Uses data from Toddler Sign Program, a nine-month program of bimodal input and assessment involving 25 handicapped and nonhandicapped toddlers (11 to 33 months old at program onset). Explores boundary conditions (most extreme conditions under which a phenomenon holds) of sign advantage phenomenon (where signs are learned earlier and more easily…

Examined mothers' speech to 2-year-old children in both quiet and moderately noisy conditions. Mothers were recorded while teaching their children two words, one of which occurred in the context of other people speaking. Parents used characteristics of infant-directed speech (IDS) to these older children. In addition, many of the prosodic changes…

Examined data on cognitive ability of mono- and dizygotic twins who ranked in the bottom 10th percentile of cognitive ability at 14, 20, 24, and 36 months. Statistical analyses suggested that there is a genetic etiology in low cognitive ability groups and that the stability of low cognitive ability over time is due primarily to genetic factors.…

The study assessed the turntaking skills and pragmatic language skills of 4 mildly to moderately developmentally delayed children (ages 2 and 3) and 14 nondelayed controls. Developmentally delayed children exhibited appropriate turntaking skills but a higher proportion of gestural in contrast to verbal responses to the pragmatic language tasks.…

Examined changes in spouses' experiences of their mates and marital relationships from last trimester of pregnancy through 3 years postpartum. Found 4 distinct patterns of marital change (accelerating decline, linear decline, no change, modest positive increase). Findings from 128 families revealed that patterns of marital change were determined…

Children as young as 24 months were able to recall accurate information about a series of unusual events after a 3-month delay. Recall of the events after a relatively brief interval appeared to act as a deterrent against forgetting over a longer interval. (RH)

The article describes the Intervention Program for handicapped children (birth to three years) and their families located at the University of California, Los Angeles. The program served 139 children and their families using a model which emphasized integration of young handicapped and nonhandicapped children within a developmental educational…

Investigated the role of parental interaction styles on children's developing skill at providing contextual orientation in personal experience narratives. Eighteen monthly narratives were elicited from toddlers. The children's increasing skill at independently providing context about when and where was correlated with mothers' frequency of using…

Studied whether two-year olds use multiple syntactic frames to help determine meanings of novel verbs. The multiple frames tested were combinations of transitive and intransitive frames in two alternation patterns. As predicted, the Causative pattern was more predictive of actions involving physical causation, and the Omitted Object pattern was…

Two-year-olds' difficulty with rule execution was examined through one of six tasks: a task assessing knowledge about a series of items, a deductive card sort requiring the use of knowledge to sort items by rules, and four modifications of the card sort. Found that the toddlers performed better on the knowledge task than the other tasks. (MDM)

Examined linguistic and nonlinguistic context effects on the shape bias in three year olds' word learning. Results indicated that children systematically attended to shape in interpreting novel count nouns, but their interpretation of adjectives was contextually determined. (GLR)

Three studies examined two-year olds' understanding of novel terms for objects that they are already familiar with under another name. The studies found that the new term was most likely to be treated as a second basic-level name for the category to which the object belonged. (MDM)

In two studies, two year olds learned a novel word for a particular stuffed animal. When the animal was familiar, children interpreted the novel word as a proper noun. When the animal was unfamiliar, children frequently interpreted the novel word as a count noun referring to a kind of object. (BC)

Compared the abilities of 3 mother-reared and 3 human-raised (enculturated) chimpanzees and 16 human toddlers to imitatively learn novel actions on objects. Found that mother-reared chimpanzees were poorer imitators than both enculturated chimpanzees and human children, who did not differ from one another in imitative learning. On time delay…

Reviewed studies of the social interaction of toddlers in interaction and play in daycare centers in Europe. Identified a characteristic style in the interaction with peers of 1- and 2-year-olds shown in play sequences, construction of shared meaning, and affiliative structures. (SLD)