Investigates the extent to which children develop the ability to comprehend and explain literal and idiomatic meanings as a function of age and sex. (EKN)

Presents suggestions for using plays in the classroom as a means of developing language and reading skills. Provides a list of plays covering many topics and grade levels. (FL)

Examined effects of direct intervention on language learning. Using a toy manipulation task, 18 children aged 3;6 to 4;6 were systematically taught linguistic structures beyond their developmental grasp. Solid improvement was found in the experimental conditions; no significant improvement was noted in control conditions, showing that the language…

The present studies were designed to test the role of descrepancy between existing cognitive structures and current input and the amount of pleasure derived from successful processing of that input with respect to children's appreciation of humor. (Author/SB)

Author describes a project which encouraged mothers to take a positive role in their children's language development. (Editor/RK)

Article discusses language development as inseparable from early childhood experience. Educational task is to associate language with child's experience in the presense of an interested adult in order to generate further language development. (MS)

Discusses children's self-image and its relationship to language acquisition and reading readiness. (DD)

Discusses the deficiencies of the nativistic explanation of language acquisition, reviews and critiques existing theories of syntax while highlighting the trend toward a semantic description of linguistic development, and argues that a satisfactory account of language acquisition will not emerge until this process is viewed within a larger…

Helping children develop effective language use in school environments requires that as much attention be given to function as to the form and structure of language. (RC)

Presented is an overview of advances in biomedicine, education, and language for the deaf over the past decade. (SB)

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that development of syntactic comprehension through verbal modeling is enhanced by referent concreteness as a contextual influence. Subjects were 48 children from 3 1/2 to 5 years old. (Author/JH)

In this study, a transfer of stimulus control procedure was used to establish generalized verb-noun instruction-following skills in two severely retarded boys. (Author/JH)

Argues that bicultural education is necessary in meeting the language needs of Mexican-American students. (RB)

Two tasks were used to test predictions of the Semantic Feature Hypothesis (SFH) about children's comprehension of the meaning of spatial adjectives. Predictions about acquisition order for dimensional features were supported; predictions about polarity were not. An acquisition hypothesis is offered that is contrary to the SFH. (Author/RM)