A study examined the transcript of a group enquiry conducted according to the practice of philosophical enquiry with eight gifted children (ages 8-12). Use of a central metaphor was seen to play the role of a "conceptual playground," permitting the children to exercise both their imagination and their reasoning abilities. (Contains references.)…

Offers resolutions to the paradox of infants' ability to abstract patterns over specific items and toddlers' lack of ability to generalize patterns over specific English words/constructions. Argues that contradictions are rooted in differing methodologies and stimuli content. Suggests that the patterns infants extract from linguistic input are not…

Phonological neighborhood analyses of tow children's expressive lexicons, maternal input, and an adult lexicon were conducted. In addition to raw counts and frequency-weighted counts, neighborhood size was calculated as the proportion of the lexicon to which each target word is similar, to normalize for vocabulary size differences. Analyses…

This study examined the relationship between fast mapping and word learning and between comprehension and production of new words with 30 young children with specific language impairment (SLI). Results suggest that children with SLI may need to hear a new word twice as many times as other children before comprehending and independently using the…

Notes that a difficulty with the multigenre paper assignment is that educators assume that students are familiar enough with the various genres to write skillfully in the genres they select. Suggests that multigenre assignments can be improved by changing forms and format; changing perspectives; and changing boundaries. Concludes that multigenre…

Examines the acquisition of conditional sentences in American Sign Language (which entail the use of both manual signs and grammaticized nonmanual facial expressions) by deaf children. The results indicate that children first acquire manual conditional signs before they employ obligatory grammaticized facial expressions, and also acquire manual…

The study found that, compared to normally achieving students, 24 students (age 10 and 12) with learning disabilities were less able in vocabulary production tasks and comparable in ability to use pictorial responses to demonstrate vocabulary knowledge. When equated in reading achievement, learning-disabled 10 year olds were poorer in composite…

The effects of expressive modeling experiences on the observational learning of generative language by children with severe mental retardation was investigated. All six children (aged six-nine) demonstrated observational learning of responses modeled by their peers. Organizing the modeling experiences according to matrix-training principles…

Describes a classroom assignment sequence in which students learn to think metaphorically about a scientific topic. Provides sample reading log questions and a prewriting worksheet. (MM)

Training procedures including cues-pause-point procedures were effectively used to teach two mentally retarded males (ages 18 and 20) to answer questions with sign language and generalize this training to correct responding to untrained questions. (Author/DB)

This longitudinal investigation charted the course of cognitive and language development from the prelinguistic period to multiword productions in 19 typically developing toddlers and 4 toddlers who were subsequently identified as having a late onset of expressive language. Three different developmental profiles were identified, and predictors of…

Associations among expressive phonological development, metaphonological skills, and spelling performance are examined. Suggestions are offered for analyzing and remediating phonological deficiencies of children with phonologically based spelling problems. A case study of a third grader with spelling problems exemplifies assessment and…

Spontaneous utterances from 3 conversational contexts were generated by 3 groups of 10 children, including children with specific language impairments (SLI), and analyzed for accuracy of pronoun usage. Results indicated that children with SLI exhibited more total errors than chronological peers but not more than their language level peers. A…

The language development of 12 premature and 12 full-term Mexican American infants was compared at age 22 months. The Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development-Revised revealed that premature infants may acquire language at a slower rate than full-term infants, with expressive language more affected than receptive language skills.…