Communication is commonly viewed as connecting people through conscious symbolic processes. Infants have an immature communication toolbox, raising the question of how they form a sense of connectedness. In this article, we propose a framework for infants' communication, emphasizing the subtle unconscious behaviors and autonomic contingent signals…

In language learning, aided language modeling refers to the method by which communication partners provide models of the communication system used by individuals with complex communication repertoires that involving both symbols and speech. Providing aided language models creates opportunities for individuals with complex communication repertoires…

In order for children to understand and reason about the world in an adult-like fashion, they need to learn that conceptual categories are organized in a hierarchical fashion (e.g., a dog is also an animal). While children learn from their first-hand observation of the world, social knowledge transmission via language can also play an important…

This paper reports on an exploratory qualitative investigation of the discourses of plurilingual children's parents, with a view to developing an understanding of their family language policy. Drawing loosely on Spolsky [2004. "Language Policy." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], family language policy was conceptualised as having…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

Background: Despite studies of how parent-child interactions relate to early child language development, few have examined the continued contribution of parenting to more complex language skills through the preschool years. The current study explored how positive and negative parenting behaviours relate to growth in complex syntax learning from…

Background: Identifying risk and protective factors for language development informs interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Maternal responsive and intrusive communicative behaviours are associated with language development. Mother-child interaction quality may influence how children use these behaviours in language…

Objectives: This research sought to determine if the language delay (LD) of severely neglected children under 3 years old was better explained by a cumulative risk model or by the specificity of risk factors. The objective was also to identify the risk factors with the strongest impact on LD among various biological, psychological, and…

An interesting paradox in the developmental literature has emerged in which fast-habituating babies tend to be temperamentally difficult and fast language learners, even though temperamentally difficult babies tend to be slow language learners. The purpose of the present investigation was to examine whether the paradoxical relationships among…

Asserts that the model of the adult-infant dyad developing interaction, and then language, in the infant, is a better model than adult language for the analysis of some communication-like systems. When applied to silent film, the adult-infant dyad leads to the extraction of six principles of visually based developmental communication. (25…

It has been proposed that early language is acquired in the context of interpersonal interactions, with parent-child interactions serving as an important foundation (Nicely, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 1999; Sachs, 2005; Tamis-LeMonda, Cristofaro, Rodriguez, & Bornstein, 2006). The purpose of this article is to review the literature on maternal…

Examined relation of social-pragmatic and data- providing features of input to productive vocabulary of 63 two-year-olds. Found benefits of data provided in mother- child conversation, but no effects of social aspects of those conversations. Properties that benefited lexical development were quantity, lexical richness, and syntactic complexity.…

Analysis of mothers' pragmatic language use and children's language levels during free play sessions suggested that a mother-driven, direct influence model may be inappropriate for many mother speech-child language development relationships and points to the feasibility of child- and mother-driven explanatory models for indirect relationships.…

This discussion proposed to describe components of training and roles parents can assume in a language development program and to describe a model program in which parents assumed a major role in their language-handicapped child's rehabilitation. (Author/RK)

A study was conducted to determine the efficacy of utilizing Leach's interrogation model as a means for analyzing question types used by mothers and their children's responses to various interrogative forms. Data analyzed consisted of language samples obtained from three preschool children and their mothers during mother-child interactions plus…