The nutritional program used at the Pediatric Language Laboratory--a day care center for preschool children with language-learning disabilities is discussed. Some "do's" and "don'ts" regarding appropriate nutrition are presented. (Author)

Three severely retarded children (8 and 16 years old) were taught to point to consonant/vowel/consonant nonsense labels depicted by geometric forms under both serial (in which training was in one item at a time) and concurrent (in which training was in three items at a time) training conditions. (Author)

A Type I incidental learning paradigm was used to examine the manner in which 20 learning disabled (LD) and 20 non-LD children (9 to 11 years old) responded to systematic variations in the semantic elements of words. (Author/SW)

Describes a teacher's use of a specific event in her classroom (a child brought a turtle to school) to foster learning, especially language acquisition. (DB)

A teacher describes how behavior modification techniques based on I. Lovaas' approach resulted in significant improvement in the language of a first-grade autistic boy. (CL)

Attempts to identify the point at which prelinguistic vocalizations are used by infants as a means of communication. A significant relationship between Piagetian causal developmental level and the occurrence of intentional vocalizations was found in a study of 46 infants with a mean age of 10.7 months. (JMB)

Examines vowel systems of German-Spanish bilingual children to determine whether there is interaction between the two language systems. Given the differences in the vowel systems, which point to a more marked system in the case of German, two predictions are considered: 1) bilingual children will acquire the vowel length contrast in their German…

Responds to a critique of an earlier article. Reexamines the pattern of inversion and universion in Adam's (1973) wh-question data and argues that the Role and Reference grammar explanation put forth cannot account for some of the developmental facts it was designed to explain. (Author/VWL)

Suggests five principles that characterize written language development: the establishment of equivalences; exploration and orchestration of the system; reliance on shifting relationships of form and function; differentiation and integration of symbolic functions; and participation in social dialogue. Discusses implications of this viewpoint for…

Critiques Bohannon and Stanowicz's (1988) conclusion that natural languages can be learned and that there is no need to postulate innate knowledge. Argues that Bohannon and Stanowicz's results disclose nothing about learnability or innateness. (RH)

The traditional assumptions that novel word compounds fill lexical gaps and allow speakers to convey an intended meaning more precisely were explored. Twenty-eight 5-year-old children and 16 adults participated in referential and nonreferential communication tasks in which they were exposed to referents whose elements were inherently and…

Most recent approaches to language learnability and acquisition have assumed that parameter setting is largely a deductive process. This article develops the thesis that parameter setting is correctly viewed as nondeductive. This approach uses natural selection, as simulated by a genetic algorithm, to simulate parameter setting. (90 references)…

Discusses two experiments concerning the generality of shape bias in two and three year olds. The experiments were intended to provide new information about shape bias in children's novel word extensions. Results suggest that very young children possess considerable knowledge about conditional relations between kinds of perceptual properties. (GLR)