In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross-linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to "front" and "behind," followed by "left" and "right." This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by…

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…

Bilingualism is associated with lifelong cognitive benefits that correlate with facilitated achievements in subsequent language learning. Second language (L2) instruction as well can promote the development of cognitive abilities involved in language learning, and among these, L2 input processing. Crucial to L2 acquisition, input processing is the…

In transparent alphabetic languages, the expected standard for complete acquisition of letter-speech sound associations is within one year of reading instruction. The neural mechanisms underlying the acquisition of letter-speech sound associations have, however, hardly been investigated. The present article describes an ERP study with beginner and…

Examines the communicative functions served by the lexical usage of normal and language impaired children whose speech was limited to single word utterances. (EKN)

Investigates young children's ability to adjust the content of their verbal responses according to what they know their listener knows. Younger and older three-year-old children were able to discern what another person knew and did not know and adjusted their responses accordingly. Younger three-year-olds tended to be underinformative. (SED)

Examined phonological processing in a Chinese reading test and on several phonological processing tasks. Found that younger normal and poor readers of Chinese made more semantic and visual errors, whereas older and normally achieving children made more phonologically related errors. Normally achieving readers also performed better than poor…

A study was conducted to determine whether children give evidence of using any of six comprehension strategies and whether children of same and different ages use different strategies. It was studied how comprehension performance can best be predicted by other facts about the child, including his language and his language input. The six…

The phenomenon known in cognitive psychology as U-shaped behavioral growth is discussed in relation to second language learning. The U-shaped growth concept focuses on the fact that some behaviors appear, disappear, and then apparently reappear over time. It has been documented in children's learning of physical concepts, musical concepts,…

THIS STUDY REPORTS THE FIRST PHASE OF A 5-YEAR LONGITUDINAL INVESTIGATION OF THE COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF A HIGHLY STRUCTURED PRESCHOOL PROGRAM AND A TRADITIONAL NURSERY SCHOOL PROGRAM IN AMELIORATING THE LEARNING DEFECTS OF CULTURALLY DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN. THE HIGHLY STRUCTURED PROGRAM IS INTENDED TO OVERCOME PARTICULAR WEAKNESSES OF…

A study examined the effects of differing degrees of bilingualism (English monolingual, English-French balanced bilingual, Bengali-English partial bilingual) on nonverbal problem-solving abilities of 71 grade-three children. The groups were compared on control of attention and analysis of knowledge. Results indicate the balanced bilinguals…

This paper considers psycholinguistic aspects of bilingualism from two perspectives: the psychology of the individual and social psychology. The linguistic development of children is described and research is presented that compares bilingual and monolingual children with respect to cognitive development. The emotional consequences of parents'…

Papers presented at a 1977 symposium on language acquisition held at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee are included. Contents are as follows: "Assumptions, Methods and Goals in Language Acquisition Research" (Sheldon); "The Mother as LAD: Interaction between Order and Frequency of Parental Input and Child Production"…