In an attempt to integrate the theoretical perspectives of G.H. Mead and Piaget, this paper presents a model of human development which views physiological and cognitive growth as a unitary, universal progression that is interdependent with social development. Social development is seen as a result of the child's developmentally constrained…

This study supports the claim that environmental factors in early intervention programs can positively affect the development of early communicative behaviors in infants. A sample of 20-month-old infants from low socioeconomic backgrounds and at risk for mental retardation was randomly divided into a day care intervention group and a control…

A study was undertaken to explore the relationship of mothers' language to infant development in terms of the infants' development of sensorimotor intelligence. Specifically, the study chronicled the infants' advances in sensorimotor development from J. Piaget's Stage II to Stage III as a possible explanation for changes in maternal language. It…

The use of formulaic speech is seen as a learning strategy in children's first language (L1) acquisition to a limited extent, and to an even greater extent in their second language (L2) acquisition. While the first utterances of the child learning L1 are mostly one-word constructions, many of them are routine words or phrases that the child learns…

A study was conducted of the language development of a hearing child whose mother was deaf and communicated only in sign and whose father was hearing and communicated in both sign and oral language. Results showed similarities in development between the two modalities as well as similarity between development in two separate modalities and two…

This study investigates oral language characteristics of 100 first-grade children to determine the relationship between selected measures of oral language and reading achievement at the end of first grade. Using the Stanford Achievement Test, Reading, the study shows statistically significant, but low, correlations existing between the…

Intended for parents and teachers of multiply handicapped preschool children, the booklet provides lesson plans in three major areas--basic concepts, motor activities, and language activities. Each lesson plan is broken down into four parts: purpose (a descriptive statement of what the lesson hopes to accomplish), materials (list of materials…

Presented is a language stimulation curriculum guide designed for severely mentally retarded institutionalized persons. Pre- and post-assessments and behavioral objectives with teaching suggestions are provided for the following curriculum areas: early motor development (such as sitting, crawling, and walking skills); adaptive skills (including…

A total of 113 seventh grade students participated in a study to test the effectiveness of sentence combining practice as a means to significantly improve syntactic and semantic fluency in student writing. Methods included pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest t-unit analyses of syntactic fluency, and four pretest and posttest analyses of…

In recent years, T-unit analysis has been applied in second language research to characterize the syntactic nature of linguistic input and to assess the syntactic maturity of the learners' written production. This measure has been seen to provide an objective and reliable method of determining the overall complexity of language samples. However,…

Presented to the Ninth Annual Interdisciplinary UAP-USC Conference on Piagetian Theory and the Helping Professions in 1979, the paper discusses the development of cognitive skills in handicapped children through art activities, and describes some new art-based procedures for assessing and developing such cognitive skills. The procedures in the…

Research evidence currently indicates that young children's communication skills for both the speaker and the listener roles are often ineffective. The accuracy of children's communication improves gradually over the elementary school years. Current thinking in the area of metacognition may be very useful in understanding the development of…

Findings from research investigating the development of competence in young children are summarized in this pamphlet. Characteristics of the competent 6-year-old, derived from the systematic observation of more than 100 children in various settings over a two-year period, are listed. A study aimed at identifying the kinds of experiences regularly…

Written in 1965, the author describes the initial stages in the development of the elementary level curriculum, Man: A Course of Study. The structure and form of the course and three pedagogical techniques are discussed. The course is organized around the humanizing forces of tool-making, language, social organization, the management of man's…

A study was conducted to test the validity of the Linguistic Features Hypothesis, which predicts that unmarked personal pronouns will be learned first by children, yielding the following order of acquisition: first person before second, followed by third; singular before plural; and subjective case before objective or genitive. A review of the…