The study sought to identify effective procedures for facilitating initial imitative vocal behavior in mentally retarded children, thus accelerating the initial stages of language acquisition. Three groups of Down syndrome children ages 6 months to 4 years (N=15) served as subjects in an examination of the relative effectiveness of three…

A descriptive case study reports and examines a five-year-old Finnish child's attainment of English language and communication skills during his first eight months in the United States, within a pragmatic theoretical framework, focusing on the various functions of utterances. The child's language usage is divided into social and egocentric speech…

After a pilot study identified possible responses that children and adolescents give when defining concrete and abstract nouns, a study investigated the development of concrete noun (specific objects) and abstract noun (concepts) definitions given by 10, 14, and 18-year-olds, as well as whether abstract and concrete nouns are defined in a parallel…

A study was conducted to determine what specific activities parents use to develop language in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first and second grade children. A questionnaire about language related activities consisted of general information regarding the parents and children, followed by 15 statements that the parents checked according to the…

A study investigated developmental changes in children's fluency in interpreting metaphors. Specifically, it examined the development of an implicit interpretation strategy found in adults of mapping relational structure from base to target. Ten subjects from each of three age groups--five to six years, nine to ten years, and college-age…

Child acquisition of Mandarin was studied with four middle class families from Taipei, Taiwan. The 2-year-olds were taped at home playing with their families. Two of the children were taped for short periods (7 hours and 9 hours), while the other two children were studied biweekly for 14 months, which resulted in 71 hours of transcribed child…

The teaching activities presented in this paper focus on expanding children's language. The paper describes (1) a "community journal" activity in which students recorded observations about events occurring in various parts of the classroom, (2) a poetry assignment using Richard Wilbur's book of poetry, "Opposites," (3) an exercise to assemble…

Three empirical studies were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that the "easy to see" construction (such as in the sentence "children are hard to understand") is acquired at a younger age than the 7-9 year range reported by previous studies (Cambon and Sinclair, 1974; Chomsky, 1969; 1972; Cromer, 1970; Kessel, 1970).…

The feedback model of maternal language indicates that maternal language development is tailored to child feedback. The conversational model indicates that adjustment in mothers' speech occurs before the onset of child language. In order to verify the validity of these models, the language of mothers of six hearing and six deaf 13- to…

This study investigated the linguistic characteristics of speech addressed to the child and the features of the verbal environment critical for learning language. The study focused on the prosodic and paralinguistic features of adult speech to the young child. Adult speech directed to children was compared to other kinds of systematic speech…

This longitudinal study examines the early stages of language acquisition in four first-born infants from birth to two years. Selected aspects of vocal-verbal behavior exhibited by the children and their parents were examined. Home and laboratory recordings, diaries, interviews, and developmental observation were principal data sources. Substudies…

The five essays in this collection examine the ways in which language functions in the lives of children, particularly in contexts outside the classroom. The first essay attempts to relate the actual language of children and adolescents to the rather different language characteristic of teachers and schools. The second essay examines the language…

The three Summer Institute articles in this publication urge teachers of English language arts to base their teaching on an awareness of how language operates and on an understanding of children's needs. Among the topics dealt with are the central role of literature in the English curriculum, the need for teachers to attend to children and accept…

Four papers are included in this document concerning the structure of linguistic input to children. Dan Slobin's paper, "Questions of Language Development in Cross-Cultural Perspective," suggests that children everywhere acquire basic grammatical competence in the first five or six years of life, regardless of social milieu or linguistic…

This paper describes an instrument used to assess the receptive language of children. The bilingual child is tested first in the non-dominant language. When the ceiling is reached in the non-dominant language, the tester switches to the dominant language. (The ideal situation would be to give the test in one language one day, then repeat the test…