pointing initiation by Down's Syndrome children when looking at books were studied. Analysis of initiation patterns and point duration revealed possible developmental progression from a stage where point and exchange duration are linked to a stage where pointing becomes more detached from the exchange. (21…

In a study about the comprehension of anaphoric relationships in text, three anaphoric ties in forward (antecedent-anaphor) and backward (anaphor-antecedent) position were examined with attention to developmental trends. A four-school sample was used, three in the United States and one in New Zealand. A test of comprehension of anaphoric…

Piaget's research on the processes and products of cognitive and representational development in early childhood is employed to outline the bases of early language development. The processes of assimilation and accommodation, leading to horizontal decalage; empirical and reflective abstraction, resulting in schemas and schemes; as well as…

Examines various kinds of linguistic and psychological information for their pertinence to the arrangement of grammatical information in teaching beginners in English as a Second Language. It is claimed that the psychological information on learning processes is as important as linguistic analysis of the target language. (Author/AMH)

Semantic or vocabulary errors were measured among 6 children with autism and mild learning disability (ages 7-8) and 6 with mild learning disability. Vocabulary errors were similar, except under extension, which was not used by children with autism. Children with autism tended to use all mechanisms in order to name something. (Contains…

Five studies examined the contributions of syllable-ordering and rhythmic properties of syllable strings to 6- and 9-month-old infants' speech segmentation. Results indicate that the capacity for integrating multiple sources of information in speech perception emerges between 6 and 9 months, in rough synchrony with the emergence of integration in…

Data on the development of fundamental frequency patterns and the emergence of semantic relations during the "one word period" in child language development are reported in this study. The research focuses on the changes that occur as children progress from producing single words to sequences of single words and finally to producing…