A study was conducted to examine the interrelationships between drawing, early writing, and the context of talk in which both phenomena occur. Participant observation methodology was used in a self-contained public school kindergarten in order to gather daily data during a 3-month period. Specifically, children freely drew and wrote in an…

Discusses research results that demonstrate that nonlinguistic symbolic deficits of language-impaired children may actually reflect resource allocation constraints and cross-modality deficits. Discusses implications of studies that contrast symbolic action development in normally developing children with that in children with specific language…

Presents observations of three children's styles of symbolic language focusing on how each leaned to different degrees on drawing and talking to create their imaginary worlds and thus faced different challenges in rendering those worlds in print. (SRT)

Examines the meanings young children express in talk, pictures, and written text, focusing on the integration of the three. Findings illustrate children's exploration of imagined worlds through drawing and talk and the potential problems children face in transferring those worlds to text. (SRT)

Offers an organizational perspective designed to illuminate processes of symbolic development in both normal and abnormal populations. Focuses on the symbolic system of Down Syndrome children. Data support the claim that the symbolic system of these children is intact. (RWB)

This study, which uses the organizational perspective, synthesizes major contributions to the examination of symbolic development in abused children. Focuses on the interrelationship between and the impact of maltreatment on children's cognitive, socioemotional, and linguistic development. (RWB)

Examines, through a longitudinal study, the temporal correspondences of 4 Japanese children, aged 7 to 11, in the attainment of specific milestones in play and language. All children proceeded through the same sequence of stages, but the rate of development was different depending on their environment. (34 references) (GLR)

This book reports the proceedings of the conference on the role of speech in language, the fifth conference in the "Communicating by Language" Series, sponsored by the Growth and Development Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The focus of the first group of papers is on the development of speech in man and…