While semantic development has been alleged to proceed slowly, reading instruction begins early in the child's school career. Yet, little research has been addressed toward understanding how beginning readers extract meaning from the printed word. This paper reports two experiments that measured latencies in a picture-word interference task to…

Four realizations of the copula occur in English, two in both Anglo and Black English and two in Black English and in some varieties of Anglo English but not in standard English. This paper describes the use of the copula in English and identifies the phonological, syntactic, and semantic factors which are believed to condition its realization in…

The author calls attention to a basic split between perception and cognition that psychologists or linguists tend to make either explicitly or implicitly. There is some psychological evidence to substantiate, at least for higher developmental levels, the functional importance of this split. The chief problems for psycholinguistics which arise out…

This paper, a commentary on W.W. Gage's article "Uncommonly Taught Languages" (AL 002 524), attempts to stress other aspects than those treated by Gage and points out the practical and technical needs of those interested in the field. The author views the goal of the study of uncommonly taught languages at the understanding of other peoples and…

This paper represents a preliminary attempt to determine universals of grammatical development in children. On the basis of language acquisition data, a limited number of findings are presented in the form of suggested developmental universals. These universals are grouped according to the psychological variables which may determine them, in the…

Research was undertaken to develop techniques to facilitate natural communication with computers, people, other computers, and real-time devices. The work has been carried on as an integrated research program; work on semantic automatic language processing and automatic programing aids was performed, and work on the development of time-sharing…

This paper describes PAL--a new computer language. It is used as a pedagogical vehicle in an undergraduate subject called "Programming Linguistics." This subject is designed primarily for sophomores who anticipate a major professional interest in computer science and has two objectives. The first is to study linguistic constructs for the…

This paper explores and discusses the concept of reading comprehension from two major perspectives. One perspective is based on the theory that reading comprehension constitutes a pattern of skills. The other perspective is based on a psycholinguistic view of reading: reading as a language process. Strategies for gaining comprehension during…

Early childhood learning of language has led some to postulate innate knowledge of an abstract symbolic linguistic system. However, if the child's abstract understanding initially requires concrete support in the form of agreement of the message with his nonlinguistic experience, the indication would be that the development of syntactic…

This 40 item questionnaire was developed to measure students' attitudes toward police officers. For the first 28 items the students read a statement and select a response ranging from agreeing strongly to disagreeing strongly on a five point scale. The students indicate their attitudes toward police on a scale of semantic distance between pairs of…

A result of a three-week reading institute at Northern Illinois University during the summer of 1974, this publication consists of papers focusing on various aspects of reading from a psycholinguistic perspective and strategy lessons to be used in the development of effective and efficient readers. The contents include five sections: "Moving to…

The focus of this study was on the effects which knowledge of semantic components may have on recall. It was hypothesized that after an introduction to discourse structures immediate recall would improve and recall which was delayed for one week would improve. Thirty-four unpaid volunteers between the ages of 16 and 26 were recruited and randomly…

The basic learning theory underlying this study is that not all language needs can be accounted for by a prediction of the possible language situations in which a person will engage. This paper proposes a way of resolving the problems of determining what is grammatically necessary as a sound basis of all language use and what constitutes a…

This document proposes a new meaning for the term postsecondary education: (adult learning through an accredited or eligible institution). Following a preliminary definition, this paper suggests some related issues in the milieu of higher education, then explores several of the abstract arguments for a new meaning. Aspects of the Education…

This book explores the theory and technique of faking it in America, referred to as the B.S. Factor. Chapter 1 discusses the Factor as a substitute for lies, causing a subtle skewing of sense, a distortion of logic, without ever becoming an actual lie. Chapter 2 breaks the B.S. Factor into styles or systems of thought and language such as…