Ten four-year-old boys explained how a toy worked to "high varbal" and "low verbal" two-year-old boys. Results showed that the listener's linguistic ability and conversational responsiveness influenced preschoolers' speech modifications. (Author/JMB)

A total of 16 mothers and 16 fathers were recorded in dyadic sessions with their children (eight five year olds, eight two year olds; half boys, half girls) and with an adult. Noise-free questions and declaratives were analyzed for pitch and frequency range. Results suggest that both fundamental frequency and range are significantly influenced by…

Children exhibiting a referential orientation seem more likely to acquire new object names than nonreferentially oriented children. Also, children's selection of words may be influenced by the phonological structure of the words. (Author/RH)

In two experiments, preschoolers interpreted a novel count noun applied to an unfamiliar stuffed animal as referring to a basic-level (such as a person or a dog) kind of object rather than to a context (such as a passenger) or a life-phase (such as a puppy) kind of object. (MDM)

Examines the manipulative strategies of 2- to 6-year-olds in terms of three structural principles--hierarchical complexity, interruption and role change--which are formally parallel to dimensions of language structure. Paper includes an extensive discussion of related studies. (JMB)

Although research on the language of the disadvantaged child is receiving much impetus, few extant studies have been helpful to the teacher. This article reexamines widely held misconceptions about disadvantaged child language in light of modern linguistic and psycholinguistic advances. (WY)

Results of four experiments suggest that two-year-olds may be capable of forming inclusion relations when they hear a novel word for an object that already has a familiar name. (PCB)

Three experiments found that (1) nine-month olds listened more to two-syllable words with strong-weak stress patterns than weak-strong stress patterns; (2) six-month olds showed no preferences for stress patterns; and (3) nine-month olds showed preferences for strong-weak over weak-strong stress patterns in speech sounds passed through a low-pass…

Two strategies that children use to figure out new word meanings--attention to linguistic form class and the assumption of lexical contrast--were examined. It was found that very young children use both form class and lexical contrast to interpret new words. (PCB)

Examines how conversations between parents and their 2-year-old children change as a function of the number of family members interacting. Results indicate that parental speech to their young children is influenced by the gender of their offspring and the number of family members interacting in the situation. (Author/RH)

Sessions of verbal interaction (N=22) significantly facilitated syntax acquisition by 32- to 40-month-olds. In response to children's sentences, experimenters replied with recast sentences that maintained the same meaning but provided new syntactic information. A selective bias in these replies was matched by selectively stronger facilitation in…

Tests the hypothesis that the extent to which the durations of pauses (silences within the utterances of a single speaker) and switching pauses (silences between the utterances of 2 speakers) in the speech of children in conversation become similar (i.e., exhibit conversational congruence) is positively related to age. (BRT)

Tests the hypothesis that mothers would label objects with adult-basic level terms when talking to other adults, but would label the same objects with child-basic terms when speaking to their young children who were just starting to talk, even though these labels may be very much "incorrect" by adult standards. (Author/RH)