One 9-year-old child was taught conditional discriminations between dictated names in Spanish and their corresponding pictures across three stimulus sets while her 10-year-old brother observed. Posttests revealed the emergence of symmetry relations in the form of oral naming skills by both children. (Contains 2 figures.)

The generality of the orthographic consistency effect in speech recognition tasks previously reported for Portuguese beginning readers was assessed in French-speaking children, as the French orthographic code presents a higher degree of inconsistency than the Portuguese one. Although the findings obtained with the French second graders replicated…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold. First, we investigated whether first-grade children evidenced morphological awareness and whether they used their knowledge of morphological relations to guide their spelling. Second, we sought to determine whether children's morphological awareness abilities were predictive of their performance on…

Prosodic contrastive focus is used to attract the listener's attention to a specific part of the utterance. Mostly conceived of as auditory/acoustic, it also has visible correlates which have been shown to be perceived. This study aimed at analyzing auditory-visual perception of prosodic focus by elaborating a paradigm enabling an auditory-visual…

This study investigates the way in which speakers determine which aspects of an utterance to emphasize and how this affects the form of utterances. To do this, we ask whether the binding between emphasis and thematic roles persists between utterances. In one within-language (Dutch-Dutch) and three cross-linguistic (Dutch-English) structural…

Previous studies have shown that bilingual adults use more gestures than English monolinguals. Because no study has compared the gestures of bilinguals and monolinguals in both languages, the high gesture rate could be due to transfer from a high gesture language or could result from the use of gesture to aid in linguistic access. In this study we…

We present analyses of the impact of morphological awareness on spelling. Initial measures of morphological awareness and a number of control measures were taken at age 7 and spelling was assessed two years later (n = 115). Results indicated that the appreciation of morphology in oral language makes a contribution to spelling that is impervious to…

One account of how pronunciation variants of spoken words (center-> "senner" or "sennah") are recognized is that sublexical processes use information about variation in the same phonological environments to recover the intended segments [Gaskell, G., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1998). Mechanisms of phonological inference in speech perception.…

"Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education" is a comprehensive textbook for all students studying literacy and language subjects in early childhood education and primary degrees. Covering an age range from 0 to 8 years the book encompasses the four main early childhood contexts of: the family and community; childcare; the pre-school years,…

The purpose of this study was to examine Hispanic families' perspectives on using a prepared kit to enhance their preschoolers' vocabulary development at home. Families enrolled in a public prekindergarten program were provided with a bilingual (English/Spanish) home literacy kit that included ways in which to engage their children in activities…

Parental attachment and close teacher-child relationships offer a protective mechanism to promote language development among bilingual preschool children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Research has shown that language skills are an integral part of resilience for young children. This is the first study to examine parental…

Young children draw on all their senses to engage with the world around them. Despite research that documents the diversity of ways children learn and express themselves (Eisner 1994; Gallas 2003), primary education has become more focused on addressing early learning standards than ever before. How might today's teachers individualize learning…

In this 1-year longitudinal study, we examined the central component processes of reading fluency, spelling accuracy, reading comprehension, and narrative text writing skills of 103 Turkish Cypriot children. Two cohorts of children from 2nd and 4th grades were followed into 3rd and 5th grades, respectively. The testing battery included the…

This study investigates second language (L2) development of Spanish verbal morphology, subject omissions, and subject-verb (SV) inversions by learners in two different proficiency levels and learning contexts. Oral narratives from 40 L2 learners at the intermediate and advanced levels, both at home and in a study abroad (SA) program, were examined…

Learning to communicate using speech and language is a primary developmental task for young children. Delays in the acquisition of language are one of the earliest indicators of developmental deficits that may affect academic and social outcomes for individuals across the life span. In the period since the passage of PL 99-457, significant…