The investigation assessed the generalization of verbal behavior by autistic type children (aged 5 to 12 years) across different settings. (Author)

An argument is presented showing that the postulation of psychological capabilities that are jointly necessary to and specific to other capabilities involves strong theoretical commitments that have not generally been recognized. Examples are drawn from language development and evolution. (SS)

The key questions in reading are: Do school beginners need to be taught anything about reading? How do people adjust their reading process to their purpose? Why is reading proficiency predictable? (Author/IRT)

Now that language development research itself has broadened its focus beyond syntax to discourse, there is a real possibility of collaboration among descriptive researchers, curriculum designers, and teachers, all contributing their insights to a common cause. (Author)

Current theory and research in development of self and of language in autistic children is considered, with emphasis on studies of normal development of personal pronouns and the roles played in that process by listening, echoic memory, mitigated echolalia (recording), and person deixis. (Author)

Four experiments used a free-naming task to examine four-year olds' and adults' default construals of solids and nonsolids. Found that children named an individual-related word (such as shape) for solid materials, but gave a substance-related name for nonsolids. Results suggest that children conceptualize solids and nonsolids in distinct,…

Addresses bilingual phonological development in the prosodic field, by studying the transition from a single metrical foot to the production of one foot preceded by an unstressed syllable or to the production of two consecutive feet. Uses monolingual data to form a baseline comparison with the bilingual data Establishment of two different…

While investigating a novel toy, infants heard a novel label applied to the toy by a speaker seated within the infant's view and attending to the toy (coupled condition) or by a speaker outside the infant's view (decoupled condition). Found that infants registered a link between the label and toy in the coupled but not the decoupled condition. (BC)

In Britain, 30 bilingual 7-year olds were given phonological awareness tasks separately in English and Panjabi. Results suggested that assessment of preliteracy skills in bilingual children is useful only if carried out in both of their languages. (SK)

Gender agreement elicitation was used with Russian children to examine how diminutives common in Russian child-directed speech affect gender learning. Children were shown pictures of familiar and novel animals and asked to describe them after hearing their names, which contained regular morphophonological cues to masculine or feminine gender.…

Reanalyzes production data from three French children to make two basic points. Shows that tense and agreement inflection follow independent courses of acquisition (in child French). Using a mechanism of grammatical development based on partial rankings of constraints, analysis successfully models over three stages the frequency with which…

This study examined language and fluency characteristics of single-utterance (SU) and multiple-utterance (MU)conversational turns produced by 15 preschoolers who stutter and 15 nonstuttering peers. Results suggest that MU turns are demanding for young children because they evoke relatively long and complex utterances and that clinicians should…

Collected data on early language development of preschool children with autism spectrum disorder, using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. The pattern of development of understanding phrases, word comprehension and expression, and production of gestures, was compared to the typical pattern. Implications for assessment and…

The study found that 8 language-impaired 3-year-old children were less likely than 10 normally developing children to apply unusual sound changes to words with the potential for homonymy, suggesting they are limited in their ability to capitalize on the phonetic regularities of language. (Author/DB)

Assesses whether 30 children aged three-five years had a preferred direction in responding to "when"-questions and whether this preference could be influenced by story structure. Results indicated that children showed a preference for "after"-type responses and that productions of "before" were more likely to be…