Throughout life, actions and language are inherent to social interactions. A long-standing research question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the interrelation between verbal and non-verbal forms of social interactions, that is, language and action. Perceiving "how" actions are performed and "why" they are performed in a…

The goal of this study was to investigate non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in target words during the first-word period in infants learning American English. In the spontaneous speech of eighteen participants, target words with a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (C[subscript 1]VC[subscript 2]) shape were analyzed. Target words were grouped into…

Infants have been described as "statistical learners" capable of extracting structure (such as words) from patterned input (such as language). Here, we investigated whether prior knowledge influences how infants track transitional probabilities in word segmentation tasks. Are infants biased by prior experience when engaging in sequential…

Research suggests that nonlinguistic sequence learning abilities are an important contributor to language development (Conway, Bauernschmidt, Huang, & Pisoni, 2010). The current study investigated visual sequence learning (VSL) as a possible predictor of vocabulary development in infants. Fifty-eight 8.5-month-old infants were presented with a…

The ability to perceive sequences is fundamental to cognition. Previous studies have shown that infants can learn visual sequences as early as 2 months of age and it has been suggested that this ability is mediated by sensitivity to conditional probability information. Typically, conditional probability information has covaried with frequency…

Individuals of all ages extract structure from the sequences of patterns they encounter in their environment, an ability that is at the very heart of cognition. Exactly what underlies this ability has been the subject of much debate over the years. A novel mechanism, implicit chunk recognition (ICR), is proposed for sequence segmentation and chunk…

The sequential nature of action ensures that an individual can anticipate the conclusion of an observed action via the use of semantic rules. The semantic processing of language and action has been linked to the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP). The authors developed an ERP paradigm in which infants and adults observed simple…

We investigated infants' sensitivity to spatiotemporal structure. In Experiment 1, circles appeared in a statistically defined spatial pattern. At test 11-month-olds, but not 8-month-olds, looked longer at a novel spatial sequence. Experiment 2 presented different color/shape stimuli, but only the location sequence was violated during test;…

The spontaneous speech of 12 Black children (18-36 months) was evaluated to identify the existence of distinctive Black English features. (Author/CL)

The manual is intended to help parents and professionals understand the motor development of Down's syndrome infants and young children. Following an overview of motor development, gross and fine motor landmarks are presented along with exercises and activities to promote their development in infancy, toddlerhood, and childhood. Each landmark is…

The relationship between language and symbolic play was studied in a sample of children identified as referential in style (multiple noun utterances exceeded pronoun or no-noun utterances), as compared with a sample identified as expressive in style (pronoun utterances or no-noun utterances exceeded multiple noun utterances). Children were…

This study of 82 hearing-impaired children (ages 6 to 36 months) sought to provide normative data concerning their communication efforts and to document the course of development of these earliest communication efforts. The study found that certain cognitive abilities and strategies are prerequisite to the development of certain language…

Presented in the second of a two volume series is a language training program for developmentally delayed children from infancy to development of grammatically appropriate sentences. The second volume is said to have been developed in the Infant, Toddler, and Preschool Research and Intervention Project (Tennessee) and to focus on training the…

"The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education, Volume 2," is an updated edition of the landmark original volume. A range of international experts present a comprehensive overview of the field of deaf studies, language, and education. This area has grown dramatically over the past forty years. From work on the linguistics…

This curriculum was designed as a learning sequence for the adults in charge of a group care center for infants. For example, the sequence of the steps in the child's motor development (e.g., reaching) are described, and some activities and materials appropriate to each step are suggested. Other areas for developmental sequences and activities…