Two experiments investigated how child and adult speakers of English and Kannada (Dravidian) interpret scopally ambiguous sentences containing numerally quantified noun phrases and negation. Results showed that 4-year-olds' interpretations were constrained by the surface hierarchical relations (the c-command relations) between sentence elements…

Presents a study that compared 22 children with Down syndrome in mainstream school placements matched for chronological age with 22 children attending special schools in a different Local Education Authority where mainstream placements were rare. Reports that children in mainstream placements achieved higher scores for vocabulary, grammar, and…

A study examined phonological and orthographic processing skills related to two lexical acquisition systems in fifth and sixth-grade children with (n=16) and without (n=48) reading disabilities (RD). Children with RD added word-specific entries to their lexicons without a corresponding expansion of subword orthographic-phonological connections.…

Explores the possibility that the early predominance of infinitival forms in children acquiring Dutch as their first language is related to patterns in the language input. Analyzed a corpus of utterances addressed by two Dutch-speaking mothers to their 2- and 3-year-old sons. Root infinitive utterances amounted to 10%, and auxiliary-plus…

A longitudinal study of 12 children (ages 1-3), investigated why some prefer to replace "I" with "me", whereas others prefer to replace "I" with "my". The percentage of errors in which "me" replaced "I" was positively correlated with the correct production of "me" as an objective pronoun. (Author/CR)

Used head-mounted eye-tracking system to study kindergartners' and adults' moment-by-moment language processing ability as they responded to spoken instructions. Found that 5-year-olds did not take into account relevant discourse/pragmatic principles when resolving temporary syntactic ambiguities and showed little/no ability to revise initial…

This brief article answers frequently asked questions concerning computer based speech training (CBST) for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. It describes CBST in general, explains how CBST differs from previous systems, describes some specific CBST devices, reports on existing effectiveness data, provides cost data, and offers suggestions for…

Assessed the relative benefits of three styles of adult book reading for preschoolers' emergent literacy. Measured children's receptive vocabulary, print, and story comprehension skills after exposure to one style. Found that the describer style resulted in the greatest benefits for children's vocabulary and print skills; a performance-oriented…

Introduces this special issue on the evolving childcare and early education services in the city/nation of Singapore and presents ongoing research interests in the area. Topics for articles include an historical overview; the role of play, language development, and early reading experiences for young children; number concepts; and early-childhood…

A study of 97 Mexican-American infants born in south Texas found that language-development scores for receptive and expressive communication at age 22 months were influenced by mother's generation from Mexico and father's education level. Cultural influences on maternal teaching style and child-rearing practices are discussed in relation to school…

A study analyzed the language development of 200 children at 14, 24, 30, and 42 months and assessed their symbolic play at 14 months. Children from families with dyslexia (n=103) had lower maximum sentence length at 2 years and object naming and inflectional morphology skills at 3.5 years. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Focuses on acquisition of functional categories in the French determiner phrase. Development of determiners and prenominal adjectives in three bilingual Swedish-French children is compared with that of Swedish second language learners of French. Argues that acquisition is crucially different in these two cases. Bilingual children initially have…

Examined how Japanese 2- and 4-year-olds assigned meaning to novel nouns associated with familiar and unfamiliar animals and inanimate objects. Found that in the absence of useful information from syntax, the 2-year-olds were able to fast map a noun to its meaning by elegantly coordinating word-learning biases and other available sources of…

Examined in six experiments toddlers' use of syntactic cues to learn proper names and count nouns. Found that by 24 months, both girls and boys were significantly more likely to select a labeled object if they had heard a proper name than if they had heard a count noun. At 20 months, neither girls nor boys demonstrated this effect. (Author/KB)

Analysis of data from 96 children in a longitudinal study found that foundation skills in speech perception and language as well as family demographics and home environmental variables were related to and predicted later reading scores. Event related potential measures of speech perception immediately after birth also predicted reading scores,…