Investigates whether the asymmetry in children's acquisition of polar adjective pairs is based on linguistic factors related to differences in adult usage and frequency or on an underlying conceptual difference. Results suggest acquisition is based on an underlying conceptual asymmetry. (DP)

A 7-month longitudinal study of 20 2- and 3-year-old children shows that children at an early age already know that counting words each refer to a distinct numerosity, although they do not know to which numerosity. It takes children a long time to learn the latter. (SLD)

Preschoolers' ability to understand grammatical relations in passives and to generalize was studied using animate referents. Three- to five-year-old children were taught to produce passive sentence descriptions of events in which animacy of the actor and acted-on object were varied. After pretesting to determine passive sentence comprehension, the…

Fifty-five first grade students from low socioeconomic neighborhoods who lacked understanding of fundamental concepts frequently found in preschool and primary instructional materials and who possessed a low self-concept and limited experience were divided into a control and two experimental groups. The Boehm Test of Basic Concepts (BTBC) was…

The range of meanings of "big" and "little" that mothers and their three children under age two expressed in relatively natural communication situations was studied. Longitudinal data from transcripts of conversations of middle-class mothers and their children were analyzed along with diary records kept by parents of their children's use of size…

This study examines thought, language, and related action in sixth-graders working to understand concepts related to mass, volume, and density. Students from a heterogeneous urban classroom worked in various social contexts including individually, in pairs, in groups of four, and as a class. Their work was examined via videotapes, field notes,…