Previous research indicates that monolingual infants have difficulty learning minimal pairs (i.e., words differing by one phoneme) produced by a speaker uncharacteristic of their language environment and that bilinguals might share this difficulty. To clearly reveal infants' underlying phonological representations, we minimized task demands by…

The present research explores young children's extension of novel labels to novel animate items. Three experiments were performed by means of the intermodal preferential looking (IPL) paradigm. In Experiment 1, after repeated exposure to novel word-object associations, 24- and 36-month-olds extend novel labels on the basis of shape similarity, in…

Caregivers of 608 (331 boys and 277 girls) children in Shanghai, China reported on their children's language development and on the language teaching practices used in the home. The children were between 24 and 47 months old. The relation of age-corrected language level to paternal education, child gender, and teaching practice use was examined.…

Presents methodological and factual analyses of children's use of imitative speech as a strategy in language acquisition. The impact of conversational interactions and picture-story books on the speech of one girl aged 20 to 32 months is demonstrated. Four methodological problem areas are analyzed. (Author/RH)