Recent studies indicate the need to investigate the sources of toddlers' understanding of another person's pretense. The present study is a cultural and longitudinal extension of the work of Lillard and Witherington (2004), who claimed that mothers modify their behaviors during pretense and that the some of these behavior modifications help their…

This study examined whether poor pointing gestures and imitative actions at 18 months of age uniquely predicted late language production at 36 months, beyond the role of poor language at 18 months of age. Data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were utilized. Maternal reports of the children's nonverbal skills and language were…

The case presented here adopts a Symbolic Interactionist Observational Approach, as well as Systemic Functional Linguistics, to assess the effectiveness of a student peer-mentoring activity. Three of the author's Level 6 Education Studies students are invited to re-enact their Integrated Learning Project for the Level 5 cohort of students. In…

College students (N=95) rated 200 blissymbols for their inherent guessability (transparency) and amount of perceived perceived relationship between the symbol (translucency) and the symbol's meaning (gloss). Results indicated that although blissymbols are low in iconicity they are relatively translucent and that translucency is related to…

The relationship between language and symbolic gesture was studied in nine children (ages 18-32 months) who were in the lowest 10 percent for language production for their age. Subjects performed like language-matched controls on a lexical production task. On a syntax-related task, they performed like age-matched and significantly better than…

Background: Understanding the relationship between preverbal skills and language development has important implications for identifying communication delay/disorders and for early childhood intervention. In the case of children with Down syndrome, it is well established that symbolic play is associated with the emergence of language. However, the…

Twenty-eight moderately and profoundly retarded children (9 to 17 years old) on one unit of a center for the developmentally disabled were taught a nonvocal symbol system based on that developed by D. Premack. Children varied in speech level from totally nonverbal to some who had simple language skills. The symbol system used a behavioral approach…

This study evaluated the recognition and retention of transparent and nontransparent manual signs by 50 sign-naive hearing college freshmen. There was a significant decrease in the number of nontransparent signs retained as the period of time after training increased. Implications for sign language training with nonverbal hearing persons are…