Naturalistic studies show that children can create language-like communication systems in the absence of conventional language. However, experimental evidence is mixed. We address this discrepancy using an experimental paradigm that simulates naturalistic sign creation. Specifically, we tested if a sample of 6- to 12-year-old children (52 girls…

The causal role of speed of processing (SOP) in developmental language disorder (DLD) is unclear given that SOP has been implicated in other neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This study investigated associations between SOP, language, and inattention/hyperactivity in a U.K. epidemiological cohort…

When and how do infants learn color words? It is generally supposed that color words are learned late and with a great deal of difficulty. By examining infant language surveys in British English and 11 other languages, this study shows that color word learning occurs earlier than has been previously suggested and that the order of acquisition of…

This study examined abstract syntactic categorization in infants, using the case of grammatical gender. Ninety-six French-learning 14-, 17-, 20-, and 30-month-olds completed the study. In a preferential looking procedure infants were tested on their generalized knowledge of grammatical gender involving pseudonouns and gender-marking determiners.…

Using a picture pointing task, this study examines toddlers' processing of phonological alternations that trigger sound changes in connected speech. Three experiments investigate whether 2;5- to 3-year-old children take into account assimilations--processes by which phonological features of one sound spread to adjacent sounds--for the purpose of…

Data from 492 Italian infants (8-18 months) were collected with the parental questionnaire MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories to describe early actions and gestures (A-G) "vocabulary" and its relation with spoken vocabulary in both comprehension and production. A-G were more strongly correlated with word comprehension…

Three studies investigated how 3-year-old Japanese children interpret the meaning of a new word associated with a familiar artifact. Findings suggest that children flexibly recruit clues from multiple sources, including shape information and function familiarity, but the clues are weighed in hierarchical order so children can determine the single…

Examines language effects in class-inclusion performance with 224 children ages 3 through 12 by comparing the standard Piagetian question with two alternate question forms. Overall, the findings were inconsistent with the Piagetian assertion that logical inability produces errors in comparing subclasses; inclusion performance was a function of…

Two experiments tested claim that transparency of Korean fraction names promotes fraction concepts. Findings indicated that U.S. and Korean first- and second-graders erred similarly on a fraction-identification task, by treating fractions as whole numbers. Korean children performed at chance when whole-number representation was included but…