This study took a novel approach to understanding the role of language in spatial development by combining approaches from spatial language and gesture research. It analyzed forty-three 4.5- to 6-year-old's speech and gesture production during explanations of reasoning behind performance on Spatial Analogies and Children's Mental Transformation…

Prior research has investigated the relation between children's language and spatial cognition by assessing the quantity of children's spatial word production, with limited attention to the context in which children use such words. This study tested whether 4-year-olds children's (N = 41, primarily white middle class) adaptive use of task-relevant…

Building on longitudinal findings of linkages between aspects of teachers' language during instruction and children's use of mnemonic strategies, this investigation was designed to examine experimentally the impact of instruction on memory development. First and second graders ("N" = 54, "M"[subscript age] = 7 years)…

Executive function mechanisms underpinning language-related effects on theory of mind understanding were examined in a sample of 165 preschoolers. Verbal labels were manipulated to identify relevant perspectives on an explicit false belief task. In Experiment 1 with 4-year-olds (N = 74), false belief reasoning was superior in the fully and…

A total of 104 six-year-old children belonging to 4 groups (English monolinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals, French-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals) were compared on 3 verbal tasks and 1 nonverbal executive control task to examine the generality of the bilingual effects on development. Bilingual groups differed in degree of…

Infants of 18 and 24 months acquiring English were tested in a preferential looking task on their ability to detect ungrammaticalities caused by manipulating a single function word in sentences. Infants heard grammatical sentences in which the determiner "the" preceded a target noun, as well as three ungrammatical conditions in which "the" was…