The aim of this longitudinal study is to evaluate 3 views on the relationship between nonword repetition and vocabulary: (i) the storage-based view that considers nonword repetition, a measure of phonological storage, as the driving force behind vocabulary development, (ii) the lexical restructuring view that considers improvements in nonword…

Parental engagement in home-based learning activities is linked to children's academic skills. Yet, interventions that try to enhance parental engagement--sometimes targeted to families with low levels of education--have small effects. This study aimed to inform supports for families by examining how different types of home-based learning…

Theory and empirical work suggest inclusion preschool improves the school readiness of young children with special needs, but only 2 studies of the model have used rigorous designs that could identify causality. The present study examined the impacts of the Boston Public prekindergarten program-which combined proven language, literacy, and…

When teaching children part terms, adults frequently outline the relevant part rather than simply point. This pragmatic information very likely helps children interpret the label correctly. But the importance of gestures may not negate the need for default lexical biases such as the whole object assumption and mutual exclusivity. On this view,…

Compares older and newer methods of studying language acquisition in younger and older toddlers in an attempt to explain discrepancies in the literature concerning whether girls are more advanced than boys in language acquisition. (SS)

Two studies investigated linguistic representations underlying English-speaking 2.5-year-olds' production of transitive utterances. Findings indicated that children trained with pronouns and nouns could produce a transitive utterance creatively with a novel verb. Results suggest that English-speaking children build many of their early linguistic…

Twenty preschool children and their mothers were observed interacting verbally in an unstructured situation. Close mutual adaptation of both partners was demonstrated. Correlational patterns allowed the abstraction of primitive and advanced clusters of language-teaching/learning behaviors. (JMB)

Twelve 21/2-year-old children received adult verbal intervention selectively directed toward acquisition of either question forms or verb forms. Findings showed that children who received verb intervention acquired new verb structures while children who received question intervention acquired new forms of questions. (Author/JMB)

Assessed the relative benefits of three styles of adult book reading for preschoolers' emergent literacy. Measured children's receptive vocabulary, print, and story comprehension skills after exposure to one style. Found that the describer style resulted in the greatest benefits for children's vocabulary and print skills; a performance-oriented…

Analyzed "if" sentences in conversations in the homes and preschools of four-year-old children. Parents and teachers used "if" more often than did children. Children and parents did not differ in the proportion of "ifs" that had the linguistic properties of a conditional premise. (BC)

Used a cross-sectional natural language database to investigate the parent-child conversations of 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds. Found that 4-year-olds and, to a greater extent, 5-year olds reliably used explicit contrastives. All the children regularly elicited mentalistic responses from their parents and, in some cases, these parental responses were…

After viewing sequences of pictures that depicted a problem, children produced stories with plots and character responses. After sequences of uneventful pictures, children produced stories that focused on actions and used simple connectives. First graders' stories contained more goals, complex language, and temporal connectives than did those of…