Comprehension of metaphor in preschoolers was studied through an elicited repetition task. It was shown that the metaphors were not semantically anomolous to the children and that they were processed on a par with literal language. (Author/CB)

Compared trisomy-21 infants whose parents were trained in vicarious techniques with those whose parents were trained by written instruction. Significant differences in gross motor and language development favored vicariously trained parents. (Author/BB)

A longitudinal study investigated how a hearing child of deaf parents simultaneously acquired American Sign Language and spoken English. Neither of two unique properties of signed language (personal pronouns or "negative" sign markers) facilitated acquisition of English, suggesting that children's acquisition of grammar is relatively…

Explores the acquisition of productive verbs and (spatial) agreement of American Sign Language (ASL) in the signing of two deaf children with hearing parents. The children, observed at two ages, initially showed markedly different developmental trends. Then their grammatical development converged, and they were able to suit ASL to the kind of…

Investigation of four- through six-year-olds' abilities to correct over-regularized plural nouns and verbs in the past tense showed that, generally, older children performed better than the younger children, and plural nouns were corrected significantly more than past-tense verb forms. Younger children were better at correcting the nouns than the…

Reports that mothers' responsiveness to young infants' distress predicts language capacity at two years. Mothers' responsiveness to older infants' nondistress vocalizations predicts cognitive performance, perceived self-esteem, social competence, and family relations in preadolescents. (PCB)

Examines medical, social, demographic, parental, and other variables in relation to early language adequacy or delay in development among native French and immigrant toddlers. (PCB)

This article offers a framework for language intervention focusing on conversational interaction, suggests some parallels between oral conversations and the development of literacy, and offers guidelines for facilitating the development of language and literacy. Implications for a model of written language are discussed. (PB)

Compared to age-matched and language-matched controls, 15 autistic children (mean age of 45 months) who were administered the Early Social-Communication Scales displayed deficits in gestural joint attention skills in 2 testing sessions 13 months apart. The measure of gestural nonverbal joint attention predicted language development in subjects.…

The oral foundations of narrative knowledge are examined as a linkage to literacy acquisition problems. Examined are kinds of narrative knowledge acquired, the nature of story organization, and developmental acquisitions in story recall and generation. The performance patterns of language learning-disabled children on oral story recall and…

Language abilities from age 2-5 were studied in 4 children with early language delays. Deficits became milder and more selective, with normal or nearly normal speech/language proficiency by age 60 months. But at 3-year follow up, 3 of the 4 cases were severely reading disabled. (Author/JDD)

The relationship between children's early experience with otitis media with effusion, hearing over time, and emerging receptive and expressive language skills was assessed. Better language was found to be associated with better average hearing levels, suggesting that the relationship between otitis media with effusion and language is mediated by…

A discussion of young children's revision strategies exlores four topics: a theory of written language, the development of writing, children's understanding of spoken and written language, and the context of writing. (RJC)

Analysis of five Mohawk children's strategies for acquiring morphology revealed that the earliest segmentation of words was phonological, rather than morphological. Morphological structure was apparently discovered when most utterances were long enough to include pronominal prefixes as well as roots. (Author/CB)

Investigation of the acquisition of Tamil verb inflections in three two-year-old children revealed a high percentage of usage of verb inflections indicating tense, aspect, modality, person, number, and gender. Explanations for this early, almost error-free language acquisition are explored in terms of the facilitating properties of agglutinating…