The world's languages draw on a common set of event components for their verb systems. Yet, these components are differentially distributed across languages. At what age do children begin to use language-specific patterns to narrow possible verb meanings? English-, Japanese-, and Spanish-speaking adults, toddlers, and preschoolers were shown…

A brief summary of research findings which support the hypothesis of scriptal knowledge structures in children and which indicates that children use such structures in ways very similar to those of adults is provided in this paper. Research reveals that when children as young as three are asked to tell what they know about events, they tend to…

This discussion centers on language development in young children particularly as it relates to Piaget's work. The author believes guidelines are lacking for describing structurally the outcome of the language acquisition process at different stages and that there should be more collaboration between linguists and psychologists in this area. (MS)

Data on the development of fundamental frequency patterns and the emergence of semantic relations during the "one word period" in child language development are reported in this study. The research focuses on the changes that occur as children progress from producing single words to sequences of single words and finally to producing…

Suggests that differences in verbal intelligence affect the speech of four-year-olds, necessitating that care be taken not to confuse verbal intelligence with social class when studying the speech of young children. (RL)

Two studies examined whether differences in the lexical explicitness with which languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish) express false belief and preschoolers' socioeconomic status (SES) influenced children's performance on standard false belief tasks. Found that lexical explicitness influenced responses on the "think" false…

This study addressed the extent to which performance on selected verbal and nonverbal measures contributed to the prediction of inflection learning with 20 normal boys (ages 4 to 5). Results suggested that inflection learning may be tied more to other language abilities than to nonverbal cognitive skills in normally developing boys. (DB)

Forty-eight nursery school and kindergarten children participated in a study of concept learning. The study focused on children's use of intensional and extensional information in the acquisition of basic and superordinate categories. The intension of a concept is its definition or set of defining attributes; its extension is the set of all…

The papers in this document represent preliminary results of a study which is part of a 3-year project being conducted by the Educational Testing Service in cooperation with the New York City Board of Education, with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This document is divided into seven sections: (1) Introduction, (2)…

This study of language development was intended to chart the developmental course of the spontaneous use of negatives and affirmatives by 1 1/2 - 3-year-olds in response to true or false statements concerning familiar objects, properties, and actions. Forty children, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months of age, were assessed for knowledge of the words used…

A study of overregularized use of verbs by two children over a period when they were 2 1/2 to 5 years of age shows overregularizations in two directions: non-causative verbs were used as causatives; and causative verbs were used non-causatively. According to terminology from logic, predicates were classified according to the number of noun-phrase…

Investigators agree that mothers employ a variety of request forms and that children seem to be able to respond to these forms with a remarkable degree of accuracy. It is suggested that the speech of mothers to their children is filled with requests which are really not requests at all. It is shown that many of what appear to be adult requests to…

This study proposes that children's phonological behavior at Stage VI of sensorimotor development may show markedly decreased variability compared to children at Stage V. According to Piaget, sensorimotor development during Stage VI is distinguished from preceding stages by the onset of representational ability and ability to form mental…

PART OF A LARGER STUDY OF THE COGNITIVE ENVIRONMENTS OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN, THIS EXPERIMENT EXAMINED THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MOTHERS' LANGUAGE STYLES AND THE CONCEPT ATTAINMENT OF THEIR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN. SPEECH SAMPLES WERE OBTAINED FROM 160 URBAN NEGRO MOTHERS OF FOUR SOCIOECONOMIC GROUPS (MIDDLE-CLASS, UPPER-LOWER, LOWER-LOWER, AND…

The purpose of this research was to develop methods to study the effects of context on children's comprehension and production of temporal terms such as "before,""after,""next,""then," and "but first." A longitudinal study, using naturalistic and traditional laboratory methods, and three…