Young children typically do not use order-of-mention to resolve ambiguous pronouns, but may do so if given additional cues, such as gestures. Additionally, this ability to utilize gestures may be enhanced in bilingual children, who may be more sensitive to such cues due to their unique language experience. We asked monolingual and bilingual…

Pointing and gestures in 47 infants was investigated in 2 experiments contrasting declarative-referential vs. imperative-instrumental conditions of communication, and another study of 7 infants examined prepointing transitional phenomena. Results show gestures are produced differently in experimental conditions: reaching is only produced in…

We investigated infant precursors of low language scores in early childhood. The sample included 373 probands in 130 monozygotic (MZ) and 109 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs in which at least one member of the pair scored in the lowest 15th percentile of a control sample on a general language factor derived from tester-administered tests at…

Examines the changes that occur from ages 5 to 11 in question/answer sequences of Dutch children. Function, content, form of questions, and listener response are analyzed. (EKN)