Preparation of this paper supported by U.S. Public Health Grant HD-0890, a grant from the Carenegie Corporation, and by U.S. Public Health Grant HD-2680.

Piaget's research on the processes and products of cognitive and representational development in early childhood is employed to outline the bases of early language development. The processes of assimilation and accommodation, leading to horizontal decalage; empirical and reflective abstraction, resulting in schemas and schemes; as well as…

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Examined was the association between affective and cognitive development in 14 Down's Syndrome infants (4- to 8-months-old). Mothers administered a series of 30 laughter items each month, and experimenters gave the Uzgiris-Hunt scales of cognitive development at 13 and 16 months, and the Bayley scales and Infant Behavior Record at 16 months.…

Cognitive categories in infants that have relevance for linguistic development were investigated. "Agent" and "recipient," the categories chosen, are relational categories which by definition involve action. This experiment explored infants' (48 males, 14-24 months of age) sensitivity to certain "action parameters" of events. The question of…

Sixteen 9-18 month normal/superior infants "played" in their home cribs with a two-channel operant "toy" which allowed free choice between alternate audio feedbacks. With more than 300,000 seconds of listening time in the response record, 12 babies successfully discriminated gross differences in auditory complexity, while 10 discriminated fine…

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