Discusses ideas from Vygotsky, Leont'ev and Bakhtin to show how fantasy play acts as its own zone of proximal development that contributes to the development of symbolic mediation, the appropriation of social roles and symbols, and the preschool child's preparation for elementary school. (JPB)

Examined data from 408 pairs of identical, same-sex fraternal twins at 14, 20, and 24 months to assess cognitive development and to identify genetic and environmental influences on phenotypic similarity. Found various patterns of development for separate constructs, for females versus males on each construct, and for individuals across constructs.…

To test whether the critical language learning period applies to second languages, the English proficiency was studied of 46 Asians varying in age at which they moved to America. Results on a grammaticality judgment task support the hypothesis; early arrivals were significantly superior to later arrivals in English proficiency. (TJH)

Discusses humor development in children and other factors that influence children's interpretation and enjoyment of literary humor. These factors include the child's cognitive and linguistic stage of development, the object of humor, sex differences, and past experiences. (BB)

Comparison of results obtained for 62 normally developing preschool children on the Bracken Basic Concept Scale, the Preschool Language Scale, and the Slosson Intelligence Test revealed low to moderate correlations between the three tests. Results suggest the tests do not measure the same abilities and thus cannot be used interchangeably. (DB)

The role of cognitive and linguistic individual differences as well as contextual factors and processing complexity were examined as determinants of pronoun reversal (I/you). It is proposed that pronoun reversals commonly result from a failure to perform a deicitic shift, which is especially likely when children's psycholinguistic processing…

Attention regulation was studied with 35 children with Down syndrome, ages 13-42 months, and 23 children with typical development, focusing on alternating looks between a person and an object, social referencing (using emotional responses of others to appraise ambiguous events), and links to language and cognitive development. (SW)

Verbal and figurative classification tasks were presented to 30 blind and 30 sighted children (ages 6 to 11). Although younger blind children were significantly less efficient on tasks, older ones reached or were close to the level of their sighted peers. Analysis illustrates how the blind children adjusted their conceptual knowledge to their…

Examines the relationship between young children's use of two languages and their cognitive development. Discusses the simultaneous and sequential acquisition of two languages; theories on cognition and language; and studies on the effects of bilingualism. Offers strategies for creating an effective language learning environment for young…

Infants were exposed to symbolic gestures from their parents beginning at 11 months of age. In bimonthly interviews, mothers reported their infants' use of gestures and words. Results indicated a smaller but reliable difference between the onset of infants' use of symbolic gesture and the onset of their use of words than earlier research…

The study found that eight specifically language-impaired children (ages four and five) were more limited than eight normally developing children (ages two and three, matched for mean utterance length) in the use of both subject case marking and verb morphology. A relationship between the two types of usage was found in both groups of children.…

Assessed semantic priming for category coordinates and function-related words in children with good or poor reading comprehension, matched for decoding skill. Found that both groups showed priming for function-related words, but poor comprehenders showed priming for category coordinates only if the pairs shared high-association strength. Good…

Describes the rationale and development of a new screening test, Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning-3 (DIAL-3), which is based on previous editions. Empirical research is presented to document item additions and deletions as well as the continued maintenance of three performance areas: motor, concepts, and language. (Author/CR)

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…

Focuses on whether teachers' enabling styles in talking with young pupils depends on supportive strategies on teacher's part or whether any more specific teacher discourse-moves can be identified as productive. Analyzes one extended recording in which the teacher talks with a group of 5-year olds for approximately 30 minutes. Conclusions are drawn…