This volume is a summary of current knowledge concerning the relationship between social behavior and language behavior. It is intended both for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and for interested laypersons who have no extensive knowledge of either sociology or linguistics. The introduction and ten chapters cover the following topics:…

The document contains the final report of the HIP (Hearing and Speech Agency Infant Parent) Project, a program which provided 19 communicatively handicapped children (0-5 years old) with a home-center based language program. Sections focus on the direct and supplementary services for children (including a description of the project population and…

The paper provides an overview of a prelanguage program that was developed for a low functioning, 7 1/2-year-old congenitally deaf-blind child. It is explained that the program was based on principles and procedures as they related to operant behaviors, that reinforcement techniques were continually applied, and that a great deal of successive…

Parent training on a daily basis has a positive effect on the number of verbal interactions between mother and infant. However, parent training did not seem to be a factor influencing the social-emotional and physical development activities of the teenage mothers in this study. Three groups of teenage mothers were observed with their infants in…

This paper integrates a recent conceptual shift in middle childhood language acquisition research--the study of metalinguistic development--with a Piagetian perspective on cognitive development to propose a theoretical framework from which to consider language development during this period. The paper first defines metalinguistics and then uses a…

A total of 411 elementary school children seven to twelve years old read short prose passages and selected the most appropriate continuation sentence from four alternatives. The completion sentences were constructed so that the correct (target) response involved either an explicit (simile) or an implicit (metaphor) metaphorical comparison. It was…

A familiarization procedure was used in two experiments investigating word encoding in second and sixth graders. Previous studies using release from proactive inhibition had indicated that developmental changes on some encoding dimensions occur during this period. It is argued that the dependence of release from proactive inhibition on deliberate…

Data on English article usage, based on a new classification system ("a,""the," and null article), were obtained from 20 adults and 20 two- and three-year-old children. An oral sentence completion technique was used with the child subjects, and the same items in written form were used with the adults. The results for the older…

This paper suggests that one possibility for the lack of study emphasis and unity of understanding in the area of dual language development is that language study in general shows some serious gaps and reveals a need for viewing language development as a holistic endeavor. Noting the failures of Skinnerian theory, Chomskian theory, Soviet…

A program was developed to provide for generalization training for two groups of language delayed children (N=11), ages 5 to 11, being served in two self contained special education classrooms. The program consisted of three components: teaching the target language construction in a controlled classroom setting, evaluation of language…

Since language largely derives from social interaction, preschool children should be provided many opportunities to converse, question and play with words. In this way children learn what to do with language in order to communicate effectively and appropriately. Recently begun investigations of language as it is actually used may produce findings…

The interactional competence of 12 kindergarten children was studied through naturalistic research of their sociodramatic play in a classroom context. Data were collected by both videotape and trained observers. Contextual and interactional information was analyzed according to an Interactional Competency Checklist (ICC) designed by the author.…

The errors on cloze tests completed by 22 German adults who spoke English and 40 American college students were analyzed to determine whether predictable error patterns occurred. The results indicated predictable error patterns at the independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels for all the adults. The error profiles of the two…

THIS RESEARCH STUDY WAS BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC EXPERIMENTATION, AS WELL AS FORMAL ANALYSIS, CAN BE APPLIED TO DISCOVER SOME VARIABLES WHICH ALLOW THE HUMAN TO RESOLVE AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES. THE PROBLEM OF AMBIGUITY WAS CONFINED TO SITUATIONS IN WHICH A KEY PRONOUN IN A SENTENCE HAS MORE THAN ONE POSSIBLE…

AN APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF INCREASING THE SUPPLY OF IDEAS FOR TEACHING DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN WAS CONSIDERED. A BASIC PROBLEM IN WORKING WITH DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN IS THAT OF OVERCOMING THEIR RESTRICTED, CONTENT-ORIENTED LANGUAGE STYLE. WORKING CLASS CHILDREN USUALLY INTERPRET THINGS AROUND THEM AS SIMPLE, CONCRETE, DISCONNECTED, ISOLATED…