Describes the use of scripts to encourage language and literacy learning with primary school children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The scripts are designed to contextualize language learning while advancing curriculum content. A script of a doctor's-office visit illustrates the method and is interpreted in terms of a model of language and…

Examines different approaches to prosodic acquisition: Gerken's S(W) production template; Fikkert's and Archibald's theories of stress acquisition and Demuth and Fee's prosodic hierarchy account. Results reveal that current approaches cannot account for findings in the data such as the increased preservation of final over nonfinal unstressed…

The facilitative effect of incorporating echolalia on teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to four Hong Kong children (ages 8-10) with autism was assessed. Results from two experiments indicated echolalia was the active component contributing to the successful acquisition and maintenance of receptive naming of Chinese characters.…

Discusses advances in the field of child language and three major findings in language development: (1) infant communication begins at birth; (2) warning signs of language delay are evident by age 2; and (3) the benefits of reading aloud to young children can be strengthened through parent education. (CR)

Examined data from 408 pairs of identical, same-sex fraternal twins at 14, 20, and 24 months to assess cognitive development and to identify genetic and environmental influences on phenotypic similarity. Found various patterns of development for separate constructs, for females versus males on each construct, and for individuals across constructs.…

Examined the distribution of two Hebrew nominal structures in spoken and written texts of two genres produced by 90 native-speaking participants. Written texts were found to be denser than spoken texts lexically and syntactically as measured by a number of novel N-N compounds and denominal adjectives per clause; in older age groups this difference…

The traditional approach to educating language minority students separates English language development from content instruction because it is assumed that English proficiency is a prerequisite for subject matter learning. Takes an alternative view that the integration of inquiry science and language acquisition enhances learning in both domains.…

Presents diagnostic model of early language delay; examines four longitudinal studies exploring relationship between early language delay and later literacy development. Identifies findings providing strong evidence of continuity between language delay and later reading difficulties and the importance of severity and chronicity of the impairment.…

Specific linguistic characteristics of responses to requests for clarification given by 4 children (ages 3-6) with intellectual impairments were investigated. Analysis focused on children's ability to locate the specific errors that provoked neutral requests for clarification and produce repair. Three children could locate errors and partly…

Reviews the existing record pertaining to the acquisition of negation in Korean and juxtaposing it with current research in cross-linguistic child language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

This article presents a theoretical overview at the cognitive level of the role of phonological awareness in reading development and developmental dyslexia across languages. It is argued that the primary deficit in developmental dyslexia in all languages lies in representing speech sounds: a deficit in phonological representation. (Contains…

Forty-two children (ages 2-15) with autism were randomized in to two groups. One group received 2 IU/kg of intravenous synthetic human secretin at the first visit, followed by a saline placebo at week 6. The other group received treatment in the reverse order. Children showed no differences on assessments. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Fourteen Mother-Infant pairs were studied at three, six, and nine months to determine whether mothers simplify speech during the second half of the infant's first year and whether speech adjustment influences later language acquisition by infants. A mother's mean length of utterance (MLU) was predictive of later language development by her infant.…

Responds to Bowey's comments on an earlier article--"Rhyme, Language, and Children's Reading." Here, the statistical model used in the earlier analysis is clarified, and it is asserted that the new analysis presented by Bowey supports the hypothesis that children's sensitivity to rhyme/alliteration and reading is independent of general…

Exploration of the usefulness of a visual preference technique for assessing word comprehension in infants demonstrated increases in comprehension from 8 to 14 and 14 to 20 months; established longitudinal stability of comprehension from 14 to 20 months; and showed a profound effect of stimulus salience and the lack of sex differences in word…