Seven young children with autism and eight with pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified were randomly assigned to intensive treatment or parent training. At follow-up, the intensive treatment groups outperformed the parent training group on measures of intelligence, visual-spatial skills, language, and academics, though not on…

Proposes an alternative account of the child's learning of nouns and adjectives that relies on properties of the semantic categories to be learned and of the word-learning task itself. In five experiments, a simple connectionist network was trained to label input objects in particular contexts; the network learned categories resembling nouns…

Studied the dinner table conversations of 22 families with young children. Analyzed utterances for language-focused terms. Reported that metalinguistic uses exceeded pragmatic uses. Found that during routine social interactions, parents provide children with potentially important information about the communicative functions of language.…

This study examined effects of an intervention (planned play, use of conversational social interaction strategies, and evaluation of play strategies) on the social-communicative interactions of six preschool children at risk for language delays and behavior problems. The intervention led to increases in social communicative behaviors, use of…

A longitudinal study of the developmental and behavioral characteristics of 26 boys (ages 12-36 months) with fragile X syndrome, found there was an increase in their developmental skills over time, although there was a great deal of variability. Motor skills appeared least delayed, whereas communication skills appeared most delayed. (Contains…

Describes characteristics of the Native Esperanto of eight speakers, ranging from age 6 to 14 years. Found bilingualism and nativization effects, differentiating native from non-native Esperanto speech. Among these effects are loss or modification of the accusative case, phonological reduction, attrition of tense/aspect system, and pronominal…

Presents evidence from studies on adults' language processing and children's language acquisition that the lexicon is at the core of grammatical generalizations at several levels of representation. Proposes that phonological acquisition might provide the bootstrapping into grammatical generalization in general. Concludes that age-appropriate…

These case studies describe and compare the language characteristics of two bilingual children (age 7), one with specific language impairment (SLI). Results found the child with SLI produced significantly more morphosyntactic errors and less variety of grammatical forms and sentence types in both languages, and demonstrated significant…

This article describes a process known as dynamic assessment used to evaluate children's narrative and expository discourse abilities. These assessment procedures help speech-language pathologists better describe language learning potential of children who are referred for language assessment. How dynamic assessment provides critical information…

Offers hearing parents of deaf infants guidelines on communicating with their child based on changes that deaf mothers make in their signing when talking to their deaf baby. Guidelines focus on restricting language, sign repetition, dramatic expression, waiting for the child's attention, tapping to gain attention, and visual leading. (DB)

Children using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) picture boards often produce sequences of symbols that do not reflect the grammatical structure of the language spoken in their environment. Graphic symbols or pictures may be interpreted as global representations of meaning rather than as individual components to be sequenced into…

Analyzed videotapes of 3- to 7-year-old Singaporean children to document play and language level. Data analysis revealed a developmental trend in play and language scores, several significant gender differences in Smilansky's and Parten/Piaget play categories but no significant gender differences in language scores. Socioeconomic status…

Language is easiest to learn before age 5. The Cherokee Nation supported production of a toy that teaches young children basic Cherokee words. When figures that come with the toy are placed into it, a computer chip activates a voice speaking the name of the figure in Cherokee. Learning takes place on visual, auditory, and tactile levels. (TD)

Presents information for parents on children's language development prior to speaking the first word, focusing on infants' readiness to learn language. Describes ways parents can support the development of language as a social and intellectual skill, including talking early and often, using songs and poetry, describing experiences, using books,…

Two studies investigated the importance of phoneme awareness relative to other predictors in the development of reading and spelling among children learning a consistent orthography (Czech) and an inconsistent orthography (English). In Study 1, structural equation models revealed that Czech (n=107) and English (n=71) data were fitted well by the…