To obtain reliable information, it is important to identify and effectively question knowledgeable informants. Two experiments examined how age and the ease of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources influence children's ability to effectively question those sources to solve problems. A sample of 3- to 5-year-olds was introduced to…

This study examined whether children use prosodic correlates to word meaning when interpreting novel words. For example, do children infer that a word spoken in a deep, slow, loud voice refers to something larger than a word spoken in a high, fast, quiet voice? Participants were 4- and 5-year-olds who viewed picture pairs that varied along a…

Three studies tested the hypothesis that children's difficulty acquiring dimensional adjectives, such as big and little, is a consequence of how these words are used by adults. Findings indicated that children easily acquired novel dimension words when such words were used in a strictly comparative fashion, but had difficulty when also exposed to…

In learning the meaning of a new term, children need to fix its reference, learn its conventional meaning, and discover the meanings with which it contrasts. To do this, children must attend to adult speakers--the experts--and to their patterns of use. In the domain of color, children need to identify color terms as such, fix the reference of each…

Examined role of spontaneous gesture in 2- to 4-year-olds' counting and assessment of counting accuracy. Found that correspondence of children's speech and gesture varied systematically across age. Children adhered to one-to-one correspondence principle in gesture prior to speech. Counting accuracy related to correspondence of speech and gesture,…

Results suggest that children can use the rules of conversational sequencing to evaluate the need for an inference to the speaker's intent when speakers deliberately violate a rule. This ability is acquired by six or seven years of age, but children do not correctly infer the speaker's intent until they are eight or nine years old. (Author/RH)

Two experiments showed two-year-olds pairs of videotaped actions, one familiar and one novel, and asked them to select referents of novel verbs. For actions not involving objects, children tended to select the novel action over the familiar one in each of four experiments. For actions involving objects, novel actions were chosen more often than…

When learning basic color vocabulary, young children show a selective delay in the acquisition of brown and gray relative to other basic color terms. In this study, we first establish the robustness of this finding and then investigate the extent to which perception, language, and color preference may influence color conceptualization.…

Describes a study of three infants whose parents presented vocal models for the infants to imitate. Parents presented vocal models both with and without social praise. Infants showed systematic increases in matching after praise was introduced. Nonmatching vocalizations did not increase with introduction of praise. Findings demonstrate generalized…