An association has been found between nonword repetition and language skills in school-age children with both typical and atypical language development (C. Dollaghan & T. F. Campbell, 1998; S. Ellis Weismer et al., 2000; S. E. Gathercole & A. D. Baddeley, 1990; J. W. Montgomery, 2002). This raises the possibility that younger children's repetition…

Three experiments document that conceptual knowledge influences lexical acquisition in infancy. A novel target object was initially labeled with a novel word. In both yes-no (Experiment 1) and forced-choice (Experiment 2) tasks, 2-year-olds' subsequent extensions were mediated by the conceptual description of the targets. When targets were…

Scissors are a unique interactive tool when successfully used, allowing teachers and students to recognize and explore each other's creative ability while nurturing mutual communication. Freehand cutting gives children freedom to create as they cut. Scissors have the power to improve fine motor skills, stimulate creative imagination, reinforce…

The prevailing view of phonological development is that changes in pronunciation are driven by phonological changes. This view (it is argued here) derives from the particular form of the data that has most often been used in studies of phonological development, namely broad phonetic transcriptions. Transcribing an earlier pronunciation with one…

In this study, we examined the system of case marking in two groups of German speaking children, 5 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 5 typically developing (TD) children matched to the children with SLI on a general measure of language development. The data from both groups demonstrate high accuracy scores for structural case…

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize research on picture book reading with young children (i.e., children under the age of 3). In this paper, we review cross-sectional, longitudinal, and intervention reading research and describe changes in both parental and children's behaviors during picture book reading from birth to age 3. Research…

Over the past couple of decades, research has established that infants are sensitive to the predominant stress pattern of their native language. However, the degree to which the stress pattern shapes infants' language development has yet to be fully determined. Whether stress is merely a cue to help organize the patterns of speech or whether it is…

We know that children are active participants in their acquisition of language. Their language patterns are learned in social contexts while they are interacting with other children and adults. Studies continue to confirm that the development of vocabulary and syntactic complexity in language are more advanced in children who are frequently…

The present study investigated the influence of acoustical characteristics on the implicit learning of statistical regularities (transition probabilities) in sequences of musical timbres. The sequences were constructed in such a way that the acoustical dissimilarities between timbres potentially created segmentations that either supported (S1) or…

The article examines "task" as research construct as predominantly conceived in terms of task-as-workplan in the task-based learning/second language acquisition literature. It is suggested that "task" has weak construct validity and ontology in an overwhelmingly quantitative paradigm because the construct has a "split personality."…

This article asks what happens to the learning of young children when they work regularly with a professional visual artist in their school. Through Creative Partnerships, a national programme initiated in 2002 to bring creative professionals into schools across England, some school children have had the opportunity for sustained project work with…

In her Keynote, Gathercole (2006) provides a comprehensive review regarding the nature of the nonword repetition (NWR) task and a compelling argument for the utility of the task as a robust index of children's phonological short-term storage capacity. She further argues that temporary phonological storage acts as a primitive learning mechanism…

The present study investigated the validity of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for a group of toddlers 30 months of age. Study 1 examined the concurrent validity of the CDI for a group of 38 late talkers. Significant correlations were found between the CDI and direct measures of language abilities. Study 2 used…

There is incomplete consensus on the anatomical demarcation of Broca's area in the left inferior frontal gyrus and its functional characterization remains a matter of debate. Exclusive syntactic specialization has been proposed, but is overall inconsistent with the neuroimaging literature. We examined three functional MRI (fMRI) datasets on…

A fair amount of descriptive research in the field of second language acquisition has looked at the presence of what have been labeled corrective recasts. This research has relied on the methodological practice of coding to identify particular turns as "corrective recasts." Often, the coding criteria make use of the notion of the maintenance of…