A portrait is presented of the toddler with slow expressive language development (SELD), based on research examining the health history; cognitive, communicative, and adaptive skills; behavior; and phonology of 30 toddlers with SELD and 30 nondisabled toddlers. The paper offers a review of research on the outcomes of SELD, and explores…

This paper analyzes Piagetian theory on the relative development of cognition and language, the local homology model which claims there are specific language-cognition relationships at specific points in time, normal development and local homology, and development in language-impaired children. Implications for clinical decision making are…

This paper describes work being conducted at the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center of Rutgers University, focusing on the center's research findings which support the value of group-focused, language-based, integrated programing for preschool children with autism. (Author/JDD)

This article is derived from a lecture given in 1992 and addresses issues in English language education that concern "linguistic property" and "linguistic propriety." (JL)

Analyzes the developing language of the author's preschool-age daughter to examine the role of language use in two different cultural contexts. Discusses code switching, and the role of narratives. (SR)

Tested a normally developing child several times between 16 and 27 months of age for his ability to derive the relations between stimuli. Found that the child derived "mutual entailment" relations and showed "nonverbal exclusion" as early as 17 months. "Combinatorial entailment" relations and "verbal…

While children aged 1;10 and 2;1 show only a modest rate of mapping novel nouns onto unfamiliar rather than familiar objects, children aged 1;4 and 1;8 show a high rate. Two studies with young 2-year olds found the noun-mapping preference prevalent, but unless initial choices are strongly reinforced, increase in salience of familiar kinds lures…

A study of 5-year olds' ability to distinguish promises from predictions was suspected to have achieved its results due to methodological problems. A similar study with 32 children ages 5 to 6 that used several variations of the previous study's procedures was found to have similar results, suggesting the earlier findings were an accurate…

Compared 6-month-old hearing infants' responsiveness to infant-directed and adult-directed signing. Results replicated those found with deaf infants, namely that infants showed greater attentional and affective responsiveness to infant-directed sign than to adult-directed sign, suggesting that infants are prepared to detect sign motherese…

Used growth curves and dynamic-systems modeling to examine early lexical and grammatical development of one male child. Found that lexical development described a pattern of logistic growth. Plural growth began after reaching a threshold in vocabulary size. Lexical growth slowed as plural growth increased, and increased when plural use reached…

Presents suggestions for parents to stimulate children's language development. Suggestions include appreciating children's effort rather than correcting language, creating an environment that invites exploration, engaging in conversation frequently, playing with language and words, reading aloud daily to children, providing a variety of quality…

A study involving 32 children with language delays investigated the effectiveness of Dialogic Reading, an interactive language-facilitation technique. After adult instruction in Dialogic Reading, children spoke more, made longer utterances, produced more words, and participated more in shared book reading. No differences were found in vocabulary…

English language achievement of 29 prelingually deaf children with three or more years of cochlear implant (CI) experience was compared to the achievement levels of 29 prelingually deaf children with hearing aids. CI users performed better than comparison subjects on signed and spoken English grammar and length of CI experience was significantly…

A study involving 58 children (17 to 36 months) with developmental disabilities in the prelinguistic period of development and their mothers found that the relationship between intentional communication and later language was, in part, due to covarying relationships with maternal responsivity. (Author/CR)

Explores the labels "native speaker" (NS) and "nonnative speaker" (NNS) from the perspective of seven nonnative-English-speaking Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL) professionals. Contends that these terms are related to issues such as the order of learned languages, language competence, language-learning environment, cultural…