Examined social labels first used for parents, differentiation of parents and others on the basis of labeling behavior, and overgeneralization of social labels in 71 infants ranging in age from 9 to 24 months. (JMB)

Describes research on the ways in which children of ages 5 to 11 years maintain conversation with adults in situations of conceptual or linguistic difficulty. (SS)

Investigated the seriation ability of two groups of four-year-old children with differing levels of language functioning. Results indicated that subjects with delayed language development demonstrated a severe delay in seriation ability, while subjects with normally developing language demonstrated seriation ability commensurate with their…

Examines the techniques used by Anne Sullivan in helping Helen Keller to overcome her learning difficulties. (DD)

Reports two studies which examine the cognitive demands of nominal realism tasks. Subjects were kindergartners, first graders and second graders. (Author/JMB)

Four studies investigated how differential input affects preschoolers' abilities to learn novel color words. Found that four- and five-year olds interpreted novel words as shape terms when ostensive information was provided but as color terms when additional information, contrastive or inclusive, was given. Three-year olds generally did not make…

Two experiments were conducted to test Chinese children's comprehension of count-and mass-classifiers. Participants were Chinese-speaking children ages 3 thru 8, plus 16 adults. Results cohere with the linguistic analysis that the count-mass distinction is relevant in Chinese grammar. Results also cohere with the current theory in cognitive…

Reports on experiments investigating children's knowledge of the constraints on ellipsis constructions in English, focusing on subtle contrasts between verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) and VP-anaphora (VPA). Results from parallel experiments employing the same stimuli but with different methodologies show that young children can correctly distinguish…

The study assessed the turntaking skills and pragmatic language skills of 4 mildly to moderately developmentally delayed children (ages 2 and 3) and 14 nondelayed controls. Developmentally delayed children exhibited appropriate turntaking skills but a higher proportion of gestural in contrast to verbal responses to the pragmatic language tasks.…

Investigated the way in which forty 10- to 20-month-old infants established an initial mapping between objects and their labels. Results indicated that language could increase infants' attention to objects beyond the time that labeling actually occurred. (RJC)

Notes the tumultuous relationship between researchers and theorists who identify with either Jean Piaget or Lev Vygotsky. Argues that both theorists start from basically the same place in developing their contributions to the study of human development and that new and important theoretical contributions may be possible through a dialectical…

Discusses three commonly believed myths about the relationships between television and language development: television displaces reading; television viewing negatively affects reading; and television inhibits language development. Discusses television as an instructional tool. Notes several ways that television can enhance literacy curricula. (SR)

This study evaluated the extent to which measures of lexical diversity (type-token ratio and number of different words produced) differentiated 25 children (mean age 59 months) with specific language impairment (SLI) from typical children. Analysis of utterance samples revealed that SLI children did not differ on type-token ratio but did use…

Eighteen-month-old children performed sorting tasks and their parents completed checklists of words used by the children. Children who performed exhaustive grouping, or grouping of objects of different kinds in different locations, were reported as using more words than children who did not perform exhaustive grouping. (BC)

Examined linguistic and nonlinguistic context effects on the shape bias in three year olds' word learning. Results indicated that children systematically attended to shape in interpreting novel count nouns, but their interpretation of adjectives was contextually determined. (GLR)