Piaget's concept of socialized speech was reevaluated with the use of everyday preschool speech collected during free play on 174 boys and girls aged 2 to 5. (MS)

Offers five classroom activities, some teacher centered and some child centered, that develop reading and writing in five-year-old children. (FL)

Describes a psycholinguistic investigation of children's competence in the production of extended discourse, concentrating on discourse form (narrative versus expository) and production modality (written versus spoken). (SKC)

Describes a teacher's metamorphosis from a controlling kindergarten teacher to one who recognized that children already have a great deal of language and print awareness and who could assist them in self-directed learning by giving their language instruction a context. (HTH)

Parents and teachers of 98 developmentally delayed children (ages 5-17) rated the childrens abilities for self-help, speech/language, and play skills and for the presence of behavior problems. Significant agreement was found on 77% of the items. The mean level of agreement was 68%. (Author/DB)

When lexical availability was manipulated through discourse support and word frequency for 40 target nouns, measurement of effects on length, complexity, order of mention, and fluency of 4- to 8-year-olds' utterances showed that the number and length of responses containing the target word varied with age, word frequency, and discourse support…

Production of the deictic verbs "bring" and "take" was evaluated among 88 normally functioning elementary school children. Results showed that data evaluation procedures greatly influenced conclusions, the second-to-emerge form was easier to learn in a conventional way, and the second term was the proactive stimulus for…

Fifteen 1-year-olds without otitis media were compared to 12 babies who were otitis positive. No significant differences were detected on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development or the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development (SICD) Receptive scale. However, the otitis-positive group exhibited lower SICD Expressive scores than the…

The study examined whether differences existed between experimental and control groups in maternal language and children's receptive language five years after a home-based intervention program. Mothers were interviewed and asked to tell stories to their children. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was administered to the children, with the…

This longitudinal study presents the communication techniques utilized by teachers interacting with four hearing-impaired preschool children. Teachers relied extensively upon three techniques: label/model, extension, and correction. Infrequently used were such techniques as expansion, completion, reinforcement, repetition, and simple expatiation.…

Thirty-five maltreated children (mean age 36 months) who received treatment in a therapeutic day program had significantly higher developmental scores in five areas -- fine motor, cognitive, gross motor, social/emotional, and language -- than did maltreated children not receiving the treatment. (Author/DB)

Illustrates ways teachers can facilitate literacy and language development in preschool and kindergarten children by offering children a variety of opportunities to create connections between "reading" symbols, communicating ideas and mastering meaning. Among the suggested activities are oral language experience, printing of names and words, and…

Relates how the increased use of the word processors is changing life in Japan and predicts both positive and negative effects on language education. Illustrates some features of the Japanese language. (NH)

A cognitive-developmental view of reading was tested with 100 four-year-olds by examining the relationship between conceptual reading (multiple seriation and perceptual regulations), oral language (vocabulary and grammatic production), and reading (word recognition and comprehension). Findings suggest that language-learning explanations of reading…