A good deal of research purports that bilingualism has a positive effect on some aspects of cognitive functioning. However, this effect is not consistent, and little research examines trajectories of cognitive skill development in bilingual children. Moreover, it remains unclear whether different types of bilingualism impact how cognitive…

Second-language learners display poorer general language skills in the language used at school than their monolingual peers, which is a concern because general language skills (vocabulary, grammar, language expression, and comprehension) provide the foundation for later academic success. In a randomized controlled trial, we examined the efficacy…

The aim of the current study is to determine what language activities Norwegian preschool children took part in, and to examine whether these language activities predict children's language comprehension. We tested children (n = 134) with language measures at age 4/5 and age 5/6 and interviewed their teachers (n = 71) about the kinds of language…

From the field of developmental psycholinguistics and from conceptual development theory there is evidence that excessive linguistic "code-switching" in early school education may pose some hazards for the learning of young multilingual children. In this article the author addresses the issue, invoking post-Piagetian and neo-Vygotskian…

Background: This research explored the relative impact of demographic, cognitive, behavioural, and psycholinguistic factors on vocabulary development in two-year-old children. Methods: Two hundred and thirty-two children (24-30 months) were tested on expressive and receptive vocabulary, cognitive development, word learning and working memory…

In six analyses using the Child Language Data Exchange System known as CHILDES, we explored whether and how parents and their 1.5- to 5-year-old children talk about writing. Parent speech might include information about the similarity between print and speech and about the difference between writing and drawing. Parents could convey similarity…

It has been found that an information-processing analysis of latencies collected in an immediate sentence recall task using children with median age 4 years 4 months favors a serial processing mechanism. This mechanism consists of three major parts: (1) The detection of a clausal boundary, (2) the assessment of whether or not the observed…

Used a combination of observational and experimental methods to assess young children's (aged 2 years, 11 months to 4 years, 9 months) comprehension of "if" and "because" expressions. Found significant increases in spontaneous "if" and "because" expressions between 3 and 4 years, and improvement on…

The use of four types of psychological state words (physiological, emotional, desire, and cognitive) during mother-child play sessions at ages 3, 4, and 5 years was examined in 30 children diagnosed with delayed expressive language at 24-31 months and 15 age-matched comparison children with typical development. The children's mean length of…

Children (2;10 to 4;7 years) taught passive sentences with forms employing animate patients could produce and comprehend passives better than children taught with forms employing inanimate patients. This indicates that "perspective" is the cognitive counterpart to the formal category of subject and that language acquisition is connected…

Details findings indicating that most early linguistic competence is item based. Maintains that language development proceeds without evidence of system-wide syntactic categories, schemas, or parameters. Suggests that findings are not easily explained by the development of children's skills of linguistic performance, pragmatics, or other external…

Examined effects of direct intervention on language learning. Using a toy manipulation task, 18 children aged 3;6 to 4;6 were systematically taught linguistic structures beyond their developmental grasp. Solid improvement was found in the experimental conditions; no significant improvement was noted in control conditions, showing that the language…

This paper proposes an explanation for the onset of autobiographical memory at about 4 years of age. It seems likely that normal middle-class 3-year-olds have not yet mastered language as a representational system. Research suggests that children learn the social and cultural forms of narrative memory in talk with others. It is hypothesized that…

A study suggesting semantic rather than syntactic early language acquisition by children. (CH)

Presents a framework for relating degree of bilingualism to aspects of linguistic awareness. Found the more fully bilingual a child was, the better his or her performance on metalinguistic tasks requiring high levels of analysis of knowledge. (SKC)