Proper Names appear at the heart of several debates in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. These include "reference", "intentionality", and the nature of "belief" as well as "language acquisition", "cognitive development", and "memory". This dissertation follows a cognitive approach to the philosophical problems posed by proper names. It puts…

A review of Studies in Cognitive Development: Essays in Honor of Jean Piaget (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969) by David Elkind and John H. Flarell (Eds). (DS)

This paper proposes an explanation for the onset of autobiographical memory at about 4 years of age. It seems likely that normal middle-class 3-year-olds have not yet mastered language as a representational system. Research suggests that children learn the social and cultural forms of narrative memory in talk with others. It is hypothesized that…

Three experiments with children between 5 and 7 years are described. It is shown that nominal predication of an unknown word by a superordinate term enables young children to make appropriate inferences concerning its attributes. The results are discussed in relation to semantic development and reasoning in the young child. (Author/RM)

This study investigated the effects of stimulus presentation rate on primacy-recency effects in children. A modification of the Digit Span task used in the Binet and Wechsler intelligence scales provided the basic memory task administered to 56 male school children in grades kindergarten, second, fourth, and sixth. The specific design required…

Children at three age levels were administered Schutz and Keislar's word-span task using nouns, verbs and functors as stimuli. (Author/RM)

This paper represents a preliminary attempt to determine universals of grammatical development in children. On the basis of language acquisition data, a limited number of findings are presented in the form of suggested developmental universals. These universals are grouped according to the psychological variables which may determine them, in the…

Research has indicated that across the second to fifth grade range, there was evidence to suggest a difference between the oldest and youngest groups in the memory representations which directed recall of logically related sentences. The developmental trend was from what seemed to be an unstable and fragmentary memory rperesentation, which…

Cognition, not to be confused with perception, reception, or stimulus detection, is defined as relationships of sensory experiences in single-loop matrices. The reticular system of the upper brain stem is centered upon as the likely locus of sensory filtering and modification that can modulate language usage. That is, higher cognitive functions…

This study investigated the relationships obtained among verbal imitation, comprehension, and production when a stimulus sentence exceeded the child's short term memory. A total of 32 children, aged 3 to 5 years, took tests of comprehension, nonverbal imitation, verbal imitation, and production of structures expressing sequence ("before", "after",…

Intended for the regular class teacher, the booklet contains 72 sample lesson activities for use with mainstreamed learning disabled students. Activities are organized around the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities and cover the following areas: auditory reception, visual reception, auditory association, visual association, verbal…

This paper discusses various theories of the role of memory in vocabulary acquisition and storage. Several research models are described, and theoretical considerations and questions are presented. The lexicon is seen as an element of grammar; an understanding of lexicon organization is important in the understanding of vocabulary acquisition.…

After intensively studying for several years the thinking processes of members of a tribal group in Western Africa, the Kpelle, the authors examine the relation between culture and cognitive development. The following issues are discussed: (1) an analysis of the terms "culture" and "cognition"; (2) an ethnographic description of the Kpelle…

The last 25 years have witnessed an explosion of research at the intersection of typical language development and child language disorders. A pioneer in bringing these fields of study together is Robin S. Chapman, Emerita, University of Wisconsin. This contributed volume honors her with chapters written by former students and colleagues, who track…