Data are presented from two studies that investigated short- and long-term outcomes of early identification and intervention for young children from birth to age 3. Results from the studies support the immediate and longer-term benefits of early entry into intervention for language, academic, and social-emotional development. (Contains extensive…

A study of 20 multiple birth children (MBC) (ages 7-8) and 20 controls found MBC performed significantly more poorly on some tasks of phonological processing, and early phonological skills of MBC were correlated with poor performance on visual rhyme recognition, word repetition, and phoneme detection tasks five years later. (Author/CR)

Explores research on development of integrated speech-gesture system from its origins during the one-word period of language learning through childhood. Concludes that, although there may be a brief period prior to onset of two-word speech during which gesture and speech are not well integrated, ability to convey and interpret speech and gestures…

Describes a 14-year program of research, the focus of which was the capacity of normal infants to incorporate gestural symbols into their earliest expressive vocabularies. Explores the effects of such gesturing on vocal language development, the theoretical implications for researchers, and the practical applications for parents. (Author/EV)

Examined how object shape, taxonomic relatedness, and prior lexical knowledge influenced children's overextensions (e.g., referring to pomegranates as apples). Researchers presented items that disentangled the three factors and used a novel comprehension task where children could indicate negative exemplars. Error patterns differed by task and by…

Considers the possibility of applying instance theory to the study of second language. Instance theory emphasizes the storage and subsequent use of individual experiences over the creation of abstract principles. Suggests that the theory can be applied to the study of second languages, only if it is used in conjunction with a theory of universal…

Two groups of adolescents with language impairment (n=87) were compared with 20 adolescents with dyslexia, 19 aged-matched controls, and 18 younger typical children. Adolescents with dyslexia only performed as well as those with persistent oral language impairments and younger controls in reading and spelling, however, their reading comprehension…

A study involving seven early childhood and special education teachers found they tended to use the naturalistic intervention strategy, embedding, in a limited capacity. They embedded objectives by asking questions and providing verbal models and used embedding most when they were one-on-one and engaged in language programming and pre-academic…

A multiple baseline study evaluated effects of using voice output devices to facilitate communicative initiation behaviors of two young nonverbal children with developmental delays. Both children increased their specific initiations and decreased unclear initiations and adult prompted communication behaviors. Results support the use of…

This article reviews literature on normal and impaired spelling development, and discusses the influence of consonant clusters, phonetic influences, and the role of letter names. Research that underscores the importance of fine-grained linguistic analyses of spelling performance is described. It is concluded that such an approach holds promise.…

Proposes that the confluence of stimulus appraisal and social cognition that is effected by the neural system in the brain has important implications for language and learning theories. Describes the anatomy and functions of this neural system and discusses how it may operate in motivation for second language acquisition and how in conjunction…

Assessed word-learning skills of 19 deaf/hard-of-hearing preschoolers either with novel mapping strategy to learn new words, or after minimal exposure when reference was explicitly established. Found that 11 children were able to learn words in both contexts, 5 only in the second, and 2 in neither. The latter 7 children eventually were able to…

This study, with 53 Mexican-American infants, found that five predictors accounted for approximately 35 percent of the variance in receptive language at 12 and 22 months with average parental generation from Mexico (acculturation) and infant visual recognition memory accounting for 14 and 15 percent of the variance, respectively. No predictors…

This article presents a conceptual model of the cognitive social bases of language derived from the philosophical view of constructionism and theoretical perspectives of speech act theory and relevance theory. The centrality of intent, modality and core issues of language, lack of construct validity in assessment, and heterogeneity are discussed.…

Examines arguments that language comes from innate, abstract knowledge of universal grammar that signers use to create new grammatical features. (12 references) (CK)