Three- and four-year-old children were tested in their comprehension of locative prepositions. Results showed that those prepositions characterized as positive were comprehended less well than their ostensibly negative counterparts, contrary to theoretical predictions. An explanatory hypothesis concerning children's developing spatial…

A comparison of the self-selected reading words of a group of preschool children to the words in the first reading books of four widely used basal reading series reveals that the children's self-selected words are more imagery-loaded than the words in the readers. (FL)

Responding to O. Weininger's concern about Early French Immersion (EFI) programs, the author declares that evaluations from all over Canada have shown that EFI students achieve high levels of French proficiency at no apparent academic cost. Other objections to Weininger's conclusions are also raised. (PP)

Explores the transition of several children from spoken language to beginning writing. (HTH)

Two linguistically deficient children of deaf parents had been cared for almost exclusively by their mother, who did not speak or sign to them. Intervention led to erasure of idiosynchratic speech pattern in the older child and in increasing both children's expressive ability. Implications for language-learning are discussed. (PJM)

Points out the types of information teachers can learn from children's "mistakes" in language, reading, and writing; urges teachers to look at "mistakes" analytically rather than from a correctional perspective. Notes the need for teachers to understand the developmental nature of language skills and to observe each child in many contexts. (ET)

Evidence is provided to refute the suggestion, made by Macnamara et al. (1976), that four-year-old children perform logical operations corresponding to formal logic upon the sentential components of implicative verbs to produce indirect implications. It is argued that children use past knowledge plus additional premises to derive indirect…

Presents a rebuttal to Hidi and Hildyard's (1976) criticism of Macnamara et al.'s (1976) assertion regarding the ability of four-year-old children to grasp implicatives and presuppositions. (AM)

Examines the relationship between phonetic substitution patterns in child speech and sound change patterns in dialects of adult language, basing an explanation of these phenomena on acoustic data and language universals. (AM)

Presents a case study of an elementary school child with a learning disability to illustrate that both performance and disability have to be understood in terms of the social environments with which they are linked. (FL)

Children should develop communication competencies related to a broad array of communication situations involving speaking and listening as well as reading and writing. Five functions of communication (controlling, sharing feelings, informing, ritualizing, and imagining) are offered as the communication focus of a language arts program. (JMF)

This article reports on a study designed to obtain data on the first words understood and produced by eight infants. It provides a descriptive account of the earliest levels of language comprehension and allows comparison of lexical development in comprehension and production. (Author/CFM)

Results from correlated multiple-group component analyses of the Revised Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) subtests were given. Intercorrelations for each age group in the standardization sample provided strong support for the theoretical model underlying the Revised ITPA. (Author/MH)

Reports on a study designed to: (1) produce a multiple-choice test which would measure children's comprehension of figurative language, and (2) obtain information about the development of figurative language comprehension in children. (Author/AM)

Describes a research project in which the acquisition of French by two six-year-old boys, native speakers of English, was observed longitudinally. (CFM)