Technical terminology such as shaft and axle has a range of meanings in instructional support materials. Studies of children show that they use their own terms to describe unfamiliar components. Although appropriate vocabulary is desirable in technology education, teachers should find ways to incorporate children's own vocabulary to help them…

Examines attempts to teach primates how to communicate using sign language. Much of the debate over whether it is possible to teach primates to communicate centers on the definition of language. (Author/VWL)

Three experiments examined role of lexical-form class in preschoolers' establishment of word-to-object mappings in referentially ambiguous situations. Results indicated that preschoolers were most likely to reject two words for the same object if both were proper names, and were less likely to reject if both were adjectives or if one was proper…

Shows that children (mean age 4 years and 4 months) not only know the meaning and use of complex reciprocal anaphors like "each other," but that they also have knowledge of subtle differences in the possible interpretations of such anaphors depending on the type of predicates involved. (Author/VWL)

Provides a preliminary description of phonological tier development in Cantonese-speaking children. Data were analyzed for word, syllable, onset-rime, skeletal, and segmental tiers. Results suggest a developmental order in acquisition of hierarchical features. (Author/VWL)

Examined whether 7- to 9-year-olds vary their judgments of responsibility according to the reason that the promised action was not completed and recognize that an unfulfilled an promise is a promise regardless of whether the speaker's failure is unavoidable or intentional. (Author/VWL)

Provides evidence from child language acquisition and comparative syntax for existence of a syntactic parameter in the classical sense of Chomsky (1981), with simultaneous effects on syntactic argument structure. Implications are that syntax is subject to points of substantive parametric variation as envisioned in Chomsky, and the time course of…

Analyzed three main types of English dative constructions--the double-object dative, the "to" dative, and the "for" dative--in the spontaneous speech of seven children aged 1.6-5 years. Results provide a starting point for determining the underlying representations for the different kinds of dative constructions and for explicating how children…

Learning English through vocational courses can be successful because the subject matter is related to personal experience and learners have some control over content, as evidenced by I CAN (Initial Caring and Maturing Course), designed by parents for parents. (SK)

Examines the course of young children's acquisition of the sign language formational aspects of location, handshape, and movement. Nine children and their sign-using parents participated in the study. One child was deaf; the other children were reported as having normal hearing. In seven families, both parents were deaf, and in the other two…

Discusses language as skill and the idea that there are common elements between language and general skill acquisition. (Author/VWL)

Demonstrates how innate representational capabilities for serial and temporal structure of language could arise from a common neural architecture, distinct from that required for the representation of abstract structure, and provides a predictive testable model of the initial computational state of the language learner. (Author/VWL)

Examined the evolution of visual perspective-taking skills in relation to comprehension and production of first, second, and third person pronouns among French and English speaking toddlers. Some perceptual perspective-taking capacities were well developed by the time children acquired a full mastery of personal pronouns. Full pronoun acquisition…

Thirty-four typically developing children (ages 3-6) participated in a multi-trial word-learning task involving nonwords of varying phonotactic probability. Results indicated that common sound sequences were learned more rapidly than rare sound sequences across form and referent learning. Also, phonotactic probability appeared to influence the…

This study examined the relationship between event representation and linguistic expression in narratives of 31 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) and controls matched for either mental age, syntax comprehension, or expressive language. Use of linguistic devices and cohesion were poorer in DS subjects than MA- matched controls with…