Organized action need not depend on group consensus. Karl Weick's theory argues that only minimal shared understanding is needed and that common ends and shared meanings may be outcomes of organized action, not prerequisites. This paper reveals four communication mechanisms that generate and sustain equifinal meaning (multiple routes to a single…

Investigates the evolution of specific lexical and syntactical clues and the recurrence of various semantic fields in mothers' spontaneous speech to their infants. Content of mothers' speech was related to age in newborn to 10-month-old children. (Author/RH)

Subjective comments from veteran news reporters, media critics, and the public give the impression that bad or negative news is becoming a major problem in this country. This impression raises major questions concerning how much is really known about bad news, including whether the media present an accurate or distorted picture of reality in…

Communicative adjustments of nonhandicapped preschool children addressing developmentally delayed companions were evaluated for their effectiveness and appropriateness. Behavior-request episodes in which initial failure had occurred were analyzed, and sequences of interactions were tracked within episodes until some form of resolution was…

Demonstrates a training technique for improving the referential performance of young children and for obtaining generalization of this training. Findings on generalization suggest that further investigation should reveal practical applications of the method for the classroom and clinic. (RH)

Vocalizations of infants were classified and analyzed in a longitudinal sample of infants ranging in age from 2 to 14 weeks. Results suggest that infants performed different types of vocalizations that can be interpreted as affective states from 2 weeks of age on. Parents responded with a highly diversified pattern of reactions to different infant…

Preschoolers did use certain aspects of the "child-directed speech" register: they addressed their infant siblings with a high pitch, with relatively short utterances, and with many directives and self-repetitions. However, linguistic interactions of preschool-age siblings and infants were different from those of mothers and infants in several…

Investigates children's ability to distinguish the literal meaning of a message and a speaker's communicative intent. Either knowing or not knowing the speaker's intended referent, first- and second-grade children evaluated brief referential communication messages for ambiguity. In the first experiment, messages were written on cards and read to…

Preschool children's evaluation and integration of visual and auditory information in speech perception was compared with that of adults. Results were used to test current views of the development of perceptual categorization and speech perception. (Author/RH)

Proposes that young children employ two ordered, nonverbal classification strategies to interpret vague referential instructions: first, they rely on context; then, if the first strategy fails, they guess. If the guess goes uncorrected, they conclude that it was correct. Two studies provide evidence supporting children's use of the hypothesized…

The relationship between the referential communication accuracy of mothers and their 4-year-old children and the children's achievement in vocabulary and mathematics at age 12 was examined in 47 American and 44 Japanese mother-child pairs. Positive correlations were found in both cultures. (Author/BN)

Examines how children's responses to questions about object terms varied across objects and the degree to which children specified common and conventional values for different object dimensions. (HOD)

Reviewed are previous studies that have examined adults' and children's ability to understand verbal directions. Differences in style and the implications of these differences for educating children are discussed. (CW)

Argues that many existing methods for teaching English diction for choral performance are ineffective. Describes a study of the Articulatory Diction Development Method (ADDM), focusing on kinesthetic awareness and speech articulator control. Concludes through research involving three high school choirs that the ADDM can improve choral tone and…

Examines whether vocal exchanges between preverbal infants and their mothers show characteristics similar to those found to be typical of conversational exchanges between competent adult speakers. (HOD)