Purpose: Previous studies with children and adults have demonstrated a "familiar talker advantage"--better word recognition for familiar talkers. The goal of the current study was to test whether this phenomenon is modulated by a child's language ability. Method: Sixty children with a range of language ability were trained to learn the…

Children ranging in age from 1;1 to 1;3 were presented with 16 contrived lexical concepts, each consisting of a nonsense word (eight object words and eight action words) and four unfamiliar exemplars that served as the referents for that word. Overall, the children used 65% of the experimental words one or more times to refer to at least one of…

Investigates language-normal one-year-olds' (N=14) and language-impaired two- and three-year-olds' (N=10) acquisition of words referring to three types of action. Findings revealed that, although both groups produced few of the words, the language-normal subjects comprehended the different types of action, whereas the impaired subjects did not.…

Focus is one factor that may account for children's use of single-word utterances after they have acquired the use of multi-word utterances. The possible role that focus may play in children's use of single-word utterances in naturalistic settings, after the acquisition of syntax, was investigated. (SW)

The role of a strategy of reduplication in phonological acquisition and behavior was examined in terms of: (1) the relationship between adoption of this strategy and failure to produce nonreduplicated multisyllabic forms and final consonants, and (2) the role of reduplication in production constraints. (Author/AM)

One-year-olds (N=11) showed no differences in comprehension of words containing consonants that they had never successfully produced (attempted), words with consonants easily produced (in), and words with consonants never before produced or attempted (out). Attempted and out words were less likely to be acquired in production than in words.…

Describes a study that examines the effect of an adult-child discourse structure on the word combination produced by 17 children at the single-word utterance level. There was a significant difference between pretest and posttest multiword production for the experimental group of six children, but no difference for the control group. (SED)

This study examined the influence of metrical patterns (syllable stress and serial position) of words on the production accuracy of 20 children (ages 22 months to 28 months). Among results were that one-fourth of the initial unstressed syllables were omitted and that consonant omissions, though few, tended to occur in the initial position.…

A study examined the ability of 10 two-year-olds to produce minimal pairs of novel trisyllabic words with primary stress on the first or second syllables. The syllables contained dissimilar or similar vowel contrasts to determine if segments affected omission. Omission was more frequent for the first syllable of weak-strong-weak word pairs.…

Examines within an experimental paradigm phonological selection and avoidance patterns of infants and discusses the role of these patterns in early lexical acquisition. (EKN)

A study consisting of two experiments attempted to further adapt the visual preference procedure for determining children's meaningful phonological perception. In the first experiment, 1-year-olds were presented with auditory stimuli (words) and screens containing paired color photographs of the object described by each word and of an unusual…

Comparison of language-impaired two- to three-year-olds (N=10) and normal one-year-olds (N=15) matched for expressive language revealed that the language-impaired subjects acquired a greater number of object concepts presented in a no-action condition than the normal children, although language-impaired subjects' extensions of the names to new…

This study proposes that children's phonological behavior at Stage VI of sensorimotor development may show markedly decreased variability compared to children at Stage V. According to Piaget, sensorimotor development during Stage VI is distinguished from preceding stages by the onset of representational ability and ability to form mental…