Purpose: This study examines the effect of age on language use with an automated analysis of digitized speech obtained from semistructured, narrative speech samples. Method: We examined the Cookie Theft picture descriptions produced by 37 older and 76 young healthy participants. Using modern natural language processing and automatic speech…

Deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from accessing spoken language and whose hearing parents have not exposed them to sign language develop gesture systems, called "homesigns", which have many of the properties of natural language--the so-called resilient properties of language. We explored the resilience of structure built…

In typical development, children learn an extensive range of idioms and other figurative (non-literal) language expressions during childhood and adolescence. However, many children with autism fall far behind in their idiom comprehension and production and never fully reach adult levels. The current study measured the effectiveness of a group…

SEVERAL EXPLORATIONS WERE MADE INTO THE STRUCTURE OF MEANING IN BURMESE AND RUSSIAN. VARIOUS KINDS OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION WERE ISOLATED BY TEXTUAL STUDY AND INTERVIEWS WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS. DISCUSSION COVERED SUCH THEORETICAL QUESTIONS AS (1) SYNCHRONY AND DIACHRONY, (2) SEMANTICS AND GRAMMAR, (3) SEMANTICS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE, (4) SEMANTICS…

FOUR DIFFERENT READING PROGRAMS WERE EVALUATED USING 302 SECOND-GRADE PUPILS WHO HAD PARTICIPATED IN THE SAME PROGRAMS IN GRADE 1. IN ADDITION TO THE STUDY CONDUCTED IN THE SECOND GRADE, A PILOT STUDY WAS CONTINUED INTO GRADE 3, AND A MODIFIED VERSION OF THE GRADE 1 STUDY WAS MADE AGAIN IN GRADE 1. THE FOUR READING PROGRAMS INVOLVED WERE (1) A…