During the second year of life, children acquire words and expand their receptive and expressive vocabularies at a rapid pace. At this age, toddlers' phonological abilities are also developing rapidly. The current study investigated the effect of phonological complexity of words on the order in which they are acquired, receptively and…

"Ladders to Literacy" is a supplemental early literacy curriculum composed of 60 activities designed to develop children's print/book awareness, metalinguistic awareness, and oral language skills. The "Ladders to Literacy" activities can be implemented in a variety of early childhood settings and adapted for children with…

This study applies the Phonological Mean Length of Utterance measurement (PMLU; Ingram & Ingram, 2001; Ingram, 2002) to the data of five children acquiring Finnish and evaluates their phonological development longitudinally at four different age points: 2;0, 2;6, 3;0, and 3;6. The children's results on PMLU and related measures are discussed…

Aim: Very-low-birthweight (VLBW; birthweight less than 1500g and/or gestational age less than 32wks) children are at risk for speech problems. However, there are few studies on speech development in VLBW children at an early age. The aim of this study was to investigate phonological development in 2-year-old VLBW children. Method: Twenty VLBW…

Phonological acquisition traditionally has been measured using constructs that focus on segments rather than the whole words. Findings from recent research have suggested whole-word productions be evaluated using measures such as phonological mean length of utterance (pMLU) and the proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP). These measures have been…

The present study assesses the phonological development of 17 children acquiring Finnish at the developmental point of 25 words (ages 1;2-2;0). The analysis is made using the "PHONOLOGICAL MEAN LENGTH OF UTTERANCE" (PMLU) method (Ingram & Ingram, 2001; Ingram, 2002), which focuses on the children's whole-word productions. Two…

To test D. Stampe's hypothesis about the development of phonological processes, 60 children (21 to 48 months old) were placed into groups based on mean length of utterance (MLU) and chronological age. MLU was found to be the best classification for describing the phonological processes. (Author/SEW)

Phonological skills of 20 mentally retarded preschool children were compared with those of 10 communication handicapped, nonretarded children and 10 normally speaking nonretarded children. Retarded and communication handicapped children used a significantly greater total number of phonological processes more frequently, but all groups used the…

Results of two experiments investigating phonological skills of illiterate, unschooled adults and formerly illiterate, unschooled adults from shantytowns in Portugal suggest that learning to read, though not strictly necessary, plays a decisive role in the development of the ability of many individuals to focus on phonological length of…