To learn a verb, children must attend to objects and relations, often within a dynamic scene. Several studies show that comparing varied events linked to a verb helps children learn verbs, but there is also controversy in this area. This study asks whether children benefit from seeing variation across events as they learn a new verb, and uses an…

Despite well-documented attention deficits in children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), distinctions across types of attention problems and their association with academic attainment has not been fully explored. This study examines visual attention capacities and inattentive/hyperactive behaviours in 77 children aged 4 to…

The aim of this study was to investigate verbal and nonverbal cognitive deficits in Italian students with developmental dyslexia. The performances of 32 dyslexic students, 64 age-matched typically reading controls, and 64 reading age-matched controls were compared on tests of lexical knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming,…

The aim of this study was to examine the combined influences of infants' attention and use of social cues in the prediction of their language outcomes. This longitudinal study measured infants' visual attention on a distractibility task (11 months), joint attention (14 months), and language outcomes (word-object association, 14 months; MBCDI…

Hannula and Lehtinen (2001, 2005) defined spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) as the tendency to notice the relatively abstract attribute of number despite the presence of other attributes. According to nativists, an innate concept of one to three directs young children's attention to these "intuitive numbers" in everyday situations--even…

Used visual preference technique to examine infants' (mean age 14.8 months) comprehension of two novel words for images of novel objects. Found that infants looked preferentially at images that matched an auditory stimulus and that infants showed learning after about 12 presentations of new words. Results support previous demonstration of rapid…

Investigates the color term knowledge of two-year olds and the influence of schooling on their color term acquisition. Findings reveal considerable knowledge in these children. Conclusions are that contemporary children's early and frequent experience with color terms may account for this cohort's improved performance over previous generations of…

Examination of the first 50 words of three blind children revealed that the early vocabulary paralleled that of seeing children in terms of age and speed of acquisition. Differences between the two groups were related to factors which were highly influenced by experience (including visual experience). (Author/CB)

Research on reading has tried, and failed, to account for wide disparities in reading skill even among children taught by the same method. Why do some children learn to read easily and quickly while others, in the same classroom and taught by the same teacher, don't learn to read at all? In "Language Development and Learning to Read", Diane…