Both modeling and imitation training were found to be effective procedures in eliciting imitation of utterances. (ST)

A review of research on language handicapped, disadvantaged, and other children, indicates that incidental language teaching (natural unstructured interactions between adults and children and which allow adults to transmit new information and give children practice in developing communication skills) is a promising language intervention technique…

Forty-five children drawn equally from nursery school, kindergarten, and first grade were administered a nonverbal imitation task, a production task, a comprehension task, and a verbal imitation task. The results of the four tasks support the Temporal Complexity Hypothesis, which states that the components of temporality--order among events (O),…

A longitudinal study examining the role of imitation on children's lexical acquisition is discussed here. Findings did not support the view that imitation may enable new lexical items to be acquired, and it is noted that other functions of imitation in language acquisition should be explored. (CHK)

Attempts to determine whether children can use social-pragmatic cues to determine "what kind" of referent, object, or action an adult intends to indicate with a novel word. Doubts that children assume that a novel word refers to whatever nameless object is present. Suggests that lexical acquisition rests fundamentally on children's…

Examines whether knowledge of functional properties of a referent for a new name influences children's first guesses about whether that name refers to an object or a substance. Suggests that children do not rely on a single source of information, but rather draw on various kind of information, including perceptual characteristics of the entities…

Describes a study of three infants whose parents presented vocal models for the infants to imitate. Parents presented vocal models both with and without social praise. Infants showed systematic increases in matching after praise was introduced. Nonmatching vocalizations did not increase with introduction of praise. Findings demonstrate generalized…

Two environmental learning conditions based on generative linguistics were tested to determine whether they could induce in children (in grades 1-3) the acquisition of the rules of metaphors and the subsequent generation of metaphors based on the acquired rules. The first modeling condition (MC-1) emphasized the verbal-interaction effect: the…

Imitation in the speech of the child serves at least three functions in the development of linguistic competence. Imitation provides auditory feedback for phonological and morpho-syntactic accuracy, produces a model for verification and/or clarification by speakers, and "makes time" for the processing and acquisition of information. Beyond these…

A question of both theoretical and practical importance for the study of phonological development is whether there is a difference in the status of productions rendered spontaneously by the child and those repeated by the child after either an adult model or his own production. The relevant theoretical questions are: (1) Are all the child's…

In this monograph, the language and pedagogical concepts embodied in the Tucson Early Education Model are used to develop a systematized method of natural language learning. It is hypothesized that young children in school continually resystematize their language, and that conscious and systematic modeling by the teacher should accelerate this…