This study indicates several areas in which the contributions of Piaget, Dewey, and Vygotsky appear to substantiate Montessori theory and practice. Historical information concerning the emergence and accessibility of developmental and educational theory is also provided. The work identifies similarities and differences in the theorists' views of…

This report describes a project which targeted two-person teams of leadership-level personnel in special education and speech/language pathology for training in child language to serve severely handicapped non-verbal children. A "pyramid" training model was used and these primary trainees conducted additional training with teachers and clinicians…

Focusing on the realities and constraints operating in public school settings, this book suggests ways that school personnel with responsibilities for hearing-impaired and other language-delayed children can produce effective language assessments and interventions. Following an overview of language development, the book is organized into sections…

A study tested the hypothesis that the production of derivational (as contrasted with grammatical) morphemes is acquired through a systematic development of three distinct psychological processes: comprehension, segmentation, and production, regardless of whether the individual is a first- or second-language learner. The subjects were 32 children,…

The Auditory Discrimination in Depth (ADD) program, an oral-motor approach to beginning reading instruction, causes students to become aware of the oral-facial characteristics of phonemes by calling conscious attention to the motor characteristics of each sound. This aspect of phoneme production is connected to visual and auditory cues to provide…

A review of the literature on the development of children's abilities to comprehend and produce metaphorical language shows this development to be a continuous process rather than one characterized by stages, and to be constrained primarily by limitations in children's knowledge and information processing abilities. More specifically, the…

Collected are four conference speeches which in various ways attack the developmental perspective that views genetics as a source of stability and environment as a source of change. Dr. Bonnie E. Litowitz's discussion of "Context and Continuity: Changing Perspectives on Children" explores differences among development, learning, and…

One of a regular series on the status and progress of research into the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications, this report consists of 17 papers dealing with the following topics: (1) vagueness and fictions as cornerstones of a theory of perceiving and acting--a commentary on D.O. Walter; (2) the…

This paper discusses the meaning and formation of children's play in order to (1) deepen understanding and respect for what play is, (2) demonstrate how young children cannot thrive or survive without play, and (3) give a common framework for interpreting and deriving meaning from the play behavior that occurs in the daily lives of young children.…

The booklet offers five presentations from a 1975 special conference on the role of the psychologist, audiologist, and speech pathologist in working with the deaf-blind child. The first paper, "Meeting the Needs of the Severely Handicapped" by L. Hall, addresses the needs of special education, the role of administration in special education, and…

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…

Intended to help elementary school children integrate the skills of writing and reading at an early age, this booklet discusses research concerning the cognitive processes and acquisition of reading and writing skills, and presents teaching methods and resources to help young children make the connection. The first half of the booklet explores…

Once speech educators turn their attention to the "ideational" function of oral language--that portion pertaining to thinking--rather than the relational function, they will see that speech can and should be incorporated into every discipline. The psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky envisions the ways in which humans use speech to reorder their…

Since the time of E. B. Huey (1908), there have been clear indicators that oral language as a reflection of a child's linguistic ability has been clearly related to his or her reading achievement or comprehension. P. McKee (1937) and W. S. Gray (1937) both speculated that reading difficulties might parallel language deficiencies. G. Hildreth…

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…