Compared quality of substitute care being provided to children in care of relatives (n=31) by reason of their mothers' incarceration, with care provided by foster parents (n=9). Quality of care from foster families was rated significantly better than care from relatives for 3- to 6-year old children, but equal for infants and toddlers. (Author/NB)

Tested the prediction that "yes-no" questions that place forms of the copula "be" in initial position will also increase the rate of growth of children's copula verb development. Data from 33 children who were matched for stage of language development at 1;9 and 2;0 confirm that the frequency of inverted copulas in yes-no…

Argues that the developmental origins of actions are actions themselves and that a future-oriented mode of control is basic to movement at all ages. Suggests that, through active movement, children learn about changing and invariant properties of movement and about coordination with the external world. This learning constitutes the foundation of…

Comments on the article by von Hofsten in this issue by examining four of von Hofsten's propositions: (1) physical actions are expressions of self-organizing systems composed of bodily, task-related, motivational, and environmental factors; (2) the ability to perform actions develops with age; (3) action is situated in a total postural background;…

Three experiments explored determinants of two-year olds' perseverative errors in a search task. Found that active search, even in the absence of observation, produced perseveration on post-switch trails, but mere observation did not. Results indicated that active search is required to elicit perseveration, which points to failures of response…

Reviews study of toddlers' responses to specific and neutral requests for clarification, focusing on ability to locate linguistic errors that provoked clarification requests and their successes in repair. Argues that this behavior provides evidence for a speech monitor that detects errors and enables repair. Suggests that metalinguistic ability…

Studied 715 twins and singletons to document heritable influences on temperament during toddler and preschool ages. Found substantial shared environmental influence on positive affect and additive genetic influence on emotion regulation. Intraclass correlations from many scales showed no evidence of "too-low" dizygotic correlations that…

Advises parents to relax and learn to recognize the signs that a child is physically and emotionally ready for the next developmental step. Developmental milestones discussed include riding in a backpack, moving to a forward-facing car seat, using eating utensils, taking time-out, and moving from crib to a bed. (HTH)

Two studies examined word frequencies in toddlers' lexicons using the Language Development Survey (LDS). In Study 1, a high degree of consistency in LDS word frequencies was found in the lexicons of 758 24-month-olds. In Study 2, LDS word frequencies in 40 late talkers found both lexicon size and age of subject influenced the degree of consistency…

Examined use of word order and animacy for interpretation of sentences by typically-developing and language delayed children. Results indicate that typically-developing 2-year-olds use neither cue consistently to interpret sentences; typically-developing 2.5-year-olds used a coalition of word order and animacy cues; and language-delayed…

Describes an ethnographic study of African American toddlers and families that focused on children's productive competence in naturally occurring narrativelike conversation. Examines emergence of narrative competence; posits definition incorporating minimal requirements for child participation within the fundamental essence of narrative structure.…

Examined two-year-olds' word learning. In one study, adults modeled the new word for an object novel to the children; in another, the object was novel only for the adult. Subjects displayed significant learning of new words in both settings, suggesting that toddlers understand that novelty in a discourse setting is determined from the speaker's…

Investigates how the noun and verb classes develop in the free speech of a French child between the ages of 1 year, 2 months to 2 years and 6 months from the perspective of semantic and grammatical development. Analyses indicate that in French acquisition, nouns clearly predominate over verbs until 20 months of age at least, but that verbs are…

Five experiments tested hypothesis that the A-not-B error results from general processes that make goal-directed actions to remembered locations. Findings showed that 2-year-olds' performance on the A trial was accurate. When the object was hidden at Location B, searches after 10-second delay were biased in the direction of Location A. This bias…

Effects of different levels of treatment integrity for a time-out intervention in relation to the aggressive behavior of an 18-month-old were investigated. Results suggest that the 75% and 100% treatment integrity conditions were most effective for decreasing aggressive behavior. Discussion focuses on the need for assessing optimal and minimum…