Recent research indicates that interaction patterns between parent and child change according to the increasing language skill of the child. These patterns are linguistically summarized here. All are correlated with the child's age, but many relationships are still unexplored. (Author/KM)

Examines the IQs of 75 preschool children perceived to be "at risk" by parents, teachers, and diagnostic nursery staff. Full Scale, Verbal and Performance IQs were correlated with: (a) assessment of problem area (b) socioeconomic and familial variables (c) gross assessments of speech and motor development and (d) improvement in a special preschool…

Described is a language development technique designed for parents working with their young exceptional children at home. (SB)

Urges adults to help children learn to speak and appreciate the two languages of their native tongue: prose and poetry. (GT)

Reports on an experiment conducted on 23 Israeli kindergarteners and 16 Israeli college students, which used a variant of a semantic differential test in order to test the hypothesis that young Israeli children, like adults, ascribe sexual meanings to words without regard to grammatical gender. (Author/AM)

Offers a framework used in two workshops of elementary and secondary school teachers for looking at classroom practices in non-English subjects that assisted in life-long language learning. (RL)

Current hypotheses about language and language development have certain important implications for the study of language acquisition and function, especially in disadvantaged or minority children. According to these hypotheses, traditional theories concerning linguistic deprivation and related factors are no longer valid. (Author/EB)

Language disorders in mentally retarded children may be assessed by standardized tests, developmental scales, and informal procedures. The processes to be assessed include comprehension, production, and use in communication. In the assessment of a child, these processes should be related to chronological age and to cognitive development. (CTM)

The paper outlines an educational scheme whereby teachers of severely mentally retarded and multiply-handicapped children (including deaf/blind children) can assess the prelanguage levels of children on a hierarchical language schedule, which culminates in the acquisition of natural gesture. (Author)

This paper reports on a case study of a Cantonese-speaking child age 2 and considers the implication of tone acquisition for tone studies in general, and Cantonese tonology in particular. (NCR)

A phenomenon called "pragmatic variation" is discussed as a child's individual system of behavior in response to a question the child doesn't understand but realizes that he must verbalize an answer to. (NCR)

In testing kindergartners and first graders in their comprehension of the words "before" and "after," it was found that when temporal terms are acquired, they are first used as prepositions and then as subordinating conjunctions. (Author/NCR)