Previous research using the name-based categorization task has shown that 20-month-old infants can simultaneously learn 2 words that only differ by 1 consonantal feature but fail to do so when the words only differ by 1 vocalic feature. This asymmetry was taken as evidence for the proposal that consonants are more important than vowels at the…

Results are described of a study of vocalizations of two female infants, classified as cry, discomfort, and vegetative sounds, recorded between one and eight weeks of age. The implications for later speech development are discussed. (Author/RM)

Vocalizations of two female infants, recorded over a five-week period after the first emergence of cooing were studied. It was found that the features of the more primitive sound types regrouped themselves in comfort sounds. The implications for theories of prespeech development are discussed. (EJS)

Describes an experiment which tested the infant's sensitivity to the timing of the mother's responses by arranging a video system so that mother and baby each saw a full-face, life-size image of the other on a video screen. Results provide evidence for the infant's active role in interaction with adults. (SED)

This research disputes the traditional position on babbling by showing that the phonetic content of babbled utterances exhibits many of the same preferences for certain kinds of phonetic elements and sequences that have been found in the production of meaningful speech by children in later stages of language development. (Author/RM)

Through discussion and illustrative events, an evolving segment of communication is described during the course of transition of one child's total communication system from the sensorimotor or gestural level at 12 months into the level of use of the adult words "more" and "mine," and associated utterances, at 24 months. (Author/RM)

A study is described, the results of which indicate that mothers can recognize the cries of their own infants from tape-recorded cry samples with few instances of confusion, and that the sex of an unknown infant cannot be reliably identified using a simple auditory identification paradigm. (Author/RM)

Research is reported which investigated the ability of four-month-old hearing infants to discriminate between gestures derived from American Sign Language. Findings show that infants possess the perceptual abilities to differentiate between signs that differ solely in terms of contrasts along a single underlying movement direction. (SED)

Addresses questions about infant perceptual ability and the possibility of its decline as a function of development in the absence of specific experience. Compares English-speaking adults, Hindi-speaking adults, and 7-month-old infants on their ability to discriminate two pairs of natural Hindi (non-English) speech contrasts. (Author/RH)

A case study of the period of repetitive babbling in one Dutch infant is reported. Repetitive babbling is seen as a systematic and continuous process, during which the child is applying certain strategies in order to form concepts concerning the possibilities of his or her articulatory apparatus. Strategies identified are: (1) variation…

Thirty-one papers and reports dealing with recent work on language input to children are listed in this annotated bibliography. The annotations, which are descriptive rather than evaluative, summarize the design of each study, the nature of the data, and some of the results and conclusions. Entries by P. Broen, J. Bynon, L. Cherry, J. M. Crawford,…

The early acquisition of the interrogative system, with data from Serbo-Croatian, is investigated. The subject is approached from the angle of adult-child interaction. A first-born pair of dizygotic twins were observed, beginning a month prior to the time when they first began to produce questions. (Author/RM)

Selected aspects of early phonological development are described, and eight important characteristics are suggested. It is held that the child plays a highly active, creative role in the acquisition process. The child's early vocables constitute a connecting link between babbling and adult-modeled speech; the child's phonological systems for…

The feedback model of maternal language indicates that maternal language development is tailored to child feedback. The conversational model indicates that adjustment in mothers' speech occurs before the onset of child language. In order to verify the validity of these models, the language of mothers of six hearing and six deaf 13- to…