Shared intentionality theory posits that at age 3, children expand their conception of plural agency to include 3- or more-person groups. We sought to determine whether this conceptual shift is detectable in children's pronoun use. We report the results of a series of Bayesian hierarchical generative models fitted to 479 English-speaking…

A good deal of research purports that bilingualism has a positive effect on some aspects of cognitive functioning. However, this effect is not consistent, and little research examines trajectories of cognitive skill development in bilingual children. Moreover, it remains unclear whether different types of bilingualism impact how cognitive…

In six analyses using the Child Language Data Exchange System known as CHILDES, we explored whether and how parents and their 1.5- to 5-year-old children talk about writing. Parent speech might include information about the similarity between print and speech and about the difference between writing and drawing. Parents could convey similarity…

The relationship between written words and their pronunciation varies considerably among different orthographic systems, and these variations have repercussions on learning to read. Children whose languages have deep orthographies must learn to pronounce larger units, such as rhymes, morphemes, or whole words, to achieve the correct pronunciation…

The use of four types of psychological state words (physiological, emotional, desire, and cognitive) during mother-child play sessions at ages 3, 4, and 5 years was examined in 30 children diagnosed with delayed expressive language at 24-31 months and 15 age-matched comparison children with typical development. The children's mean length of…

BASIC LINGUISTIC CAPACITY IS PRESENT EXTREMELY EARLY IN CHILDREN. TWO-YEAR-OLDS UNDERSTAND TRANSITIVE ACTIVE SENTENCES AND THREE-YEAR-OLDS UNDERSTAND MANY PASSIVE SENTENCES. OLDER CHILDREN (THREE-YEAR-OLDS) UNDERSTAND SOME SENTENCES LESS WELL THAN YOUNGER CHILDREN (TWO-YEAR-OLDS). THIS BRIEF DECREASE IN COMPREHENSION ABILITY IS DUE TO THE…

A study was conducted to test an hypothesis relating semantic structures to cognitive development, specifically that the mean number of associative complexes used by a group of children will be significantly greater than the mean number of associative complexes used by a group of adolescents. The word game "Password" provided a simulation of a…

Discusses the possibility of a neurolinguistic interconnection between the parieto-temporo-occipital junction, semantic aphasis, and cognitive and language development around age seven. (Author/HP)

Research has indicated that across the second to fifth grade range, there was evidence to suggest a difference between the oldest and youngest groups in the memory representations which directed recall of logically related sentences. The developmental trend was from what seemed to be an unstable and fragmentary memory rperesentation, which…

Pragmatic development requires the ability to use linguistic forms, along with non-verbal cues, to focus an interlocutor's attention on a referent during conversation. We investigate the development of this ability by examining how the use of demonstratives is learned in Turkish, where a three-way demonstrative system ("bu,"…

Two children were observed for half a year and specific topics were examined in child communication: how much information is transmitted through various channels of verbal and nonverbal communication? Is specific information transmitted through specific channels? Can relationships between the channels be expressed through some type of formula?…

Discusses research results that demonstrate that nonlinguistic symbolic deficits of language-impaired children may actually reflect resource allocation constraints and cross-modality deficits. Discusses implications of studies that contrast symbolic action development in normally developing children with that in children with specific language…

In one experiment, children from 5 to 10 years of age played with puppets and responded to questions concerning the acquisition of one particular linguistic structure by children; in another series of experiments, both children and adults responded to questions regarding nonsense words in differentiating contexts--the focus of the discussion…

The concepts of front, back, and side may be easily understood in relation to an intrinsically fronted item, but with a nonfronted object they depend on situational or psychological cues. A study investigated a child's awareness of the front, back, and side of his own body and of fronted and nonfronted objects. Researchers hypothesized that a…

Two studies which examined the effect of bilingual cultural/educational experience on competence are presented. The language/educational matrix of the child is an influential factor in development. Bilingual children tended to have greater "cognitive plasticity" than monolingual children. A comprehensive theory of human development is…