We studied spontaneous speech noun-phrase production in eight French-speaking children with SLI (aged 5;0 to 5; 1) and controls matched on age (4;10 to 5;11) or MLU (aged 3;2 to 4;1). Results showed that children with SLI prefer simple DP structures to complex ones while producing more substitution and omission errors than controls. The three…

An intriguing error has been observed in toddlers presented with a 3-location search task involving invisible displacements of an object, namely, the C-not-B task. In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the dynamics of the attentional focus process that is suspected to be involved in this task. In Experiment 1, 2.5-year-old children were…

Tested predictions of dynamic field theory in study of 3-year-olds' location memory errors in task with homogeneous task space. Found that young children's spatial memory responses are affected by delay- and experience-dependent processes as well as the geometric structure of the task space. Both dynamic field theory and category adjustment models…

Examined preschool children's recall of deictic verbs of motion presented within stories either consistently or inconsistently with the protagonist's viewpoint. Found that 3- and 4-year-olds accurately recalled verbs of motion (come, go, bring, take) that were consistent with the protagonist's viewpoint but made substitution errors of…

Presents an alternative definition of negative evidence, based on the idea that the unique discourse structure created in the juxtaposition of child error and adult correct form can reveal the child in contrast or conflict between the two forms. Findings reveal that children reproduced the correct irregular model more often and persisted with…

Presents a stochastic model for distinguishing mental arithmetic errors according to causes of failure. A series of experiments (1) studied questions of goodness of fit and model validity among four and five year olds and (2) used the model to measure the relative contributions of developmental improvements in short-term memory and arithmetical…

The objective of this paper is to explain the need for and defend the sufficiency of the child's-play method of teaching the place value notation concept to preschool and elementary school children. Discussion first illustrates error patterns of school children in the use and interpretation of place value notation, arguing that the errors reflect…